The Crossing of the Visible

by Jean-Luc Marion, James K.A. Smith

Painting, according to Jean-Luc Marion, is a central topic of concern for philosophy, particularly phenomenology. For the question of painting is, at its heart, a question of visibility―of appearance. As such, the painting is a privileged case of the phenomenon; the painting becomes an index for investigating the conditions of appearance―or what Marion describes as "phenomenality" in general. In The Crossing of the Visible , Marion takes up just such a project. The natural outgrowth of his earlier reflections on icons, these four studies carefully consider the history of painting―from classical to contemporary―as a fund for phenomenological reflection on the conditions of (in)visibility. Ranging across artists from Raphael to Rothko, Caravaggio to Pollock, The Crossing of the Visible offers both a critique of contemporary accounts of the visual and a constructive alternative. According to Marion, the proper response to the "nihilism" of postmodernity is not iconoclasm, but rather a radically iconic account of the visual and the arts that opens them to the invisible.

Genres: Philosophy, Art

116 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Jean-Luc Marion est un philosophe et universitaire français.

Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and academic.

Reviews

[Marcus W. C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

for my art history/theology nerds out there THIS IS SOOOO GOOD :'))))))

but it's super dense and jargony and you need both a solid understanding of aesthetics and religious icons to get it... but dang, once you get it. If you're not a nerd then take me to coffee and I'll give you the cliff notes, I can talk about this book for days.

[Chungsoo Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the icon, the visible and the invisible embrace each other from a fire that no longer destroys but rather lights up the divine face for humanity," writes Marion as he ends this magnificent book (88 pages in total without counting endnotes, published in French in 1996, 2004 in English; his God Without Being was published in French in 1982. See my review). Like the burning bush whose branches remained visible and intact, in the icon the image remains visible and intact; and yet icon is more than the image it contains. The divine gazes at the one who gazes at Him in prayer: "Before the icon, if I continue to look, I feel myself seen" (60). The two gazes cross each other; and the exchange of the gazes happens in the crossing over of the visible into the invisible in the icon: "The icon is crossed by the veneration of my gaze in response to a first gaze" (60). Thus, there are double crosses at work: (1) one between the two gazes of the two invisibles and (2) the other from the visible to the invisible. The crossing or transference is not possible without the visible or the invisible. Marion does not say an icon symbolizes the divine. In fact, the word 'symbol' appears only once or twice. (Sumballō means 'hold together.' Thus, Alexander Schmemann, a renown Russian Orthodox theologian, writes: "the symbol unites disparate realities, the relation of the one to the other [that] always remain[s] 'absolutely other'" (The Eucharist, 39, translation altered).) The visible in the icon does not hold on to the invisible. Rather, the two are juxtaposed, held together, not in tension (as in art, see below) but in subordination of the visible with respect to the invisible, in which the visible serves the invisible and defers to the invisible by disfiguring, dulling, deforming, or emptying itself, like Christ (Phil. 2:7) or the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:14; Psalm 22:6-7): "The icon... is derived from the kenosis of the image" (62). In icon the visible empties itself. This constitutes its crucial distinction from art and idol.

The Orthodox and the Catholic venerate, not adore, the icons. The veneration of icon, more than anything else, probably separates Christianity from Judaism and Islam. The latter two religions forbid the engraven images to represent God or Mohamed. The iconoclasm controversy (the "war on icons," eikonomachia) brought on the definitive identity for the Orthodox Christianity, even though the controversy seriously challenged the unity of the Church (between 726 and 787 and again between 814 and 842 ACE) and broke out again at the Reformation. The Seventh Ecumentical Council, assembled by the iconoclass Emperor Constantine V held in 754 in the palace of Hieria (opposite to Constantinople), affirmed iconoclasm. Absent in the Council were the five patriarchs (from Constantinople and Rome who choose not to attend; and from Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria who were under the Muslim control). Prior to the Council, a Syrian monk John of Damascus (676-749 ACE) vigorously defended icons in his theological writings, as did St. Basil the Great (the Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, 330-379 ACE) earlier. The Seventh Council was later anathematized at the Lateran Council of 769 and overturned by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which affirmed the icon veneration and thus ended the iconoclasm controversy. By this time the liturgy and the seasonal feasts and rites of the Orthodox Church were firmly established and continue to be practiced even to this day without significant deviations. The Great Schism between the eastern Orthodox and the western Catholic occurred in 1054. Constantinople fell to the Muslims in 1453. Luther posted his 95 theses in 1517.

The key text of the Second Council of Nicaea is cited by Marion as his (not sole) basis for articulating the phenomenology of icon. (Is relying on the Church creed a phenomenology, Dominique Janicaud would ask? See my review of his book Phenomenology and the Theological Turn.) The text of the Second Council of Nicaea runs:

For the more continually these (Christ, the Virgin, and the saints) are observed by means of such representations [di eikonikēs anatupōseōs horōntai], so much the more will the beholders be aroused to recollect the original (tōn prōtotupōn, [the prototype]), and desiring them and testifying to them; to these should be given respectful veneration (proskunēsis), but not true adoration (latreia), which pertains only to the divine nature (60).

The Council thus declared:

We define with all accuracy and rigor that, concerning the manner [of] approaching to the type of Cross (paraplēsi ōs tō tupō tou... staurou) worthy of honor and invigoration, it is necessary to set up (anatithesthai, proponere) [for God] holy and respectable icons, [made] from colors, mosaics, and other suitable materials (68).

Marion notes: "a similarity: paraplēaiōs indicates approximation, the point of approach, without either confusion or assimilation" (69). The Cross functions as the icon of icons and lets us approach the invisible by its visible approximation. As the "tupos [type or imprint] of the invisible on the visible" (74) the Cross reveals God the wounded in the approximation that invites us to approach Him. Christ's Incarnation (the prototype) provides the point of approach in approximation as depicted in the icon (the type). Marion notes: "the tupos tou staurou [type of the cross] on which the Second Council of Nicaea grounds the icon, if it can be authorized only by a single occurrence of tupos in the Gospels, is precisely the site of the death on the Cross" (74). Christ, says Paul, is "the icon of the invisible God" (Col.1:15), the icon (the prototype) of all icons (the types or imprints): "Christ displays the logic of the iconic image" (61); "Christ indicates not his own face but the trace of God" (62). Here trace is visible, not self-erasing. The Cross is also an icon. But "what does the Cross actually give to be seen?" (72) Answer: The disfigured and humiliated image of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:14, Psalm 22:6-7) (61). Marion writes:

The tupos [imprint or mark] of the invisible on the visible will at first exhibit the murderous mark that the visible inflicts upon the invisible that loves it: in short, the wounds of Christ on the Cross. In order to recognize the holiness and innocence of the invisible God, man henceforth has at his disposal a visible mark--the wounds he has inflicted upon the body of God. Thus appears the type of the Cross: not a sacred image imitating the divine and exhibiting in itself a spectacle, but the imprint paradoxically received by the invisible in the manifest wound that the invisible imposes on it. The spear-pierced side of the visible Christ is there made to appear suddenly as the type of the invisible (74).

Christ (or Christ on the Cross) provides the logic of icon, which is this: "the obedience of the one who sheds his face, renouncing his visibility in order to do the will of God" (61). "The self-renunciation of the image itself" (61) is the logic of icon. Icon does not glory in its image. It dulls its image. As such it is not art or idol. Furthermore, as the centurion saw (idōn) (Mark 15:39; Matt. 27:54), Jesus' corpse "bears the marks [les stigmates] of the living God" (73). As such "it brings right into the visible the type and mark of the invisible" (Id.) The death of the Son makes visible the invisible God the Father.

As noted by Marion, St. Basil's notion of "transference" was adopted by the Second Council of Nicaea as a key, who said: "the honor paid to the icon is transferred [diabainei, 'transit'] to the prototype" (60). (Diabainō means 'cross,' 'step over,' 'to cross over.' Metabainō, in contrast, means 'to carry or convey over,' 'bring into another place.' 'Metaphor' thus does not have the sense of 'crossing over' the boundaries or limits that the word 'transference' canotes.) Icon is not a symbol, where the spiritual and the physical are united and held together, because the material image refuses to draw attention to itself but necessarily defers and refers to the spiritual, the other, the invisible. Icon is not a metaphor either, because it does not transport us to the divine as if the divine and the natural are on par with each other and that one can be exchanged for the other in enlarging the concept. When Homer says: 'Hector is a lion,' we are not thinking of lion but Hector in his vigor. When we say, 'Christ is God,' we are not saying it metaphorically; rather, we are affirming the iconography of Incarnation. As "the icon of the invisible God" Christ defers himself and refers to God: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Christ, as the icon of icons, demands that we cross over the visible to the invisible. For us the Eucharist, which is not an icon but the divine nature itself, replaces the Christ Incarnate. (Christ not only promised the Holy Spirit (John 14:26) in his absence but also commanded that we perform the Eucharist "in remembrance of [Him]" (Luke 22:19; I Cor. 11:24-25; Luke 24:31). We also have the icons to replace his historical presence, as we have the liturgy to replace his earthly deeds. But we do not imply Plato's hierarchy here: that the icon of Christ (the image) stands in for Jesus of Nazareth (the phenomenal being) who in turn stands in for God the Father (the intelligible). That would be idolatrous. What happens with the icon? How is it different from the idol or the painting?

According to Marion, in facing the icon we gaze into the face of Christ gazing at us, especially in the eyes or, more precisely, in the dark pupils, the invisible. There is a counter gaze (from Christ) gazing at us, resulting in veneration and lowering or raising of our gaze as one venerates the icon in prayer. Prayer is "letting the other (of the) gaze see me" (65). Icon allows the transfer or crossing of the visible into the invisible; hence the title: The Crossing of the Visible. Moreover, through the visible (i.e., the icon) our gaze and the gaze of the Infinite crosses each other: "The gaze looks at the one who, in prayer, raises his gaze toward the icon" (20); "two invisible gazes crossing themselves through the visible witness of their bodies..." (21). To venerate is "by my gaze to climb back up [remonter], to cross the visible image and be exposed to the invisible counter-gaze of the prototype" (60). Thus icon is not the visible aspect of the inexhaustible, as in Husserl's adumbration of an object that, as a transcendent ("symbol" as he puts it), only shows an aspect at a time (according to his 1905-6 lectures on the theory of perception).

When we venerate an icon, we aim our gaze at the invisible. The respect, as St. Basil says, is transferred from the icon (the image) to Christ, the Virgin, or to the saints as they are depicted in the icon. But why must the transfer occur from the visible image? Why not venerate without an image? That is the question raised by the iconoclassists and later by the Protestants. Marion's answer, simply put, is: because icons are not idols. The delineation of the differences among icon, idol, and painting is the aim of the book. The iconoclasts were idolaters, which, according to Marion, include the consumers of technological images projected on the screens and other media, even pornographic images (48-54). If an image in the icon represents nothing other than itself and thus satisfies what one desires to see, it would be an idol; and the depiction of Christ, Mary, or the saints (and never God himself, despite Michelangelo's Creation) in that mode would indeed be blasphemy. But icon is not idol; because, unlike idol, icon demands the transference of the referent from the visible to the invisible; whereas idol glories in its own image. Idol has nothing more to show other than itself; it does not refer or defer to "things not seen" (Heb. 11:1). It has no original it refers to because it pretends that it itself is the original. It is self-contained and self-sufficient, like being. In fact, Marion speaks of the iconoclasm of metaphysics whereby, in accordance with Nietzsche's reversal of Platonism, the image itself becomes the thing in itself (51), or, more precisely, "to be is to be perceived [as an image]" (51) as in 'media presence' or marketing. Icon is the logical conclusion of empiricism. The only thing that exists is what is perceived: image. The only truth is what can be perceived or verified: the idolatry of science. There is nothing behind the silver screen on which images become real. There is no original to which the image is a copy of. To be is to be an image that can be objectified, consumed, reproduced, circulated, etc. If metaphysics consists in the persistence of being in its being (conatus essendi), and if being is strictly reduced to image; then metaphysics consummates in idolatry in the Nietzschean reversal of Platonism. The principle of metaphysical idolatry would then be: being "gives to be seen by the viewer's gaze the scope of his own gaze" (67); and idol would be the essence of technology. Everything is made into an image. But is idolatry confined only to the age of technology? Is not being an idol in the final analysis? The Greek temple was the house of idols where, according to Heidegger, one would feel at home, content and satisfied, in the nearness to being, where "[w]orld worlds" as in artwork (Off the Beaten Track 23) as well as in the mirror play of the fourfold in the flash (Einblitz) of the truth of Being ("The Turning," in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays 45). Did Heidegger indeed overcome metaphysics or did he succumb to what Sartre calls "the useless passion [for being]"? Marion doubts whether Heidegger succeeded in overcoming metaphysics (God Without Being 165). After all is said and done, is not being still under the grips of metaphysical idolatry? In the church, in contrast, under the dome of heavens, one faces the greatest icon of all, Christ himself on the Cross, in the company of saints (other icons) and fellow believers in crossing over the visible into the invisible without ever setting aside the visible, the stigma of the Cross. The icon actualizes the eschaton, as in Simeon's encounter with Christ, "the icon of the invisible God" (Luke 2:30; Col. 1:15).

Marion also heavily relies on John of Damascus. Thus, he writes:

... in the face of a prōtotupon [prototype], the icon can barely appear as a tupos [type]. But above all, at least since John of Damascus, the icon should be understood, equally, as a tupos [type]: 'The protohype, this is what is put in the icon (eikonizomenon), [apart] from [à partir de] what produced it [i.e., the physical image-translation modified]. [Otherwise] by virtue of what did the people of Moses prostrate themselves around the tabernacle carrying the icon and the type (eikona kai tupon) of what is in heaven?' Very systematically, John of Damascus considers the relation of the icon to that which it shows according to the possibilities of the typical [la typique]: 'icons are the visible of invisibles and nontypes, corporeal types (atupōtōn sumatichōs tupoumenōn) in order to permit a confused knowledge [connaissance]'; in short, icons are 'the types of that which has no type, tupoi tōn atupōtōn' (69).

We must note the crucial word 'tupos' employed here. It means 'a blow,' 'the mark of a blow,' 'the impress of a seal,' 'the stamp of a coin.' The word 'tupóō' means 'to impress,' 'stamp,' 'to form,' 'mould,' 'model.' The verbal form 'tuptō' means 'to beat,' 'strike,' 'smite,' 'knock.' Thus, the icons are the visible imprint or 'type' of the invisible, very much like the emperor's image stamped on the coins. Just as a coin obtains the value based on the imprint, an icon accrudes veneration based on the imprint of the divine that has no imprint of itself. Icon is a 'type' or imprint of what has no type or imprint. For Marion, the stamp on the icon is the saturated given of the invisible: "The visible, what the painter himself by prayer deposits on wood, deploys itself saturated with the invisible of the exchanged gazes" (20). The saturated phenomenon, beyond and more than an ordinary phenomenon, is made possible by two factors: the visible icon and the invisible gazes that are exchanged between the venerator and the invisible (the prototype). The invisible exchange happens only because of the visible icon, at the saturated site on the icon itself. Without the visible icon, this cannot happen: "it is the visible that serves the invisible" (20). Marion's definition of 'gaze' is narrower than Levinas's. For latter, the nape of the other's neck, the presence of the whole body, or the stretched hand for handshake or greeting qualifies as the Other. For Marion, the gaze is mainly narrowed down to the pupil of the eye: "I cannot see his gaze, since it comes out of his pupils, which are empty spaces; the gaze alone is not real... it is born from a black hole... its irreal space fascinates me, as the source of the invisible, at the center of the visible" (21).

[Continued in the comment below.]

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a prime example of the phenomenological method of finding perhaps the most obscure or indirect way of approaching a subject and then bringing that peculiar approach to bear on the exploration of a phenomenon in a shockingly applicable and insightful way. Here, Marion's subject is painting, which he explores through the phenomenon of the image, the icon, and its relation to the Holy, contrasted with thoughts on the image as idol. The general exploration is fascinating and insightful, but the last chapter where the discussion becomes almost entirely directly about the presence of the Holy in the images and icons that we have around us today was particularly rousing and engaging.

Dense reading, certainly not for the faint of heart and unlikely to appeal to anyone without a solid grounding in phenomenological philosophy, but if those happen to be your interests, this book is certainly worth a chance.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marion is not the easiest to read, but he provides a good apology in favor of iconographic artwork on the basis of that which is visible (the physical itself) and the invisible (such as the invisible gaze that occurs between the devotee who is venerating the icon and the prototype which the icon represents). I particularly enjoyed his 3rd chapter, as much of the comments he was making about the desire for individuals to be seen or perceived in order to feel as if they truly exist seemed to hearken quite a bit to the current trends in social media and "advertising" oneself as an object worthy of desiring.

[Gab Nug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simultaneously a challenging and enjoyable read, Marion examines phenomenologically the topic of the image. This exploration touches upon subjects of painting, televisual imagery, contemporary problems, and the idol/icon dichotomy prevalent within his other works. Within it, he diagnoses the problems of art and the image in the current world and suggests the solution lies in the icon and the depth that it exhibits. We see here a continuation of Marion's endeavor to surpass metaphysics, both in its history from Plato to Hegel and in the postmodern nihilistic response.

[Andy Stager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe the most difficult 87 pages I have ever read. But I'm starting to get the hang of Marion's vocabulary and the contours of his project.