ICONOCLASM: AN OVERVIEW

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GEORGE MAKDISI (1987)

ICELANDIC RELIGION

SEE GERMANIC

RELIGION

I-CHING

SEE YIJING

ICONOCLASM

This entry consists of the following articles:

AN OVERVIEW
ICONOCLASM IN THE BYZANTINE TRADITION

ICONOCLASM: AN OVERVIEW
Iconoclasm can be defined as the intentional desecration or
destruction of works of art, especially those containing
human figurations, on religious principles or beliefs. More
general usage of the term signifies either the rejection, aversion, or regulation of images and imagery, regardless of the
rationale or intent. Any investigation of either the historical
events or the concept of iconoclasm raises questions regarding the valuing and meaning of imagery, particularly sacred
art and ecclesiastical doctrines. Traditionally, doctrinal pronouncements defined roles, functions, and meanings of art
or iconoclasm within specific religious traditions.
Any study of iconoclasm is premised on the bifurcation
of a historical event or a cultural attitude or idea. As a historical event, iconoclasm can be interpreted as being either active
or passive. The former category includes legitimate accounts
of the damaging of images; whereas the latter category corresponds to the promulgation and the contents of religious
doctrines. Evaluations should incorporate motivations,
meanings, and results of either form of the iconoclastic enterprise. As a cultural idea or attitude, iconoclasm requires analysis from the perspective of valuing art and imagery within
the individual culture, the formative role of religious values
on that culture, and the role of the visual within that religious tradition.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English
word iconoclasm is a composite formed from two Greek
words: eikon (icon) and klasma (breaking); whose primary
meaning is [t]he breaking or destroying of images; esp. the
destruction of images and pictures set up as objects of veneration; the attacking or overthrow of venerated institutions and
cherished beliefs, regarded as fallacious or superstitious.
With the same Greek roots, the Oxford English Dictionarys
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

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primary definition of an iconoclast is as [a] breaker or destroyer of images; spec. (Eccl. Hist.) One who took part in or
supported the movement in the 8th and 9th centuries, to put
down the use of images or pictures in religious worship in
the Christian churches of the East; hence, applied analogously to those Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries who
practised or countenanced a similar destruction of images in
the churches. The Oxford English Dictionary lists an important secondary definition to the broader concept of iconoclasm and iconoclast as [o]ne who assails or attacks cherished beliefs or venerated institutions on the ground that
they are erroneous or pernicious. The rarely invoked term
iconomachy is delineated in the Oxford English Dictionary as
being from the ecclesiastical Greek, eikonomachia is defined
as [a] war against images; hostility or opposition to images,
esp. to their use in connexion with worship.
The primary reference for iconoclasm has been religion,
and in particular, Western monotheism. This reference raises
critical issues in any discussion of the meaning of iconoclasm
in world religions. Foremost among these issues is the role
of religious belief in the formation of cultural and individual
identity. If the procedures by which an individual learns
about, assents to, is initiated into, and becomes a member
of a religious community is analogous to those for entry into
political and social communities, then a socialization process
orients perception. How we come to see and interpret what
we see is predicated on our disciplined sense of values. Orientation into a religious confession privileges the acceptance of
the normative and appropriate, and simultaneously defines
the abnormal and inappropriate.
However, if Ernst Cassirer (1962/1944), Moshe
Barasch (1992), Mircea Eliade (1992/1986), and Marshall
G. Hodgson (1964), to name only a select few, are correct,
then how do we resolve their commitment to the basic
human activity of symbol making with the privileging status of religion in the process of seeing and the discussion of
iconoclasm? If iconoclasm is limited to the preconceived categories of Western monotheism, then is it independent of
the otherwise universal relationship between art and cultural
memory and religious traditions? As the basic nature of
human beings is to make symbolsvisual as well as auditory
and oral symbolsthen imaging can be defined as a universal human activity.
All world religions have an attitude toward art and imagery; some have a bifurcated view, others a single lens
through which they see and define art. The remaining religions vacillate throughout their individual histories as ambiguous or ambivalent toward imagery. Nonetheless, art and
cultural memory are embedded within religion and encoded
with religious meaning and value. This reality must be evaluated within the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century
recognition that there is no innocent eye; rather, feminist,
deconstructionist, and postmodernist scholarship argues persuasively that le regard is more than an engendered gaze. Le
regard offers a nonreligious basis for the recognition that