Aniconism
Aniconism is the religious or cultural practice of avoiding, restricting, or destroying figurative images, especially of the divine. It appears in Judaism, Islam, parts of early Christianity, the Byzantine iconoclastic crises of the 8th and 9th centuries, and strands of the Radical Reformation, and it varies enormously in degree - from suspicion of three-dimensional idols to wholesale destruction of pictures. Where aniconism holds, art does not disappear but redirects: geometry, interlace, vegetal scroll, and calligraphy carry the decorative load, symbols stand in for persons, and architecture itself becomes the image. Art historians and anthropologists use the term comparatively, and its interest for visual study is precisely that a prohibition on images is itself a visual decision, producing recognizable ornamental and architectural outcomes.
Defining characteristics
- Figural representation avoided, restricted, or destroyed
- Non-figural ornament carries the decorative load: geometry, interlace, vegetation, script
- Iconoclastic episodes - images defaced, plastered over, or replaced
- Symbolic stand-ins (cross, crescent, menorah, sacred stone) where other cultures place figures
- Tension between doctrine and practice: figural art often survives at the margins
Sources
- Aniconism - Wikipedia encyclopedia