Beauty Spirit Matter: Icons in the modern
world
Aidan Hart
Gracewing Publishing £14.99
(978-0-85244-782-6)
Church Times
Bookshop
£13.50 (Use code CT643)
AIDAN HART is one of the leading practitioners of icon-writing.
There are examples of his work not only in Orthodox churches such
as St Mary's Cathedral, Camberwell, and the Church of the Holy
Fathers in Shrewsbury, but also in Anglican places of worship. A
school in Shropshire, a Cambridge college, Carlisle Cathedral,
Hexham Abbey, a chapel in Bedford, and St Clement's, Leigh-on-Sea,
all have icons written by him.
Rather more surprisingly, since the Orthodox East and Latin West
are often at odds, so, too, has the Roman Catholic Benedictine
Abbey of St John at Collegeville, Minnesota, in the United
States.
For three decades, Hart, a former Baptist, who spent time on
Mount Athos as part of his journey into the Orthodox Church, has
enriched the contemporary way of seeing God through the ancient
practice of meditative painting. This publication consists of eight
essays that explore both his methods and also the teaching behind
the work of God.
The essays hinge on an understanding of the Transfiguration, a
major feast of the Lord which has long lost in the West the
prominence that is accorded to it as its due in the East. For it
was on Mount Tabor that, when he was transfigured, Jesus revealed
the original nature of mankind arrayed in divine glory. Our
response to glimpsing that glory may best explain why icons have
now become so much more widely used outside the Orthodox
tradition.
The book is shot through with quotations from many writers,
including St Gregory Palamas, the last of the Great Theologians;
the Russian Orthodox Bishop Makari Gluharev; St Maximus the
Confessor; and the church Father St Gregory of Nazianzus. These
draw out the theological threads that bind and explain icons.
The author also argues that the origin of much European abstract
art can be found in the desire to return to simple forms expressed
by artists such as Kandinsky and Brancusi, who grew up in a world
dominated by Orthodoxy.
Several of the essays read like carefully considered sermons;
and I especially valued Hart's insights into the nature of Church
as corporately prophet, priest, and king, manifested in the poet,
conductor, and artist.
The collection is rounded off with a witty little short story
showing that Hart is good at narrative writing as well as writing
about painting. It is a wonderful retelling of the transfiguration,
in which The Boss takes three of his friends, including Rockie, as
recounted by a goatherd.
The Revd Dr Cranfield is the Vicar of All Saints',
Blackheath, in London.