Page 206 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
as to how abstract painting as such ought to be comprehended. On the other hand, these instructions in themselves constitute a guide to the specific journey of his own, very subjective experience. In his Cologne lecture of 1914, he stated: “I immersed myself more and more in the manifold value of abstract elements. In this way, abstract forms gained the upper hand and softly but surely crowded out those forms that are of representation- al origin.”17
In 1922 Kandinsky accepted an appointment to a professorship at the Bauhaus, where his contribution until the final closing of the school in 1933 was immense. Malevich’s Suprematism influenced Kandinsky between 1919 and 1921, but only to a very limited extent. Also, while Malevich’s Black Square in a sense presents Malevich as a victor against the problems and challenges of his theoretical enquiries, or as he called himself “the president of the Universe,” Kandinsky’s own engagement with the theory of aes- thetics did not lead him to create one or more works in which his philosophy concludes itself as a final aesthetic meaning. On the contrary, the meaning in Kandinsky’s painting remained more open-ended than that in the artistic practice of any of the 20th century European abstractionists. This is most evident in the works he created in the last years of his life, such as Around the Circle (image 37), Twilight (image 40), Division-Unity (im- age 43), White Figure (image 46) and Tempered Elan (image 42). It is also noteworthy that Kandinsky’s understanding of the colours white and black seems to be almost theologi- cal. For example, in his book On the Spiritual in Art he had stated: “White has the appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in the ice age. A totally dead silence, on the other hand, a silence with no possibilities, has the inner harmony of black.”18
It should be noted that, in spite of their common affinities, Kandinsky’s path to ab- straction was more complicated than that of Malevich. In a certain sense, Kandinsky never ceased to be inspired by impressions from nature. In his work he made a distinc- tion between Impressions, as immediate impressions of external nature, and Improvisa- tions, as expressions of an internal, nonmaterial nature that was mainly unconscious.19 It is through his Improvisations that he eventually managed to gradually “musicalise” the canvas surfaces. Thus, he named them Compositions – associating them therein deliber- ately to the art of music.20
17 See: Ulrike Becks-Malorny, Kandinsky (Taschen, 2007), 113.
18 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, trans. Michael T. H. Sadler (Tate Publishing, 2006), 77–78. 19 Ibid., 111.
20 Ibid., 112.
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