Central to Elizabeth Grosz’s Chaos, Territory, Art, is the notion that art is born out of chaos and thus produces intense sensations otherwise unable to be felt or manifested. In her conceptualization of art, Grosz notes that any sensation producing medium is included, ranging from painting to literature (3). According to Grosz, “Art is the most direct intensification of the resonance, and dissonance, between bodies and the cosmos, between one milieu or rhythm and another. It is that which impacts the body most directly, that which intensifies and affects most viscerally” (23). In this passage, Grosz notes a type of bodily and sensory reaction to the chaos which art frames and she suggests the very importance of such an effect. Rather than pointing to the reaction one might have to the actual content or artistic intention, it seems to be the actual corporal response with which she is particularly interested.
In order to make sense of the kind of cosmic forces responsible for the beginnings and inner workings of humanity, artists created a variety of works to express their understanding of the world. Manifesting into painting and sculpture their understanding of the Christian dogmas regarding the creation of the world, artists aimed to capture visuals and sensations that are otherwise intangible. Putting religious figures into art works, artists were able to effectively give a face to the ambiguity and confusion that might surround attempts to conceptualize the beginning of the world. Harnessing this seeming chaos into art allows for the creation of icons, and thus, an eventual backlash to the ways in which artists chose to frame their understanding of chaos.
The Cambria Madonna, circa 1340
Given the creation of religious icons as well as Grosz’s understanding of the intense effects art is capable of producing, art has proved highly controversial in various periods of history. From the mid 8th century to the mid 9th century in the Byzantine Empire, a movement referred to as Iconoclasm raged against the worshipping of religious icons. The iconoclasts opposed idol worship based upon Old Testament scripture and a possible belief in the type of power and sensation-production which Grosz attributes to art. This opposition to paintings depicting religious figures suggests a fear regarding the intense effects that works of art are capable of having and the potentially problematic responses that the iconoclasts believed that idol worshippers might have to these sensations.
Image of Jesus Christ Pantocrator from Hagia Sophia, circa 12th century
As Grosz comments in her book, “[art] it the most vital and direct form of impact on and through the body, the generation of vibratory waves, rhythms, that traverse the body and make of the body a link with forces it cannot otherwise perceive and act upon” (23). If, in fact, religious art works serve as a manifestation of the chaos surrounding the beginnings of the universe and humanity, then they are imbued with extremely personal and culturally significant subject matter. In this scenario, artists are given the power to define and identify the religious figures who help frame chaos and thus propagate images which viewers often believe are a true representation of the chaos which they are otherwise unable to access. The power with which Grosz assigns to art explains the concern of the Iconoclasts as well as the comfort idol worshippers took in religious paintings.
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