St. Basil’s Cathedral

Thinking Through Alfred Gell (1945-1997)’s “Art and Agency” and “The Technology of Enchantment”

An Agentive Icon of Orthodoxy and Imperial Will

St. Basil’s Cathedral—officially the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat—is not merely a building. It is a ritualized mnemonic and indexical agent of post-Kievan Rus’ identity formation. Through Gell’s lens, it is a distributed agent of nationhood, fusing sacred theater with political propaganda through architectural form. Each of its nine chapels—radiating from the central tented roof—stands as a memory-node, not just of saints or victories, but of divinely sanctioned Tsardom.

Enchantment by Chromatic Multiplicity

The building’s enchantment lies in its irregular symmetry and kaleidoscopic ornamentation, which evoke Gell’s “technologies of enchantment” par excellence. The cathedral disorients the viewer not by vast scale but by visual over-stimulation—its tent domes, onion spires, and swirling colors defy the Euclidean orthodoxy of the West. This aesthetic complexity prevents immediate cognitive closure, and thus embeds itself more deeply into the mind.

This is precisely what Gell meant by opacity as enchantment: viewers cannot easily "read" the logic of the whole. They are enchanted because they are suspended in semiotic uncertainty—is it a fortress? a vision? a game?

Monument as Performative Icon

Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) commissioned this temple to mark the capture of Kazan, but it functions far beyond commemoration. As Gell writes, art does not merely represent agency—it is agency. St. Basil’s became an agentive icon of Moscow’s holy mission, retroactively transforming a brutal conquest into divine providence. The very strangeness of its appearance—unique in all of Christendom—broadcasts a message of exceptionality: 

Moscow is the New Jerusalem.

Ecstatic Architecture of the Margins

In Gellian terms, St. Basil’s is also a trap for the eye and mind, similar to Polynesian tattoo or Yoruba beadwork. Each element is modularly crafted but never repeated, producing an effect of ecstatic bricolage. It mirrors Eastern Orthodox liturgy: polyphonic, choreographed, excessive in its beauty. The cathedral doesn’t just house ritual—it is ritualized in form.