Cracked Ice Screen - Beeldenstorm, 1566: The Destruction and Absence of Idols
by Bryce Flaskas
by Bryce Flaskas
“…Shall I ask you whether God is a magician, and of a nature to appear insidiously now in one shape, and now in another - sometimes himself changing and passing into many forms, sometimes deceiving us with the semblance of such transformations; or is he one and the same immutably fixed in his own proper image?”
― Plato, The Republic (pp. 73)
What constitutes a devotional image? Devotional ideologies have aroused from human beings, countless objects and images of worship to be created for centuries. One could say that these spiritually inspired forms are representations of mortal desire, fallible in nature. Others, that these appearances arise from a more omnipotent source, evoking worship and providing assistance in devotional practices. Here we recognise a delineation, between a said divine form and a less or non-divine form. Throughout this essay I will compare two pieces of art; Cracked Ice Screen by Maruyama Ōkyo (Fig. 3.) and Beeldenstorm, 1566 by Jan Luyken (Fig. 1.), returning to this line of questioning frequently, examining idol worship through the cultural lens of Eastern and Western artistic traditions, and shedding light on the power of devotional thought in relation to art.
Firstly, I will introduce and provide a brief historical background for each artwork, and then continue to argue how each work comments on the destruction or absence of idols relating to their individual historical pre-tense. Then, framed through an understanding of Eastern and Western art traditions, I will examine each artist's technical and stylistic decisions, as well as their similarities and departures and how this relates to my line of questioning.
On August 10th 1566, exiled preacher on account of his Protestant sympathies, Sébastien Matte, delivered a heated sermon at the village church of Steenvoorde, Flanders. The exact content of the sermon is unknown, but after he finished, the crowd he was preaching to marched to the nearby convent of Saint Laurent (which was in the midst of celebrating its patron saint's day) and destroyed all the religious imagery there. This point in history is traditionally thought to be the beginning of what would be called the “Iconoclasm”, “Iconoclastic Fury”, or in Dutch “Beeldenstorm” (Image Storm), which would spread relentlessly through the county of Flanders and the Low Countries for years to come , completely transforming Western understandings of Art1.
Although we don’t know the exact wording of Matte’s speech, the thought behind this destructive gesture is evident, Suykerbuyk writes;
“…that the actions were in essence about religious convictions, and that the breaking should be understood as a physical reaction against the physicality and materiality of traditional, Catholic devotion”2.
As of May 19th, 2023, Merriam Webster listed “Iconoclasm” as derived from the Greek “Eikonoklastēs”, which translates literally as “image destroyer”. Though this term is often associated with the physical destruction of idols and more significantly the Catholic reformation of the 16th century, it can also be used in its traditional sense to describe someone who “criticises or opposes beliefs or practices that are widely accepted” (Refer to Merriam Webster as of 19th May, 2023).
In Jan Luyken’s Beeldenstorm, 1566 (Fig. 1.), we witness the energetic chaos of the iconoclastic raids in full swing. Crowds are seen scaling the walls of the church, smashing religious reliefs and saintly figures. Central to the image are a group of men pulling down a crucifix mounted upon an altar. Luyken being a pious Christian himself, and print-maker by trade, has a body of work devoted to depicting historical religious persecutions and martyrdom3. A gruesome emphasis on sacrificing oneself for a “higher purpose” is evident, and at times appears fetishised in Luykens earlier etchings (Fig. 2.).
Brutal for certain, and through this logic the more horrifically dismembered the martyrs are portrayed, the more exalted they become. Consequently, returning to Beeldenstorm, 1566, raises the question; “Were these images destroyed because they were “closer to God”, or because they were mere imitations of God?”. Luykens positionality on idolatry remains opaque, and his portrayal of the Beeldenstorm seems to serve predominantly as a historical representation, inextricably located within time and place - as opposed to Ōkyo’s work.
Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence offers an essential view of Christianity in relation to Eastern thought and how two religious ideologies have grappled over time. The novel explores the life of apostate Portuguese missionaries living in 17th century Japan, when the Christian doctrine and all who worshipped it were met with infamous acts of subjugation, physical and psychological torture. To Endō, a Catholic himself, God responds in silence to the extreme acts of human suffering detailed throughout the novel; “Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent…?”4, a desperate prayer capturing the absence and uncertainty of God. As though when crossing the cultural “border” into Japan, God was lost to the missionaries. Instead finding themselves spiritually and symbolically stuck in a country, fixed in the time and space of Buddhist law.
An unsettling atmosphere, echoing these events can somewhat be sensed within the landscape of Cracked Ice Screen by Maruyama Ōkyo (Fig. 3.), dating back to the Edo period (late 18th century)5, over 100 years after the historical events explored in Silence. A stark winter-scape, with sharp brushstrokes ruminating cracks in ice, the artist obviously taking pains to place the cracks in such a way to suggest a receding sense of distance. Although the plane of the image provides a sense of distance, it is void of an apparent association with a time and place. This point will be expounded on later in the essay, but for now it's interesting to note the unshakeable Buddhist and perhaps Shinto frameworks the artist is based in.
Emptiness, even more so than the cold landscape, is the most prevalent element within the image. Or more accurately that of the Buddhist concept anattā, or no-self, the idea that no unchanging, permanent sense of self or essence can be found in any phenomena6. Distinctly contradictory to the Christian conception of the soul. Ōkyo’s work, therefore, centralises the experience of nature - given the absence of a historic time, or recognisable place. Also when viewing the image, the absence of any transcendent divinity returns the sacred, to the immediate experience of everything around us, embodying the immanence of Shinto-Buddhist perspective.
Coming back to Silence, although the novel is entirely narrated by a Christian missionary, and therefore phrased through a Western perspective, Endō here uses a literary technique to communicate a cultural barrier from the perspective of the persecuted7. Bringing the reader closer to a sense of Christ-like martyrdom, and the human-ness of this experience. Similarly through Ōkyo’s Cracked Ice Screen, heralded as a masterpiece of Western and Eastern artistic synthesis, we can clearly see that Ōkyo has utilised the literal “Western perspective”, drawing attention to Japan's political conditions at the time, such as its trade relations with the Dutch (commonly known as “komo” or “red haired people”)8, and preceding globalisation, the gradual adoption of Western thought.
When referring to Western art education throughout this essay, it should “for our purposes, be considered a part of religious education in general”9. Although the conjecture of Western and Eastern artistic styles by many Japanese artists had been circulating Japan for a while. Ōkyo, combining elements of Western realism with a Japanese Kano style of painting , was nonetheless met with severe resistance and divisiveness at the time10. Not only because realism was considered a mechanical recreation of the natural world (distinctly opposed to Christian understanding which we’ll come to soon)11, but also because it incorporated a foreign perspective that Japan so painstakingly fought to avoid for centuries.
Beeldenstorm, 1566, also utilises an expansive vanishing point perspective, but in such a way as to contrast the proportional enormity of the religious institution, against the rallying citizens. In this way Luyken symbolically renders the power of the Christian faith, in which the crowds are attempting to tear down piece by piece, not just spiritually but also imparting a feeling of political awe upon the viewer. Though the image portrays what appears to be downright vandalism, it's important to note that the Iconoclasm wasn’t just pure vandalism, instead, crowds targeted specific imagery12. For Christians, lay and clerical of the time, the physical world held a potential for divine intervention and miraculous happenings to occur13.
Paintings, therefore, were seen in the same way; “images were physically active, reaching over space to the eye”14. So technicalities concerning perspective were extremely important in communicating the spiritual value of an image to the common Christian viewer.
However, I wonder if an image to be considered devotional, if it is more important for it to be founded upon the spiritual character of the image itself or trivial technicalities relating to perspective? For I see the artist more as a bridge between the Supreme and reality, and not merely a fabricator of pretty illusions. Later, Descartes will question the relationship between appearance and truth through his famous formula “I think, therefore I am”, proceeding; “the sense of sight assures us no less of the truth of its objects than do the senses of smell or hearing, whereas neither our imagination or our senses could ever assure us of anything if our understanding did not intervene”15.
This “understanding” for Descartes was placed there by God16. How iconoclasts understood a devotional image compared to an un-devotional image is highly debated, and for the most part becomes a political conversation. For within the struggle of definition, whether that be defining a religious sect or how particular heavenly bodies are depicted, the power to command, or indeed to neglect, forms of representation is of incredible importance.
To conclude, we have touched upon both Eastern and Western ways of perceiving, explored various technical fixtures pertaining to religious form and analysed the power of devotional thought in relation to arts practice. On a final note, attributing a thing in the world to be a “spiritual being”, can appear to be a divisive act.. divisive insofar as the object is understood from its native framework. Therefore allow the unknown to remain unknown, a place where the human mind treads only in dreams.
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