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Art in the Shade

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Beyond the Graven Image

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Abstract

When Marcel Brion ascribes to ‘Mosaism, Islam and the Reformation’, ‘the absolute proscription of every image’ he is wheeling out an old canard.1 Talk of ‘iconophobia’ is no less misleading.2 Between the innocent image and the illegitimate idol that is indeed deserving of utter destruction, especially if erected in the land promised to the Israelites (Dt.12:3), the Bible is well able to distinguish. A comprehensive policy of iconoclasm has no part in the Biblical aesthetic.3

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Notes

  1. For example, M. Carmilly-Weinberger, The fear of art, New York, Bowker, 1986

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  2. Incidentally, what did contemporary Jewish observers make of iconoclastic movements? I have been unable to find any references at all to events in Byzantium; as to the Reformation, the only contemporary reference I have been able to find is a comment in the historical chronicle of R. David Gans, first published in Prague in 1592. Luther is hailed as ‘a great scholar in their writings’, a follower of Hus, author of many works ‘who made the religion of the Pope odious and divided the heart of the Christians and wanted to burn and destroy all images, and they should no longer pray to Mary, mother of their anointed, and not to his twelve apostles and that bishops and clergy should take wives...’ (R. David Gans, Zemach David, ed. M. Breuer, Jerusalem, Magnes, 1983, p.386).

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  1. Lionel Kochan
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© 1997 Lionel Kochan

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Kochan, L. (1997). Art in the Shade. In: Beyond the Graven Image. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25545-0_6

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