Art as the Iconostas

Abstract

The text is an attempt at a critical reconstruction of Paweł Florenski’s views on esthetics contained in the collection of his essays ‘Iconostas and Other Sketches’. By means of the language of semiotics Władysław Panas discusses in detail the theocentric conception of art as the iconostas. In it ontology of the work of art gains a dogmatic rank, and the icon becomes its model. Florenski understands it as revelation, and hence for him the process of creation is tantamount to discovering the truth, to giving testimony to an extrasensory, divine reality. Hence the work of art, like the icon, is a place where the man meets God. The author looks for confirmation of Florenski’s conception in Jung’s psychology of the unconscious and in Lotman’s conceptions of semiotics.