A couple of years ago, I was poking around in a European art
museum and came across an exhibit of exquisitely beautiful
Eastern Orthodox religious paintings, “icons.” Beyond being
visually striking — they have an austere, hieratic, distant
quality — they are also, I realized at the time, in a way,
scientific. Alright, I know, that’s a wild statement. But hear
me out. A religious icon is more than a painting. It has a
semiotic value that’s highly codified, a language and practical
purpose of its own that sets it apart from all the other
representational art preceding our modern era of abstraction.
This is partly because it’s such an ancient form of art, one
dating back to a time when making images at all was a relatively
rare gesture. It’s also because it’s a devotional form, a way of
representing something believed to transcendent and beyond human
understanding. This last point is what interests me. An icon is
somewhat fraught: it’s not entirely intended to be an object of
its own. Rather, its purpose is to b