Performative Aspects of the Georgian Façades Decoration

Abstract

Standing before decorated façades like those at Jvari, Oshki, Nikortsminda, and many others, one can imagine and even feel the transformative process the medieval beholder may have undergone. Even today, the decorative system has become clearer, surprisingly rich, and astonishing in its proportions, rhythm, and beauty.
Thus, the sculpted scenes today recall the land’s history and the region’s local events in Georgia at the time, evoking religious feelings and exaltation. The inherent power of the image was thus used to pursue multivalent principles.
The relationship of the sculpted façades to their previous model represents a change or evolutionary stage in their adornment. The sculpted façades generate another visible interpretive layer of the political connection between the church’s edifice and the viewers. From the pattern of the spectators’ movement and their observation of the scenes or even partial details, they could grasp the event and the entire story that it represented. Their recollection was intensified by visual means of the architecture, the sculptures, and most likely by the processions and prayers. The landscape surrounding the holy site created a sacred atmosphere and thus strengthened the spiritual feelings of the pious before or after entering the sacred place. Crossley stated in his article Ductus and Memoria that “the aim of this essay is to move from the cathedral as text to the cathedral as experience, and to explore the relationship between aesthetics and performance”. Thus, he refers to the Gothic façades sculpture as a sacred book, summa in stone, which is very relevant to Georgian church façades.
The work of art does not stand as an object by itself. Instead, it is an experience that alters and influences the person who experiences it. Concerning religious art in Georgia, the sculpted façades acted not solely as artwork. Instead, they initiated a whole chain reaction: reliefs versus beholders, allowing them to experience an eruption of truth, extracting strong emotions, moving by processions, prayers, music, and sublime landscapes. Artwork poses a challenge to the viewers, primarily due to its appearance as mimetic, self-reflecting, and representational of someone.
The façades’ performative aspects surpass the limitations of the static sacred image, becoming a wide-ranging and transformative act. Thus, the sculptures are meant to be read as drama on the façades. Consequently, this raises the question of how the beholder experienced such an artistic program. What power did and does the artwork have that affected viewers, both then and now? 
The sacred work of art reminds us that the mode of being corresponds to the “transformation in the beholder’s mental state facing the sculpted façades”. The significance of understanding religious images is that the crucial factor is not form, style, or aesthetics; rather, it is but the response and reaction of viewers. In Georgia, this construction is visualized, I contend, through the metaphoric parochet, the veil of sculptures unfolding across the entire edifice of the church.