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> J. Michael Walker wrote: " And church fathers, in my experience, prefer their art to be symbolically abstracted: give us, they seem to say, a crucifix reduced to its essentials, like Giacometti without the subtext: pure form / pure idea...." >"In both cases, "the artist confronts the so-called "crisis of the >human figure", a lack of faith in the power of the human figure to >speak with, or to be rendered with, dignity and spirit intact; " _____________________________________ While the subject of J. M. Walker's perceptive indentification of what he sees as the crisis at the heart of representational art was born of our discussion of religious sensibilities ( via ' kwitsch Kitsch' and green-glowing Virgins), it seemed too too rich a synchronymous moment not to note that on this same day( the first Sunday of Lent), according to the calendar of the Eastern Churches, is celebrated the restoration of images at the Council of Nicea II ( 787). Any reading of the primary theological defenses of these images,( John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite, among others) identify the very same " lack of faith in the power of the human figure to speak with, or to be rendered with, dignity and spirit intact" on the part of the iconoclasts; a lack of faith which, from their reasoning should have been shattered by a proper understanding of the Incarnation, through which that dignity was permanently established ( Theodore the Studite, <On the Holy Icons>, Refutation III, #41). As to church fathers, preferring their art to be symbolically abstracted, it seems to me precisely the opposite. Abstractions, and hence 'reductions' of the human were seen as Christological distortions, and were discouraged if not actively prohibited. Josef Gulka Josef Gulka [log in to unmask] Tel: 215- 732-8420 Fax (215) 732-8420 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%