An important aspect of icons (in the teaching of the Church) is that an icon must be true. We cannot make icons of that which is not true. I recall a conversation with an elderly iconographer. We were discussing a particular icon of the Russian New Martyrs.
“It is not an icon!” she declared. I remember at the time wondering what she meant. It clearly obeyed all the canons and conventions for an icon – those whom it portrayed were truly martyrs. She drew my attention to the portrayal of those who were pictured carrying out the martyrdoms.“There is hate in this icon!” She exclaimed. A true icon can never contain hate.
She did not mean that an icon could not portray the martyrdom itself (often a gruesome event). Rather she meant that within the portrayal of the evil-doers, the hatred and anger of the iconographer could be seen. It was, perhaps, a subtle point. But it was a point that was quite vital to this very accomplished iconographer. For veneration and hatred cannot coexist. Hatred will create a distortion which is not healing to the soul but damaging.
I have had this kind of experience and have also written about it here. What offended my faith in viewing a certain picture in ikonographic style was precisely what the elderly iconographer said, ‘There is hate in this icon!’ and that is what makes it a non-ikon. Other than this, and the fact that for Orthodox Christians, ikons must be historical, not allegorical (though the rule is sometimes broken), there is little else to prevent a two-dimensional image from being regarded an ikon.
I may prefer ikons written in the Byzantine style, but others may find realistic paintings of Christ and the saints work for them just as well. That Orthodoxy has standards which it relaxes out of love and necessity is one of the chief characteristics of this Christian faith, and the open secret as to how it has been able to remain voluntarily united for so many centuries.
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