Page 208 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
takes place within the church. Moreover, within the realm of Orthodox (ecclesial) arts, Byzantine chant is considered to be by far the most profound discipline. According to the liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church, the external architecture of the Byz- antine church, followed respectively by its interior, its various decorative furnishings, its frescoes, icons, chandeliers, and the smell of the burnt incense, constitute different levels of expression which could collectively be seen to form a hierarchical pyramid where the Byzantine chant is at the very top – or rather, hovering above it. In fact, Byzantine chant is not only unified with other ecclesial arts, but in a sense, it musicalises them.
In this way, we can understand Byzantine painting as an anagogical practice which aspires to musicalise its imagery into the Byzantine chant, which, being primarily a method of worship, is emitted towards the invisible Triadic God. In her study entitled The Performative Icon, Bissera V. Pentcheva gives a slightly different but no less relevant explanation of the relationship between the Byzantine (portable) icon and the sound of prayer:
“The Sound of Prayer: The Circuit
While all five senses are engaged in the poikilia of paradise, this sensorial agitation is created by ineffable stimuli. By contrast, the icon replicates this experience through ma- terial, tangible means. Its lush decoration and epigrams demonstrate a desire to imagine the ineffable. Both being a graphe, letter and image form a prayer. While the image vis- ualises the performance of prayer, the epigram reinforces this action by sonorously re- placing it. The poetic inscription contributes a visceral, material presence of sound, transforming the icon into a sonorous body.”25
The above citation contributes to our insight into how the Russian Orthodox heritage might have functioned as a co-stimulus in Kandinsky’s “musicalisation” of painting. In fact, it cannot be plausibly imagined that Kandinsky did not, at least to a certain extent, associate his continuous inspiration from Russian icons and frescoes to the chanting of the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, we suggest that due to his Russian Orthodox cul- ture and heritage, the dialectic relationship between the image and the sound was part of Kandinsky’s experience much before he became familiar with musical theories such as those of Schoenberg.
As early as during his time as a student in Moscow, and in particular during a perfor- mance of Wagner’s Lohengrin, it became clear to Kandinsky that, to use his own words:
25 Bissera V. Pentcheva, “The Performative Icon,” The Art Bulletin 88, no. 4 (December 2006): 648. 206