Concept

Anicomics is based upon the premise of aniconism, a practice of avoiding realistic images of living beings. Several religions and belief systems are also aniconic, in which they expressly forbids depictions of images, such as Islam and certain Christian denominations. The active practice of aniconism in religions is usually called iconoclasm.


The practice of aniconism in Islam, the author's own religion, revolves around the prohibitions to represent the images of humans (especially any prophets) and animals (hereby called animated living things). The most distance reference to iconoclasm in Qur'an, Islam's holy book, only refers to idolatry (eg. al-Ma'idah 5:87 - 92 ), but the greatest bulk of the iconoclastic rule comes from the Traditions (eg. Sahih al-Bukhari 3:34:318, Sahih Muslim 24:5272). Several quarters in Islam practiced iconoclasm vigorously, and sometimes with a negative effect; for example, in 2001 the Talibans of Afghanistan destroyed the historical Buddhist Statue of Bamiyan on the grounds that it is idolatrous. 
Aniconism also exists in Judaism and Christianity, Islam's sibling religions, although it was implemented in various degrees of completeness among their various denominations. Catholic Christianity, for example, do not see it a problem to represent the figure of Jesus, Virgin Mary and other religious figures in full human characteristics, as can be seen in major Catholic architectures such as the Basilica of St Peters. However, after the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation, several Christian denominations actively practiced aniconism as part of the fundamentalist movement.


The practice of aniconism sustains a slight conflict of interest with the introduction of photography and subsequently animated pictures. Throughout the years, the huge proliferation of photography and its major benefits over its downsides has resulted in compromises among iconoclastic religions, although several quarters such as the various Anabaptists Christian groups, Islamist Shabaabs of Somalia and Talibans of Afghanistan still could not come to terms with the technology. It is virtually impossible to prevent the advent of photographic technologies; any actions to implement iconoclasty on photography will require the destruction of the entire Earth, since photography is almost everywhere in the world.

Apart from religions, aniconism also exists in general science. It is practiced mostly for the benefits of reduced overhead in documentations, idea presentations and idea distributions. Circuitry design in electronics engineering, for example, uses symbols that do not resemble the components it represented at all. A photorealistic presentations of these symbols will be difficult to produce and reproduce by hand, and will present a non-conformity crisis since no two people can realistically visualize an object in the same way. Therefore, scientific techniques relies on aniconism for it to be more effective and efficient in distributing ideas.


As tough as it can be, aniconism does have positive impact in bringing the skills of representative arts to a higher level. Geometric arts and architectures in general has benefited greatly from Islamic attempt to visualize arts through aniconic alternatives such as geometric abstractions and symbolism. Arabesque and Moresque patterns are but minor example of artistic achievements done within the constraints of Islamic aniconism. These patterns continue to be used in architecture until today in both Islamic and non-Islamic representations. Aniconism is not widespread in popular culture however, and is restricted to certain art forms. Picasso, for example, used lots of aniconism in his abstract paintings to portray his ideas of abstract arts.