What was the position of the eastern orthodox church concering the topic of icons?

Answer 1

The east is pretty conservative when it comes to icons. In fact, I just went to a seminar on this. First of all, we do not worship icons. Icons are a reminder of the acts that a saint as done rather than their physical appearance. Now, there are certain things an icon must include. The features must be portrayed a certain way, the people must be facing a certain way, and many other things. All aspects of the saint that does not concern information that may help us to salvation is removed from the icon. For example, in an icon, everyone is the same size unless one is to be portrayed as an infant because height is not an essential fact for our salvation. Also, the shading in an icon goes from dark to light rather than the normal light to dark so as to have the figures in the icon appear more as though they are coming to meet us rather than it going back into the canvas. I'm not too organized in my writing, but figures are also displayed using an opposing movement of objects that is often seen in ancient greek art. This means that for every thing that faces left, something else faces right. The head will face one way and the eyes face the other (also giving an illusion that they're always looking at you).