Virtual Reality and Virtual Irreality
On Noh-Plays and Icons
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
1. The Representation of the "Irreal"
The creation of Virtual Reality or cyberspace is not a matter of creating an artificial space in the same way in which one would create an imaginary universe. The creation of Virtual Reality aims at manipulating ontology. Virtual Reality is not just a second imagined reality, but exists as a world of its own, obeying its own ontological laws. It is tempting to use the distinction between an imaginary universe and an entirely autonomous, virtual one for establishing the difference between Virtual Reality and the reality of art. "Art" can be, or for some people even should be, apprehended by means of ontology; it is clear that this "ontology" cannot be the same for reality and for Virtual Reality. In general, in Western aesthetics, one would hesitate to call a work of art "virtual." Though the reasons for this hesitation are multiple, the most essential point is certainly the following: Western art, as much as Western philosophy, is mainly preoccupied with reality. "Reality" is not necessarily the "reality out there" but can also be the reality of art which is also seen as "real," as "something" that has been imagined and which is therefore different from "real" reality, but which is still not "virtual." Or, seen the other way round: A work of art creates a kind of reality which, even though it may be immersive and provide a certain amount of "authentic" experience, is conceived as an imagined reality and not as virtual.
Despite the level of sophistication of its discourses, Western aesthetics concerns itself largely with the opposition of "reality" to an imagined "non-reality" which is then seen as more or less "real." Within this aesthetic tradition, the "virtual" has rarely been a topic worthy of discussion. True, Western philosophy also recognizes the nature of "reality" as that of "Being" and develops, through the discipline of ontology, sophisticated approaches attempting to transgress the static opposition of reality and (imagined) non-reality. In "Being," imagination and reality can coexist, and therefore any imagined "non-reality" can obtain the status of Being. What is absent in Western philosophy of art and aesthetics, however, is the idea of reality as opposed to that of the virtual since this opposition does not fit into the existing framework. What would the virtual "be"? Since it does not exist in the form of Being, it cannot be a matter of ontology, at least not of the same ontology through which both reality and art are examined. Any persistence to adopt the virtual as a subject for aesthetics, on the other hand, would have dramatic consequences: it would oblige us to grant the status of Being to a quantity which, by definition, does not exist in terms of Being,
2. Western and Non-Western Models of Representation
I want to describe here ontological alternatives to the "virtual" that exist in branches of aesthetics developed outside the mainstream of Western philosophy. For this purpose I chose to analyze the aesthetics of Japanese Noh-plays and Russian icons. What might appear curious at first, will nevertheless turn out to be efficient. Though these two art forms share no historic links and are even different kinds of media, a simultaneous examination of their treatment of the phenomenon of representation will show the shortcomings of the Western idea of the virtual. I justify the fact that Noh-plays and icons are, through their common ideas about the virtual, conceptually linked, through mainly three points:
1) Both icons and Noh-plays create a presence that exceeds simple appearance. The creation of this presence requires a high degree of formalization and regulation, as well as the shunning of individual creativity.
2) Both icon and Noh maintain an interesting anti-relationship with Western-European "realism" that allows them to appear "virtual."
3) The "meditative" character of icons as well of Noh makes (aesthetic) "experience" the central theme of (religious) art. [1]
The first two points concern the particular form of "presence" obtained in Noh-plays and icons, a presence that necessitates extreme "formalization" as well as a well-defined attitude towards anti-realism. It has been said that the Noh-play creates a "reality of its own," providing a paradoxical « reality effect" which is simultaneously opposed to realism. Within certain limits, the Noh-play represents an « ideal image of reality; » however, this « ideal image » is not simply the representation of an idea, but arises out of continuous acts of severe formalization. Instead of as a realist or idealist representation, the Noh appears as a "stylized presentation, [which] gives nevertheless convincing impression of something that is real and natural." (Toshio Kawatake) [2]
Similar things can be said about the icon. The icon, as a Christian art, treats the human person as a corporeal and at the same time spiritual being. For icon painters it has always been out of the question to present the human being within a concrete cultural and historical context as it was common, for example, for Renaissance artists. Still, icon art is not abstract but is firmly linked to the concrete: Like the Noh, the icon strives to create a certain kind of « spiritual concreteness. » However, this spiritual concreteness will be realized only through tradition, meditation, and rules that have been well elaborated by preceding generations of painters. For this reason, for Noh artists just as for icon painters, nothing is left to imagination, intuition or abstraction, but the reality of artistic representation remains a strictly formal one. [3]
Before entering into more detailed philosophical examinations let me show that the parallelism in question is perhaps not as surprising as it appears to be. There are indeed parallels between Japanese Zen-aesthetics and the "Byzantine" aesthetics of Old Russia. Since their exact location can, of course, only be undertaken in a separate article, here I will only draw a brief sketch of what I consider as most striking. Like in Japan’s Zen culture (by which the Noh is influenced), in Old Russia, aesthetics also occupied a large part of the place that Western-Christian culture usually assigns to philosophy. Moreover, in both Eastern cultures, this aesthetics was supposed to examine "expressions of the spiritual." [4] The Japanese are usually, as Kawatake has put it, "more concerned with five senses than with logic or reason." (Kawatake, p. 88) Similarly, the Old Russians "abhorred abstract ideas" (Bychkov) as long as they were not immediately linked to concrete artistic manifestations.
We arrive here at the third one of the three points mentioned which concerns the meditative character of Noh-plays and icons and their connection with asceticism. As a matter of fact, "simplicity" became the keyword for Japanese as well as Old Russian aesthetics. With regard to the Orthodox tradition, this fact is often forgotten in the West. However, not only did Andrei Ryublev and his generation of artists meditate in front of icons but the icon’s purpose itself was to transfer its contemplator to a meditative state of mind. [5] The phenomenon of "simplicity" in connection with "meditation" leads to an important notion. In Old Russia, aesthetic simplicity obtained through meditation could create the feeling of the sublime. [6] In general it was found that any lack of clarity fails to inspire awe and is thus unable to create the feeling of the sublime. Complicated structures « unnecessarily and dangerously complicate the relationship between the sublime figure and the venerating beholder. » [7] The sublime as a meditative form of simplicity, required a certain amount of asceticism as well as a formal regulation because it was believed that, as an author from antiquity wrote, « sublimity is the resonance of the magnitude of soul ». [8] The sublime represented thus an "unconditional and ritually sanctified solemnity » (Onasch, p. 278)
The most striking parallel pattern in Japanese aesthetics is, of course, the phenomenon of yûgen, which represents the most essential element of the Noh aesthetics. This notion of yûgen, which is translated as "mystery and depth," is also often related to the notion of the "sublime." As becomes clear especially in the writings of Yoshinori Onishi, [9] this notion maintains a close relationship with a formal quantity that can, in Western terms, be best defined as style. Yûgen’s function is to provide a description of nature that has "eliminated the distance between poetic description and object or topic and poet, rejecting the superficial psychological capturing of a subject." [10] In other words, through yûgen, objects appear with an utmost degree of simplicity, which, in spite of the directness of the artistic expression (reminiscent of German Einfühlung [11]), is still not realistic. On the contrary, the effect of yûgen is, as has said Steven Heine, "nearly opposite to realism in that nature depicted in its primordial state completely mirrors the realization of authentic subjectivity." [12] Again, this still does not aim at the "idealized image" of subjective feelings. "Reality" is expressed in a "meditative" way, and this is true for icons as much as for Noh-plays. What this "meditative" representation (which is perhaps most reminiscent of some Western ideas about style) actually is, will now be examined now by viewing both Noh and icon through the phenomenon of the virtual.
2.1. Noh-Play and Far-Eastern Models of Representation
The Noh-play is a classical Japanese theatre form that emphasizes the unity of word, dance, music and mystical experience and was developed especially in the 14th century by Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443). Before discussing Noh in detail, however, it will be useful to establish its position within a larger context of Far-Eastern philosophy. This can best be done by locating its place within the above discussion of "Being" and the problem of the virtual.
At the beginning of the present article I claimed that Western aesthetics views reality in terms of Being and therefore has problems in assigning a proper "ontological" status to the phenomenon of the virtual. To say it straightaway, in Far-Eastern art and aesthetics, as far as influenced by the Confucian, Taoist, or Buddhist tradition, the problem of incompatibility of the virtual and Being does not appear. On the contrary, Far-Eastern aesthetics easily agrees that art is in the first place virtual. [13] Of course, like in Western aesthetics, explanations are complex and varied. However, the reasons for the equation of artistic reality and virtual reality should not be sought in a different eastern concept of Being. On the contrary, the philosophical idea of Being as a quantity composed of reality and non-reality mediated through human experience is something that East and West share (in comparative philosophy, reflections on Being often turn out to be the most convenient ground for exchange and communication).
The reasons for the different attitudes towards the "virtual" in Eastern and Western aesthetics are rather to be looked for in the idea of experience that is valued differently in both traditions. Robert Sharf has noted that in their religious practice, Far-Eastern religions put an emphasis on experience, an emphasis not found in the West. [14] For Sharf, Eastern religions are more experientially rooted, and phenomena like "intuition" or "purity of experience" are constantly highlighted. An essential part of Sharf’s observations possibly applies to Far-Eastern traditional arts as well.
A variety of things can be said concerning the problem of "experience" in Eastern art, but I prefer to refer here only to the most important reason for the "purity" that Eastern art and religion strive to cultivate in "experience." An essential difference between Western and Eastern art consists in the fact that the latter does not take the equation of reality and being for granted. Furthermore, in eastern intellectual traditions shaped by Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, there is a tendency to design "reality" as something that is essentially different from Being: Ultimately, reality is not seen as Being but as Nothingness. Here, nothingness is not understood as a lack of meaning potentially overshadowing the world of Being, but rather as the ultimate, immaterial ground of reality. The important point is that any art or philosophy that brings this fundamental equation of reality with Nothingness to consciousness, will - indirectly - depict "reality" as virtual. This means that through art, nothingness, though itself absolutely formless and invisible, can project itself into the visible world.
I will now try to crystallize the particular notion of the "virtual" as it appears in the Noh-play by concentrating on the idea of "representation." It has been said that Japanese stage art does not represent but present (cf. Kawatake, p. 115). First this establishes a difference with western stage art, and second, it introduces the virtual into reflections on "representation." As mentioned, Japanese traditional theatre creates a reality of its own, and this lets its theatrical space appear as virtual. Compared to this, western drama appears as "realist." However, in no case does the western "realism" qualify Japanese theatre as "non-realist" in the sense that it would produce images that are simply "unbelievable," as they are too far removed from reality or "unlikely." On the contrary, in Japanese traditional theatre the level of presentation is even "purer" and more direct than in Western theatre, and therefore also more "real." As a matter of fact, "purity and "directness" are the components which bestow to Japanese theatre its "virtual" character. The reason for this is that the reality presented by traditional Japanese theatre, re-presents nothing, but is simply the presentation of reality itself. In this way Japanese theatre manages to found itself on Nothingness. Japanese theatre is thus not, like Western theatre, founded on the reality ("out there"), but it simply presents. Because of this constellation - and not because a certain "reality" would be represented in the most realistic way - an absolute "irreality" can, finally, be experienced as "real".
2.2. The Icon
One generally considers wooden panels with paintings representing a holy person or one of the traditional images of Greek or Russian Orthodox Christianity as icons [Greek eikon: image]. This definition is, certainly, narrow, since even in the Byzantine Empire there existed other manifestations of figurative art (mosaics, statues in materials reaching from ivory to metal) which, from around the mid 11th century on, should also have been called icons. [15] Yet, icons are not only of Byzantine-Russian origin; icons also existed in East Asia and were even essential for the spreading of Buddhism, which the Chinese sometimes often to as the "religion of images." [16] Buddhist "images" might be images in the most common sense of the word, but to them applies the "Buddhist condition" that Oscar Benl recognized as a working principle also for Noh-plays: Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism, discourages "any attachment to colorful images of the world of appearance." [17] The image of the icon is thus no illustration of something, it is no symbol and no metaphor, but "simply" the manifestation of something divine. [18] In this sense Buddhist icons, like their Byzantine cousins are not, supposed not to represent but to be. [19]
Given the abundance of philosophical literature on the subject, I am, in the present article, mainly interested in the status of representation offered by Russian icons. The sacred art of old Russia distinguished itself from Greek-Roman, as well as from European Renaissance and post-Renaissance art in that it refused imitation or representation of the real world and of the psychological state of the human being. The church, together with its art, was supposed to "be" a "real world" following its own spiritual and material laws, enabling man to participate in the invisible world of the Holy Spirit.
We must recognize the status of the icon as something that is supposed to "be." Iconoclastic criticism of icons was directed against the belief in the image as a living entity. While the relevance of this criticism might no longer be felt as strongly as it once did, a related point contributes still today strongly to the "strangeness" of icons. Annulling the Cartesian distinction between the sentient and the insentient, the icon’s claim to "present" and not to re-present obviously challenges the modern understanding of images. Even more, the icon’s state of "Being" as a pure presentation provokes theological, metaphysical, ontological, and semiotic confusion because it contradicts Platonic and Aristotelian models of reality by holding that something can be concrete and at the same time true. According to the Aristotelian-Platonic tradition by which modern science and philosophy are influenced, concrete things should first be dissolved into general ideas or conceptions before any statements about their reality in terms of Truth can be made. Representation in the icon, on the other hand, is not based on these models. Taking the cue from Dyonisos Areopagites instead of from Aristotle, the icon painter sees the world as a "cover" obscuring its true meaning or the essence. [20] The icon, since it presents the true meaning or the essence of the world, is thus not an idea or a concept but the direct "uncovering" revelation of the image of God. [21] Or, as Greek theologists expressed it, it serves as the "deutorotypos of the prototype;" [22] or, more clearly: it is the reflection of divine reality.
First, it should be said that the icon illustrates the truest example of a religious picture as defined by Hans-Georg Gadamer: "Only the religious picture shows the full ontological power of the picture. (...) Thus the meaning of the religious picture is an exemplary one. In it we can see without doubt that a picture is not a copy of a copied being, but is in ontological communion with what is copied." [23] The icon is supposed to be not only the image of something invisible but the presence of an invisible reality. [24] In this sense the icon is a presence, without simply overlapping with the presence of "subjective reality." However, it is also not "unreal" either, and it is not simply an imagined or remembered fact.
The icon’s way of representing is thus symbolic in the largest sense of the term: the symbol’s representation is, in spite of its concreteness and materiality, not reduced but represents the full sense of the signified. Even more, through the influence of the signified, the signifier participates, as has said Egon Sendler, "in an opening towards the infinite." [25] The iconic symbol tends thus, by its nature of representation, towards the "unsayable." In philosophical terms it becomes transcendental. The "reality" of the icon can also be called an infinity reflected in the finite.
Out of the above observations flows the point that constitutes for me one of most obvious parallels between icon and Noh-play: the absence of any illusionism. With regard to icons, few people have defined this more clearly than Lossky and Uspensky:
The task of the icon in no way includes the creation of an illusion of the subject or even it depicts, for, according to its very definition, the icon (...) is opposed to illusion. When we look at it, we do not only know but also see that we stand not before the person or the event itself, but before its image, that is, before an object which, by its very nature, is fundamentally different from its prototype. This excludes all attempts to create an illusion of real space or volume. [26]
The kind of reality produced by the icon is neither an illusion nor an imitation of reality but can be called « virtual reality » in the true sense of the term. This applies for the icon as much as for the Noh-play. However, before examining this « virtual » input, the « Western » idea of virtual reality must be explored more completely.
3. The Western Idea of Virtual Representation
What can be said about the western approach towards Virtual Reality thus far? As a matter of fact, it is diametrically opposed to the traditional Japanese as well as to the Old Russian Virtual Reality. On the one hand, western VR tries to found its reality on "nothing" (this is why it is virtual); but on the other hand, it clings to "reality" as the primordial model it strives to imitate.
A typical phenomenon flowing out of this constellation is that of "immersion" as a means of producing an effect of "reality". This paradox seems to go widely unnoticed, though it is easy to recognize the absurd character of the overly abundant "it is just as if..." prefaces to descriptions of VR, meant to be comparative yardsticks which illustrate that everything is "really virtual." At the moment Virtual Reality claims to be autonomous and self-sufficient, there should not be any room for "as if..."
The lack of consistency and undigested treatment of Virtual Reality in popular as well as specialized discourses, has its root in a Western tradition of aesthetics that has yet to find much theoretical access to the idea of the virtual. Being "realist" in the sense described above, Western aesthetics and Western philosophy are so far unable to adopt the virtual as a term even remotely as important as that of "reality" or "imaginatio." Instead they focus on the representation of reality on the one hand, and on Being as an existential, and not necessarily representing mode of reality on the other. This, however, leaves no space for a simply "presenting" reality which, as a reality, neither represents nor exists in terms of "Being." Yet, this is the essence of virtual reality. In Western philosophical discourse, if the virtual appeared at all, it served as a contribution to formal classifications of beings like in the philosophy of Duns Scotus who claimed that things contain their manifold qualities not in reality but virtually. Or else it served the purpose of an absolute, Kantian, rationalism taking the virtual as its own ontological foundation, as is done in the philosophy of Bouterwek. [27]
When, quite unexpectedly, the virtual was recently discovered by Western thought, it appeared, curiously, not as a component of art but in the form of a quality sticking to a kind of non-existent space created by computers and through electronic communication. First, philosophy was conceptually rather helpless. There was almost nowhere to look for philosophical approaches that would systematically explain the nature of the virtual. Still, from the beginning it was clear that virtual reality was not simply a matter of illusion (similar to post-modern simulation) created by sophisticated technology. Though formally, VR appeared to be very much like television, it also included a psychologically and ontologically disquieting quantity. Terms like "transcendentality" or "Absolute Spirit" quickly occurred and could not be eradicated since. To many, virtual space spontaneously appeared as something "spiritual".
My claim is that the phenomenon commonly known as "Virtual Reality" should be opposed to a more intimate type of Virtual Reality that does not aspire to create, as does the latter, a second reality, but that creates an irreality. Virtual Reality lacks the existential component that virtual irreality considers as its main purpose of existence.
4. Spirit and Emptiness: Noh, Icon and VR
First it must be said that in Eastern art the virtual is not destructive or negative for human culture, but that any search for a virtual quantity able to transcend purely realistic interpretations of the world, is conceived as a fundamental need for human culture. Already in this sense, the virtual element sought by eastern art is designed in a way entirely different from Virtual Reality flowing out of electronic communication. I will explain this through a more detailed comparison of Noh, icons and Virtual Reality.
Also the reality of the Noh-play has been called an "Absolute Spirit," [28] and the icon is supposed to be the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. As a matter of fact, Noh, icon, and Virtual Reality share aspirations that can be crystallized in the following three points:
(1) All three create a space and a spatial experience that is determined by a strong psychological component, thereby effectuating a shift in mental awareness.
(2) They strive to establish a realm outside the physical framework of space-time and of matter.
(3) They claim to need no ontological basis for the reality they create since they are able to provide this basis on their own.
Still, there are essential differences between two types of the "virtual." In the following paragraphs I will exemplify these differences with the help of an analysis of the virtual element in Noh-plays, from which the qualities revealed are also valid for icons.
First, what distinguishes the virtual reality of Noh-plays from common, technological VR, is that the latter follows the principal lines of Western aesthetics and attempts to establish an alternative kind of "virtual realism" by means of logic and reason. Zola’s approach of capturing "life itself" is based on the "reasonable" approach of attempting to reproduce reality. It is opposed to "Romantic" ways of grasping the world based on personal feelings and other subjective components. However, even when reality is perfectly "represented" to the point that it appears as absolutely real, the fact to re-present something cannot escape subjectivism. What Zola can be reproached with represents also the weakest point of computerized Virtual Reality.
Second, there is a difference on the psychological level. In the Noh-play the three points mentioned have a beneficial effect on man’s psychological condition. Computerized virtual reality, on the other hand, though based on these same characteristics, is unable to let these characteristics work in the service of a relief of existential angst and materialist loneliness. Instead, Virtual Reality creates what Michael Heim has termed a "hyper world" that is "hyper-active" in the psychopathological sense of making people "agitated, upset, [and] pathologically nervous." [29]
Heim’s points are interesting for the present discussion. Heim has done extensive work on the philosophical constellations underlying the phenomenon on Virtual Reality as well as on its social and psychological effects. In one article he opposes the quietness and serenity inherent in the Japanese Tea Ceremony to the "culture of explosion" and of speed produced by Virtual Reality. He elaborates some of the typically Japanese qualities of the Tea Ceremony as patience, ceremonial gentleness, refined rhythmic sensibility, and suggests to redesign "virtual experience" according to this model. Heim’s idea is original and daring but, curiously, he fails to consider the moment of "virtuality" inherent in the Tea Ceremony itself that provides the essential impetus for the "shift of perception" produced by this Japanese art form.
5. Space
Because of its spatial quality, I prefer to stick to the Noh-play and leave the Tea Ceremony aside. Some people conceive of Virtual Reality as an empty space able to grant its inhabitants a potentially high degree of self-expression. [30] Because this space is removed not only from everyday matter but from matter as such, an apparently absolute freedom remains unaffected by coincidences linked to the impact of material "reality." Therefore, in cyberspace, any action can reach an exceptionally high degree of necessity. Things function here very much like on an empty theatre stage. Peter Brook has shown that when the stage is empty, even the slightest action occurring within this empty space adopts an absolute character. [31] Similarly, for many people the idea of "cyberspace" is fascinating because the elements created within this empty space can, theoretically, acquire a state of "absoluteness."
We are here close to the Noh-play not only because the stage of the Noh is extremely sober and appears as rather "empty," [32] but also because the space of the Noh-play is determined by a Buddhist concept of "emptiness" or Nothingness. Emptiness or Nothingness projects us into a realm that is absolutely free of everyday matters. As mentioned, Mahayana-Buddhism (by which Noh is influenced) recommends the abandonment of all "images" inscribed in the sphere of appearance. However, neither Mahayana Buddhism nor Noh would hold that the access to the "other" sphere (that is more "real" than the shadows on the Platonic cavern wall) would lead to the true knowledge of reality. For Mahayana Buddhism as well as for Noh, the alternative of appearance is "emptiness."
It becomes particularly clear here how much Western theatre as well as cyberspace remains linked to the Platonic philosophical tradition. However strong their tendencies towards "emptiness" may be, in the end they must fill the empty space with "something" (be it at least an idea or a concept) in order not to be infinitely boring.
5.1. Noh-Space
In contrast to cyberspace, Noh is anxious to keep its theatrical space absolutely empty. Only the persisting state of emptiness guarantees this theatrical space the status of a form of "reality" that I have termed above "virtual irreality." This constitutes the main difference between Noh-space and cyberspace: the purpose of the Noh-play is not to install, within its "empty" space, "real" things in order to create a reality, not even a virtual one. On the contrary, the reality of the Noh is supposed to remain empty in the sense that the "things" it presents are shadows of the nothingness which normally has no form but has become visible within this virtual sphere of irreality. In other words, the space containing these "shadows" is virtual because it is not supposed to represent anything, not even a newly invented reality. Or, in more concise technical terms: the Noh-play presents emptiness, while computerized Virtual Reality represents reality within a realm of - extra-temporal, extra-spatial - emptiness.
However abstract this may be, more concrete observations will show that the Noh-play refuses to produce a reality and that it therefore remains within the virtual space of "irreality." An essential point is that in Noh performances, the actors are willingly shown within a realm outside the stage, in the so-called "mirror room" in which they prepare for their on-stage appearance. (Fig. 1) The players reach the stage over a kind of bridge or catwalk called hashigakari situated west (left hand side) of the main stage. More famous than the hashigakari is the hanamichi which is used in Kabuki theatre and which serves the same function as the hashigakari in Noh. The hanamichi has been especially called a "bridge of dreams" as it links "this world" with the "other world." The significant point is that the public can see the actors arriving from the mirror room world to the world of the stage. [33]
This refers us to the subject of illusion as it has appeared in the analysis of icons. Surprisingly for Western observers, the hanamichi or hashigakari custom negates any effect of illusion. This is consistent, because "illusion" is not what is going to be presented. The only thing that is, is the presentation of an irreality for which "reality issues" like identity, immersion, or participation do not exist. The use of the hanamichi signifies thus the conscious acceptance of otherness, separation, and dislocation. This means that "virtual irreality" created in Noh thwarts all attempts of identification, be it those related to reality and those related to illusion. What remains is the paradoxical coexistence of unreal-consciousness and self-awareness providing an aesthetico-existential experience able to distill a non-materialized, "virtual" atmosphere within human experience.
5.2. Icon Space
Most works on "icons and space" concentrate on the phenomenon of perspective. I have no intention to discuss this phenomenon here in detail but will directly place it in the context of the aforementioned ideas on the "virtual space" of icons and Noh-plays.
Icons have, in general, no or only little spatial profundity. They often manifest "strange," unstable, forms of architecture and of landscapes, and objects often appear as if seen from two sides at the same time. Obviously, what is lacking in icons - at least of those up to the 17th century - is the linear perspective used by Western-European painters since Renaissance. [34]
Of course, in perspective and non-perspective paintings the respective internal relationships of representation are different. Linear perspective shows the represented object from a central point of view of an individual as if s/he were looking through a window. Linear or central perspective rationalizes and homogenizes space because, as Erwin Panofsky has said, it does not accept a given space as it is, but produces space through construction. [35] While Western aestheticians tended, for some time, to disqualify iconic art as "unable" to create perspective (Gombrich) [36], at least since Panofsky and Francastel it has become commonplace to admit that the Western art of representation is in no way superior to the non-perspective one of icons. Both ways are acceptable styles of representing reality.
The point I am interested in here is that the lack of perspective frees representation of any "illusionism." Perspective is subjective and individual, and creates an individualist and rational illusion of profundity and of three-dimensional bodies. Of course, this strategy is precisely meant to be «realist, » a strategy which icons attempt to transcend in order to transform space into a « virtual » phenomenon. [37]
5.3. « Virtual Perspective » in Icons and Noh
An interesting point linked to the phenomenon of perspective is the « theatrical effect » of icons. Boris Uspensky has drawn attention to the parallel treatment of space by traditional Russian theatre and icons. He notes that both apply unusual patterns that regulate the position of the actor in theater, or of the painted person in an icon. In traditional Russian theatre
...the actor always sits with his face toward the audience, and may even, as a result of this, have his back turned toward the person with whom he is speaking at the moment; upon leaving the stage, the actor completes a full circle, even though he can often reach the door by a much shorter route, and so on. [38]
Uspensky sees in the geometrical-perspectival deformation of theatre space a parallel with icons in general. About the fresco The Adoration of the Magi (Fig. 2) from the St. Therapont Monastery, for example, he notes that...
...the Virgin and Child regard the viewer. (...) On the other hand, the faces of the Magi are also turned toward the viewer, although they must obviously be turned towards the Virgin, whereas their bodies (...) are turned toward the Virgin, which allows us to reconstruct their actual position in space. (p. 60)
It goes without saying that the same "methods" are also used in Noh-play. In Noh, the actor often speaks facing the audience, though his interlocutor might be behind their back. This effect is even more important in the more humorous Kyôgen-plays [39] where the effect observed by Uspensky in icons is very common. When starting a dialogue, the Kyôgen actors face each other, but will soon turn their faces towards the audience and present the rest of their speech.
It is well known that in historical Japan, perspectival construction of representation was, while not absent [40], not well developed. Even today theoreticians of architecture and urbanism do not cease pointing out that the feeling for perspective in Japan is not as much developed as it is in the West. [41] In this sense, the discovery of a common lack of "perspectival thinking" in Japanese and Russian traditional art is not surprising. What is interesting, however, is that in Noh-plays a kind of a-perspective perception has some formalization.
This happens through the introduction of a secondary actor (deuteragonist) called waki. The waki is a "bystander" who has no particular role to play with regard to the action’s plot, but whose permanent and silent presence next to the waki pillar (wakibashiro) on the front of the right stage (which is named after him as the waki-stage or waki-jômen) is important. Normally the waki comes in, briefly presents himself, sits down and says, for example, that he has been or will go on a journey. Occasionally he may interfere in the play by giving comments or explanations. However, what is much more important than the actual dramatic input he delivers is the fact that though his existence the play can be perceived as seen through him. The events on the stage are events that he experiences. Yet, interestingly, the waki does not view these events himself but rather stays fixated on the audience.
The result is not only that the waki appears as the intrinsic producer of the time of the play (he condenses the time of the "real" event). He also produces a space that is no longer real space (seen from the realistic perspective of the audience), but a space that has lost its actual reality. Still this space is not simply subjective or psychological because the waki is not a narrator. A virtual character of this reality is obtained through the use of a peculiar a-perspectival model of space, which denies the existence of any logical or linear link between the waki and the events happening on the stage.
5.4. Virtual Dream Space
Some of the philosophico-aesthetic considerations enabling icons to create a special nature of space do overlap with the nature of Noh-space. These considerations concern the production of space and a virtual phenomenon strongly opposed to illusionism but philosophically linked to the phenomenon of dream. Vladimir Lossky has said that the avoidance of illusionism also excludes the creation of an illusion of "real space or volume." What is thus the nature of this space which is not "real?" First there are, as we have seen, particular devices concerning perspective. However, this is not all. Icon-space can be called virtual for the same reasons as can Noh-space. Like the hashigakari in the Noh-play, which creates a place in which otherness, separation, and dislocation are accepted instead of pushed towards ontological identification, the icon is part of a liturgical place created by the liturgical action. In other words, the environment created by the liturgical action is, like the Noh-space, a "border-region" functioning as a transitional space between the visible and the invisible. Only in this way can it be conceived as a "window to celestial realms" (Bychkov, p. 25) where "artistic symbols are perceived as ‘real symbols’" and the represented, as well as the symbolized, and the signified "‘express [themselves] in reality’." (Ibid.) [42]
To find an appropriate aesthetic term for this phenomenon one can say that the reality represented in the icon is not unreal but real and simultaneously transfigured. Of course, particularly during the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, through the use of mystical colors, non-realist devices like the dematerialization of human figures, and fleeting brush techniques creating "phantom-like appearances", icon painters managed to suggest a state of sublime « irreal » representation. Through these techniques, icons also came close to the representation of dream. However, still more contributive to the creation of this dreamlike effect was the conception of space that, through its subjective and variable character, can itself be conceived a category of the sublime. [43] Icon-reality is not actual reality but independent of actual time and space. The state of transfigured reality is arrived at only through the production of a paradoxical in-between that affirms reality as much as ideality. Onasch and Schnieper have written about one of the main difficulties of icon painters:
In their portraits of Christ, however, icon painters had the task of reproducing the ideal image - that is, of combining the sublimity of this divine Person with his true humanity. At the same time, the beauty of the humanity redeemed by him was supposed to shine forth in the beauty of his image. (op. cit., p. 121)
This reality is "virtual" in the true sense of the word; it also comes close to dream reality. The "in-between" manifests itself on several levels. The icon represents a "real" world that is perceived as real and not as an illusion, because it is the "reflection of a world where there are no dimensions." (Sendler 104) In principle, it is a world cut off from sensory enjoyment which nevertheless "uses all visible nature" (Lossky) in order to express the spiritual reality it desires to express. This is why it comes so close to dream, which is an "in-between:" it is absolute clarity while at the same time independent of earthly logic. Few comments make the link between icon and dream clearer than the "Icon" entry of the Grove Dictionary of Art:
The appearance of visible objects and the three-dimensional world is altered and adapted so that, as in a dream, another reality is discerned in which the logic of sense perception is suspended. The sacred events are not located in earthly space and time. Icons do not convey the rhythms and energy of ordinary life; instead there is an absence of agitation: angels, saints and apostles enact scenes against a background of silence and eternity. [44]
The parallel between dream and icon with regard to clarity and logic has also been addressed by Leonid Uspensky and Lossky who explain that...
...for to transmit the invisible world to sensory vision demands not hazy fog but, on the contrary, peculiar clarity and precision of expression, just as to express apprehensions of the heavenly world the holy Fathers use particularly clear and exact formulations. (Uspensky & Lossky, p. 21)
With regard to space this shows the following: the particular conception of space that is often attributed to strange constellations of persons and of architectural elements is not simply a matter of dimensions, perspective and geometry. True, the icon-space has "lost its dimensions." (Cf. Zeami who said about Noh-space: "Bring Above and Below into one.") [45] However, the production of space follows, if examined more closely, the rules of virtual reality. The dreamlike effect suggested by this architecture is firmly grounded on philosophical convictions about the world as something "virtual," which is the contrary of an illusion. As soon as the understanding of dreamlike, virtual, iconographic language gets lost (as happened after the end of the 17th century), representation almost automatically turns towards illusion. Now "architecture becomes logical and there ensues a fantastic, fairy-tale profusion of purely logical architectural forms." (Uspensky & Lossky, p. 40)
6. Secularized and Non-Secularized Virtual Reality
I want to claim that the latter illusion-like spatial representation of a « fantastic ,» though at the same time « purely logical » world widely overlaps with what we today call "Virtual Reality." It could also be called a "secularized virtual reality." P.A. Michelis found that the « infinity » as it was thought by Renaissance, was not a religious infinity but represented the « materialized infinity » of science. [46] The same can be said about today’s Virtual Reality. The computer continues with utmost efficiency the Renaissance tradition of « materializing infinity » by turning virtual irreality into virtual reality. Appearing as the prototype of a « window to celestial realms, » the computer seems to reinstate Renaissence laws of perspective in an almost charicatural way (objects are obligatorily seen from a fixed point as if through a window, and from there the view goes towards « infinity »).
For icons, alternatively, the picture is not a window through which the human spirit can penetrate until « arriving» at a represented reality. The irreality of the icon is rather a place of active presence able to « receive » the spectator. Only with this in mind can we understand Vasily Kandinsky (whose art is influenced by icon painting) and his statement that « for many years I sought the possibility of letting the beholder ‘take a walk’ in the picture, of forcing him or her to a loss of self in a kind of fusion with the picture. » [47] What sounds today like a visionary statement about computerized Virtual Reality, should rather be understood as its contrary. « Taking a walk in the picture » is more like a dream experience in which the status of reality is founded on nothing but itself, so much, in fact, that the criteria of reality or non-reality become irrelevant. This state of experience neither is, and nor will ever be reached by computer simulation.
For the same reasons, Vladimir Lossky would likely identify our contemporary computerized Virtual Reality as "a mixing of Church image and worldly image," in which "symbolical realism, based on spiritual experience and vision, disappears through the absence of the latter and through losing its link with Tradition." This results in the replacement of "transfigured reality" by "idealized reality" or simply by "reality as an idea," that is by the expression of "different ideas and opinions connected with this reality." (Lossky, ibid.)
7. Virtual Reality and the Presentation of Style
In Noh also, there are cases of representation of non-being, expressed through the coexistence of dream-consciousness on the one hand, and conscious self-awareness on the other. First, there is the aforementioned aesthetic quality of yûgen which, according to Richard Pilgrim, "functions as a scrim, a haze, or dream through which the numinal is vaguely sensed (...) point[ing] beyond itself to a sense of reality veiled by, and not confined to, the phenomenal world." [48] Pilgrim’s definition of "yûgen as dream" contains perhaps a little too much "veils" and "haze." It is true that Noh undertakes a "deepening the feeling of yûgen by avoiding overly realistic depiction." (Komparu, p. 160). However, as for the icon, the dream produced must be clear and simple, not foggy and complicated, if it strives to be sublime (or to manifest yûgen).
The non-materialized, virtual atmosphere of Noh can also be seen as that of dream. This aesthetic insight led not only to the development of yûgen, but also to that of the mugen type of Noh, a type directly aimed at the presentation of fantasy, of phantasm, or of dream. Here, the above mentioned paradox is explicated. The "bridge" between stage and mirror room will be used, in this dream-type Noh, even more intensely. The virtual reality produced through Noh-like dream irreality is obtained by radically renouncing the status of reality as such - including that of a dream reality - and by placing the Noh-dream into an "in-between" of reality and non-reality.
Through this mechanism all Noh types, not only the mugen Noh, can acquire a dreamlike character. This does not mean that they would represent elements that the observer would likely classify as "dream." Rather, they present something non-material: a style. Furthermore, the presentation of this style is mediated only through the style of the Noh. When style appears (since it has no "reality" that it could re-present) as a reality that presents nothing but itself, the Noh-play becomes an event that adopts a fundamentally virtual character. This is neither realism nor anti-realism but a kind of virtual irrealism in which "imitating and becoming" have been united. [49] Virtual Reality here is not a matter of seeing but of feeling. "Feeling" is not understood as the subjective experience imposed upon the human consciousness or even upon the unconsciousness through the effects of, for example, the cultivated realism of the "culture of explosion." On the contrary, the Noh-actor (as well as the spectator) are "carefully warned against indulging in his own emotions as well as using a technique to manipulate them." (Yamazaki, p. xlii) The feeling that arises through the confrontation with a virtual irreality is rather a "normal" feeling that at times turns towards the unheimlich since we approach an irreality through the same psychological state in which we normally approach the real.
Dream thus becomes one experiential quality with which we can - metaphorically - capture the character of this virtual irreality. The quality of style is yet another one. Finally, it is only through stylized presentations (which are presentations of style), that Noh captures an impression of reality, which appears natural even on the deepest layers of its aesthetic existence. In no case does it create a second reality representing things that would exist only "here" and not "elsewhere." In this way Noh attains a moment of virtuality.
Conclusion
The present article demonstrates that both the Noh-play and the Russian icon capture the "beauty of life" (including all existential moments that are also contained by ordinarily life) not directly, through realistic representation, but indirectly, through their styles of representation. What is presented is not a presence but rather what Derrida would most likely call an écriture. In Noh "the written, mute-optical element has priority," wrote Hermann Bohner. [50] And, significantly, in Russian language one does not say that an icon is "painted" but that it is "written."
It is tempting to suggest that the images of Virtual Reality have an essentially "phonological" character. By this is meant that VR lacks the "silent" stylistic capacity that Noh and icon have. With regard to style, VR chooses a process diametrically opposed to that of Noh or the icon: It stylizes an existing reality and is therefore the re-presentation of a stylized reality. Alternatively, style for the Noh-play as for the icon, is not simply an outspoken stylized form, or, as Masakazu Yamazaki asserts, it is not "a fiction." (p. xxlv) Noh and icon simply (silently) present style in the form of a virtual world. There is no manipulation of stylistic form, or of time and space, but virtual reality presents itself as a whole within which experience is "neither contradictory nor disjoined" [51]
Style does not exist because some reality has been stylized; and "purity" (of experience or expression) does not exist because something "impure" has been purified.
This is inexplicably linked to the particular character of the stylistic reality transmitted through a paradoxical fusion of two opposing states of human consciousness: dream and reality. As a matter of fact, style is never "really" existent, but has a profoundly non-realistic nature. Expressed differently, style is always of virtual quality, virtually (and silently) present in the sphere of reality, but perceivable only through a state of consciousness elaborated in accordance with the style about to be perceived. A "realistic" consciousness will not see this style. A "sleeping," non-realistic consciousness blinded by illusions, will not see it either. The sphere between sleep and being awake is, of course, dream. For this reason, the style-perceiving consciousness in Noh-plays and icons is developed along the lines of a consciousness that is dreaming. Computerized Virtual Reality must be seen as "realistic" for the same reasons. In VR the spiritual style so essential to Noh-plays and icons, cannot be transmitted.
Notes
[1] Onasch and Schnieper write: "Even at home, Orthodox believers are accustomed to singing appropriate seasonal hymns softly before the icon. (...) Here, without surrender of the self, the « vagabond » spirit of the Westerner can find peace. It is helpful to gaze at an icon in conjunction with the text of a hymn, what we call « meditation, » that is, the encircling of the true center. By doing so, we may experience what it is like to participate in the Eastern Church’s praise of Christ. » Icons: The Fascination and Reality (New York: Riverside, 1997), p. 103.
[2] Toshio Kawatake: Japan on Stage: Japanese Concepts of Beauty in the Traditional Theatre (Tokyo: 3A Corporation, 1990), p. 45.
[3] Special Manuals or Pattern Books were considered binding for icon artists. The so-called "gramota of the three patriarchs" (confirmed by the Tsar) established a strict hierarchy among icon painters and their respective works. The most important category of iconographers were considered the znameniteli and were responsible for the overall geometrical structure, the sketches and supervision of the final work.
[4] Cf. Bychkov: "...dass es wohl angebrachter wäre, für Rußland nicht von einer Philosophie – im traditionellen Sinne des Wortes -, sondern von einer Ästhetik zu sprechen, worunter jedoch nicht eine Wissenschaft nach der Art von Winckelmann und Baumgarten, sonder ein System von besonderen Ausdrucksformen des Geistigen sowie ein nichtutilitäres, kontemplatives Verhältnis zwischen Subjekt und Objekt zu verstehen ist." "Die Eigenart des russsischen ästhetischen Bewußtseins im Mittelalter" in Ostkirchliche Studien 41:1, 1992 (pp. 22-33), p. 23.
[5] Bychkov points out that the use of Old Russian icons as objects for meditation by Daniil and his pupil Rublev was not unusual at that time. "Die Eigenart des russsischen ästhetischen Bewußtseins im Mittelalter" in Ostkirchliche Studien 41:1, 1992 (pp. 22-33), p. 27. It is worthwhile to mention here another form of meditation practiced in the 16th century, aimed at the experience of what a Church Father called « superluminescent darkness. » Gold was conceived as a kind of absolute « non-colour ,» supposed to negate all other colours. The particular form of meditation pursued by these monks consisted in fixating on a pure gold background until the point when all other colours would disappear. The gold background was experienced as a kind of « absolute Nothingness, » as « the blackout of all objects, including the world of colour. » Konrad Onasch & Annemarie Schnieper: Icons: The Fascination and Reality (New York: Riverside, 1997), p. 287.
[6] Victor Bychkov: "Die Eigenart des russsischen ästhetischen Bewußtseins im Mittelalter" in Ostkirchliche Studien 41:1, 1992 (pp. 22-33), p. 27
[7] Konrad Onasch & Annemarie Schnieper: Icons: The Fascination and Reality (New York: Riverside, 1997), p. 277.
[8] Quoted from Onasch & Schnieper, p. 277.
[9] The Japanese aesthetician Onishi (1888-1959) published the article "On yûgen" in 1938 (Shiso, May-June) and a book called "Yûgen and aware" in 1939 (Yûgen to aware, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten). The book represents one of the first attempts to systematize and Japanese traditional aesthetic concepts in a Western way and suggests essential parallels between the Japanese yûgen and the Western sublime. Lipps’ concept of empathy (see note 12) is important for his developments on yûgen. See Makoto Ueda: "Yûgen and Erhabene: Onishi Yoshinis attempt to Synthesize Japanese Western Aesthetics" in T. Rimer: Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals During the Interwar Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)
[10] Konishi Jin’ichi: "Michi and Medieval Writing" in E. Miner: Principles of Classical Japanese Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 204.
[11] Theodor Lipps’ aesthetics of Einfühlung has been treated in Japan since right after its publication (1906) by Shimura Hôgetsu. Also the book Aesthetics (Bigaku, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten), published by the Japanese aesthetician Jirô Abe (1883-1959) in 1917, drew heavily on Lipps.
[12] Steven Heine: A Dream Within a Dream (New York: Lang, 1991), p. 88. Cf. Jin’Ichi Konishi who writes: "The contemplative expressive approach involves the bracketing of a poet’s individual impressions and drawing near to the very essence of the subject. Once the essence has been regained, the poet will recommence grasping forms manifested on a more superficial level of awareness." "Michi and Medieval Writing" in Principles of Classical Japanese Literature, p. 204.
[13] Ryosuke Ohashi: „Phänomenologie der Noh-Maske" in Japan im interkulturellen Dialog (München: Iudicium, 1999), p. 91ff.
[14] Robert H. Sharf: "Experience" in Mark C. Taylor (ed.): Critical Terms of Religious Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 94-98.
[15] David & Tamara Talbot Rice: Icons and Their History (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1974), p. 11.
[16] Robert H. Sharf: "Prolegomenon to the Study of Japanese Buddhist Icons" in R. Sharf, E. Horton-Sharf (eds.): Living images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 3. Cf. quotation from Sharf on Esoteric Mandelas which "did not serve as aids to ritual visualization, nor could they have; the mandales are better viewed as living entities necessary to ensure the efficacy of the rites performed in their presence." (p. 9)
[17] Oscar Benl: Seami Motokiyo und der Geist des Nô-Schauspiels. Geheime kunstkritische Schriften aus dem 15. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Steiner, 1952), p. 110.
[18] It needs to be said that, more than their Byzantine counterparts, Far Eastern icons are linked to relics whose presence, in Buddhist religion, was seen as pure and simple. A relic is, like an icon, non-representing.
[19] Robert Sharf affirms that also the honzon (Buddhist icon) "is not merely a representation of god but the god itself. "On the Allure of Buddhist Relics" in Representations 66 Spring 1999, p. 84
[20] The 6th century Greek Christian writer Dionysios Areopagites probably influenced Eastern and Western medieval Chistian theology more than any other writer. He elaborated a system of divine light important for the production of icons. As noted by Sendler, his theory inverses the structures of representation because the object represented (beaming with light) comes to the contemplator instead of the contemplator sending beams of light to the object. The icon’s « inverted perspective » as well as other models of perspective that appear as unfamiliar to us today, might be related to this model. (Cf. Sendler, p. 140) Areopagite’s works in translation: The Divine Names and Mystical Theology (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980)
[21] Kurt Weizmann: The Icon (London: Evans, 1993), p. 243.
[22] Cf. Sendler: "Tandis que le Christ selon saint Paul est la visible « image du Dieu invisible » (col. 1 15), l’icône, comme le disent les théologiens grecs, est ‘deuterotypos du prototype’ [meaning the ‘second existence of the prototype’]." L’Icône: Image de l’invisible. Eléments de théologie, esthétique et technique (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1981), p. 8.
[23] Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 1975), p. 126.
[24] The Russian icon’s similarity with its Far-Eastern cousins becomes obvious once again. The icon creates a "place of presence" similar to the East-Asian mandale which Sharf has named a "locus of the divine." Robert H. Sharf: "Prolegomenon to the Study of Japanese Buddhist Icons" in R. Sharf, E. Horton-Sharf (eds.): Living images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 18.
[25] Egon Sendler: L’Icône: Image de l’invisible. Eléments de théologie, esthétique et technique (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1981), p. 76.
[26] Leonid Uspensky & Vladimir Lossky: The Meaning of Icons (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminar Press, 1999), p. 41.
[27] The German Kantian philosopher Friedrich Bouterwek (1766-1828), a professor of philosophy at the University of Göttingen and a contemporary of Hegel has coined the term « Absolute Virtualism ». It was meant as a kind of absolute intensification of the Kantian rationalist critique of idealism, though did not continue as an established philosophical branch. It did, however, leave traces in Schopenhauer as well as in French "spiritualist positivism" that prepared the way for Bergson. Bouterwek developed his ideas on virtualism in three consecutively written books, Idee einer Apodiktik (1799), Anfangsgründe der spekulativen Philosophie (1800), and Epochen der Vernunft nach der Idee der Apodiktik (1802). Though « Kantian » in essence, Bouterwek used also elements of scepticism, of Spinozism and of Jakobi’s Lebensphilosophie in these three books.
[28] Hermann Bohner: Noh (Tokyo: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur und Völkerkunde, 1959), p. vii.
[29] Michael Heim: "Virtual Reality and the Tea Ceremony" in J. Beckmann (ed.): The Virtual Dimension (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), p. 172.
[30] Brenda Laurel: "Virtual Reality Design: A Personal View" in S.K. Helsel & J. Roth (eds.): Virtual Reality: Theory, Practice and Promise Westport & London: Meckler, 1991), p. 95.
[31] Peter Brook: The Empty Space (New York: Touchstone, 1968)
[32] It is necessary to note that in ancient times Nohs were never played inside buildings but outside, and that an empty space around was still essential at the beginning of the 20th century. Cf. Noël Peri, Le Nô (Tokyo: Maison Franco-Japonaise, 1944): "Né d’ancêtres accoutumés en plein air, et sur une estrade ouverte aux regards de tous les côtés, le nô semble ne pouvoir se passer d’espace libre autour de lui. Ce serait lui faire violence de le diminuer que de l’enfermer dans une enceinte trop strictement délimitée, sur une scène trop exactement close." (p. 31)
[33] Kabuki is a more popular entertainment including, like Noh, music and dance. In Noh the bridge is separated from the audience (like the main stage) through a gravel surround. In Kabuki, on the other hand, such a separation does not exist and audience and actors share the same world.
[34] From the 17th century on Russian icons began being influenced by Western styles of representation and used more and more Western models of perspective.`
[35] Erwin Panofsky: Perspective as Symbolic Form (New York: Zone Book, 1991), p. 30.
[36] Ernst Gombrich: Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (London: Paidon, 1960), p. 125.
[37] Byzantine art declined at the end of the so-called "Paleologian period" (1261-1453) just because "Western-style realism" had started to enter its aesthetics. As writes Kurt Weizmann: "While the East thought greater abstraction, western European art, from the beginning of the Gothic period, developed in the direction of naturalism that was incompatible with the spiritual concept of the icon." Kurt Weizmann: The Icon (London: Evans, 1993), p. 9.
[38] Boris Uspensky: The Semiotics of the Russian Icon (Lisse: Peter de Ridder, 1976), p. 62
[39] Kyôgen is a comic interlude played during the Noh.
[40] In Chines and Japanese drawing between the 12th and 17th century one can find a highly developed art of linear perspective. See the hanging scroll by Du Jin: Enjoying Antiquities (15th century, National Palace Museum of Taipei ) and Tosa Mitsunobu’s Legends of the Founding off Kyomizu Temple (handscroll, 16th century, Tokyo National Museum).
[41] Cf. Günter Nitschke: "From Ambiguity to Transparency: Unperspective, Perspective and Perspective Paradigms of Space" in Supplement of Louisiana Revy 35-3, June 1995: "It is an unperspective or preperspective paradigm of space which unconsciously lingers in the minds of every average Japanese. The problem how to identify a space in the 3rd dimension did not arise in traditional Japanese cities since they did not develop a third dimension."
[42] A similar function has the so called Iconostasis: "Separating the Sanctuary from the Nave (the Divine from the human) the iconostasis, just as did the ancient screen, points to their hierarchic difference, the importance and significance of the sacrament, which takes place in the Sanctuary. At the same time it indicates, like the ancient screen, the connection between the two worlds, heaven and earth, and it reveals this connection pictorially, showing in a concise form, on one plane, immediately before the eyes of the congregation, the ways of reconciliation between God and man..." Uspensky & Lossky, p. 67. It is also notable that some Orthodox theologians conceive of the Holy Spirit itself as of a "spatial event," as does for example father Boris Bobrinskoy, rector of the Alexandre Nevsky Cathedral, Paris: "Saint Basil parle de l’Esprit Saint comme de l’espace, dans un sens ascendant, de l’espace de l’adoration. L’Esprit Saint est le lieu - le milieu divin comme dirait Teilhard de Chardin - , de milieu dans lequel seul peut se faire, non seulement l’adoration, mais la vision. Il est cette luminosité sans laquelle il n’y aurait pas de transmission de l’objet lumineux vers notre égard. Voilà pour l’aspect ascendant." "Mais l’espace est aussi objet descendant, car l’Esprit Saint est non moins le lieu et l’espace de la sanctification. Donc, vous voyez: espace d’adoration, de contemplation, de vision et de communion bien sûr, espace de fortification. Donc l’Esprit Saint est ce lieu dans lequel s’opère cette relation de réciprocité et de dialogue" "L’Icône: Objet d’art ou de culte?" in: Saint Jean Damascène: L’Icône: Objet d’art ou objet de culte? (Paris: Cerf, 2001), pp. 41 and 42.
[43] Cf. Sendler who says about space that "de par sa nature, il appartient à la catégorie du sublime." (p. 136)
[44] "Icon" in Grove Dictionary of Art (New York: Macmillian, 1996), p. 76.
[45] Kwadensho III. Kwadensho or Fushikaden (The Book of Flowers) is called the collection of Zeami’s writings on Noh technique and aesthetics. Engl. translation T. Rimer (ed.): On the Art of the Nô Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). See also Benl’s German translation (note 18). For this quotation see also Bohner p. 75.
[46] Panayotis A. Michelis: An Aesthetic Approach to Byzantine Art (London: Batsford, 1964), p. 201.
[47] Kandinsky quoted from Onasch, p. 281.
[48] Richard Pilgrim: "The Artistic Way and the Religio-Aesthetic Tradition in Japan" in Philosophy East and West 27/3, p. 294.
[49] Masakazu Yamazaki: "The Aesthetics of Ambiguity: The Artistic Theories of Zeami" in T. Rimer (ed.): On the Art of the Nô Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. xliii.
[50] "Das Schriftliche, das stumme Optische behauptet den Vorrang." (Bohner, p. 15)
[51] Kunio Komparu: The Noh Theatre: Principles and Perspectives (New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1983), p. 77.
Fig 1: Plan of the Noh-stage
Fig. 2: The fresco The Adoration of the Magi from the St. Therapont Monastery
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