The Otherness of Christ

been picked up by the artistic tradition to represent the “otherness” of
Jesus. The icon writers do not want us to see Jesus as only human. They
want to show in some way what they know they is impossible to depict,
the divine nature of Christ.
This problem is particularly acute when an artist attempts the
Transfiguration, in that peak experience the Lord lets his glory be seen,
something of his divinity shows through:
And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became daz-
zling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there
appeared to them Elijah with Moses. (Mark 9:2b-4a)

The Greek word we translate as “transfigured” is μετεμορφωθη – meta-
morphothe – meaning to change, to transform, to morph. I always think
of the monarch butterflies that emerge from the cocoons which they
entered as caterpillars when I hear the word “metamorphosis.”
Two of Galovic’s icons are entitled with the words “Meta morpho-
sis” – the Greek for Transfiguration. The other, uses Old Slavic instead
of Greek, Преображение Господа Бога и Спаса нашего Иисуса
Христа (I have expanded the abbreviations and used modern Russian
letter forms) which translates as “Transfiguration of our Lord God and
Savior Jesus Christ.” The longer title makes it clear that Galovic, just
like his Slavic forebears, is out to communicate to us the dual nature
of Jesus Christ. Jesus is both “Lord God” and the “Saviour” who came
amongst us and shares human nature with us.
To understand Galovic’s icons it is important to read them against
the very long tradition of icons of the Transfiguration. In particular,
I suggest obvious artistic influences that Galovic has incorporated
into his work: the mosaicked apse of the Church of the Virgin in St
Catherine’s monastery on Sinai, and the 16 th century Russian Icons of
the Novgorod School including those found at the Monastery of the
Transfiguration of the Saviour in Yaroslavl, Russia. If we wanted to
trace a trajectory of influences among the icons then it is clear that the
work of the great icon writer Theophanes was directly or indirectly a
model for the Novgorod school, as he is for Galovic.

The apse mosaic dates from the 500s and survived the iconoclast period
thanks to its remote location. Two of Galovic’s Transfigurations have a
similar undifferentiated background, we are not on Mount Tabor, we
are in a different realm, we glimpse, for a moment, heavenly realities.
The Theophanes tradition, which Galovic consistently follows in
this respect, has the disciples in the order Peter, John and James. John
is the one without the beard. In Galovic’s first two icons they are no
longer tumbling down a mountain but in free fall against a uniform
backdrop. Peter is distinguished from the other two because he looks
directly at what they cannot bear to contemplate. In the first of Galov-
ic’s icons John and James have their backs to the Christ, in the second
they have covered their faces. The third combines these two reactions.
Notice the gleam of light on the garments of the apostles. Galovic does
not depict beams of light as in the Novgorod icon, we do not see the
rays, only their effect and their reflection.
Galovic is clearly experimenting with the postures of the apostles,
drawing his inspiration from the Novgorod School. Peter anchors the
bottom left corner of each icon, first with left foot, then right hand,
then right foot. The third icon in the series has many elements in
common with the work of Theophanes. The three mountains, two of
them hollow, the shrubs and the positions of the apostles Peter and
James. Yet, Galovic while paying tribute to Theophanes, is not simply
copying him. Theophanes has Peter kneeling, Galovic has him genu-
flecting. Moreover, one of Galovic’s bushes is red and flame-like. By
having Peter diagonally opposite the figure of Moses and having him
look to a burning bush he is surely connecting this theophany with the
revelation of the name of God on Mt Sinai when Moses hears the voice
of the Lord. The only element that contradicts this reading is that he
still has his sandals on.
Galovic is also varying the mandorla. The mosaic and the Novgo-
rod icon illustrated have the mandorla about Christ shading from dark
to light blue. In the first of his Transfiguration icons, Galovic takes
this element, in the Novgorod shape, but reverses the gradation – now
the colours take us in to the Christ. Elijah and Moses, both with gar-
ments gleaming with reflected glory are depicted in the Russian style,
but each with a foot in heaven (inside the mandorla) from whence they
have come. In the second icon of the series Galovic uses the unusual
arrowhead shape from the Yaroslav icon, but with an almond-shaped
mandorla rather than circular. He takes the rays but not the stars of
heaven. His Christ is directing us strongly upward, even bending the
red border framing the image. The third mandorla is reduced to a giant
graduated letter O, strongly cutting off the Christ figure even from his
heavenly companions,the upward momentum is now conveyed by the
whole shape of the icon with the top edge reflecting the curve of the O.
The most startlingly original element in Galovic’s icon series is the
figure of the Christ. The shape is utterly traditional, almost a straight
copy of the Novgorod, including the detail of the scroll in the left hand
and varying the gesture of the right, but it is not painted in the plane
of the picture. Every other figure is trapped in two-dimensions but
the Lord is carved in low relief, in the wood of the panel, - gessoed
and lightly painted off-white in the first, unpainted in the second and
gilded in the third. The ancient icons used the colour white to distin-
guish the Christ-figure, Galovic literally makes it stand ‘out’ from the
background.
Not merely the garments but the whole body is disturbingly uni-
form, making the viewer do a double-take and look again to try to dis-
cern the features.
The halo in the first, as is traditional, has the cross embedded
within it, but there is a subtle gradation in the red that reveals the dia-
mond halo of the deity. In the second the cross shape is emphasized by
being the only element to be gilded. In the third the cross disappears
in the uniform gilding of the Christ figure, making the halo scarcely
separate from the face or the garments.
The ‘otherness’ and strangeness of the Christ figure in the Galovic
icon series is what inspired this commentary. Every original artwork
contains elements of novelty and traditional material. Galovic has suc-
ceeded in making us stare in wonder at the figure of Christ transfig-
ured.
Our age is full of images, holy and otherwise. Photography and vi-
deo have enabled the human to be well-represented. Our holy images
communicate the human nature of Christ very well. The challenge for
sacred artists is, as it always has been, the communication of the divine
nature. God is spirit, and spirit cannot be painted straight on, it can
merely be alluded to, pointed at. We are used to the conventions that
do this, it is exciting to encounter a new take, a new way of signalling
the otherness of Christ, his full divinity in addition to his full humanity.