Page 209 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter IV
“painting could develop just such powers as music possesses.”26 Our view is that the parallel between this perception of Kandinsky and the previously discussed Orthodox experience of the Byzantine image being musicalised into the Byzantine chant, is un- doubtedly revealing. This particular parallel has not been previously noted – whereas the significance of Kandinsky’s interest in music for his painting is common knowledge.
For example, Roethel states: “Like painting, music was, to his mind, the most appro- priate vehicle for the communication of metaphysical messages. Through the medium of psychophysical ‘vibrations’ a definite if not definable Stimmung could be evoked which made the beholders participants in a spiritual communion.”27 The above cited observa- tion shows that Kandinsky’s process of “musicalisation” of painting constitutes a con- scious quest for a functional visual language, one which was to be designed to speak explicitly of the spiritual, on a universal level. Even as early as 1904 Kandinsky wrote: “If destiny will grant me enough time I shall discover a new international language which will endure forever and which will continually enrich itself.”28 In relation to this empha- sis on the universal functionality of sought visual language and the overt inclination towards non-naturalistic form, there is little difference between Kandinsky’s mindset and that of a Late Byzantine painter; more particularly, through their artistic practice they both consciously strive to surpass the notions relating to the material world, in or- der to make the presence of the divine intelligible for the observer. Further still, in both of their artistic experiences music plays a crucial role.
Consequently, it is our view that Kandinsky’s “musicalisation” of painting and his experience of the dialectic relationship between the image and the sound are phenome- na which have their deepest roots in the Orthodox liturgical experience – where the Byzantine image becomes absorbed by the sound of the chanted prayer. Schoenberg’s theories, Arthur Schopenhauer’s thought, and similar sources of music-related inspira- tion, were destined to be capitalised on by the Orthodox Kandinsky.
Deeply rooted in the Orthodox, and in particular Russian-Byzantine experience, the process of the “musicalisation” of his canvases had in time provided Kandinsky with an apocalyptic inter-historical insight into painting. As we shall discuss further in the sec- ond part of this chapter, this apocalyptic insight led Kandinsky to selectively borrow from Late Byzantine as well as from other Eastern arts, such as those from Egypt and Persia. Within the process of “musicalisation,” Kandinsky’s figures and landscape-fea- tures gradually became aspects of pure rhythm and harmony. Thus, paradoxically, silent
26 Ulrike Becks-Malorny, Kandinsky (Taschen, 2007), 25–28.
27 Hans Konrad Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky (Phaidon Press, 1979), 20. 28 Ibid., 13.
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