ABSTRACT
Iconicity, the diachronic actualization of an iconographic type, identifies patterns of continuity and transformation in the art object that are commensurate with tradition and open to transcultural realities. It draws attention to the imaginal sequences and communities that form there and to the distinctiveness and versatility of the individual images that populate them. It exposes the capacity of the Christian image for ontological expansion and plasticity and thus its openness to mystical and miraculous realities. Iconicity constitutes the Christian image as an unfolding event, with shifting and fluctuating horizons, and a being that is ontologically committed to communion rather than just simulation or reflection—to recall Gadamer's distinction. Iconicity is thus plerotic with regard to the aesthetic object and kenotic with regard to those interventions that attempt to immobilize and determine it from an exclusive vantage.
