Page 220 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
mental construction, by the gracefulness of arrangement, often amounting to delicacy, that the course of development has passed through Greek art, as we see it, for example, in any random vase decoration.”40
Our view is that in his painting entitled Division-Unity (image 43) Kandinsky in a certain sense builds upon Worringer’s theories stipulated in Abstraction and Empathy. In particular, he artistically brings the aforementioned Worringer’s understanding of the connection between Byzantine and Egyptian art to a higher level. As we shall elaborate below, Kandinsky therein reveals certain connections which, to the best of our knowl- edge, have not previously been observed in his work.
Firstly, if we consider the entire history of art and then focus exclusively on the ep- ochs of absolutely major artistic achievements, then it becomes obvious that, as a conse- quential aesthetic parallel, the numinous simplicity of Egyptian art and architecture pul- sates with variable intensity in all epochs of the art and architecture of the Greco-Roman world but also in the painting of Byzantium. It also becomes apparent that it is through the experience of Renaissance painting that this subtle Egyptian parallel is lost in the domain of painting. In this sense, the rejection of the Egyptian element is one of the most significant causes of the “aesthetic schism” which through the Renaissance experience occurred between Eastern and Western painting traditions: the Renaissance painters disassociated themselves from the Egyptian element – which as part of an inherent ten- dency towards abstraction exists within the aesthetics of Byzantine painting, notwith- standing the fact that the tendency towards abstraction in Byzantine painting is distinct from the analogous tendency in Egyptian art.
This effect of the emergence of Renaissance, although only in general terms, has been noted by Kostas Papaioannou, one of the most significant 20th century philosophers. In particular, in his book entitled Apotheosis of History, Papaioannou states: “Since the Re- naissance and thereafter, the world can no longer be perceived as a consistent and cohe- sive whole, and its meaning always remains fragmented.”41
We note that one vastly accepted view is that, besides its other characteristics, Re- naissance art constitutes a reinvention of Ancient Greek aesthetics. While this observa- tion is correct, it does not necessarily mean that the Renaissance revival of the Ancient Greek element played a decisive role in the irreversible departure of Renaissance paint-
40 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans. Michael Bullock (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1997), 104–105.
41 Κώστας Παπαϊωάννου, Η Αποθέωση της Ιστορίας (Εναλλακτικές Εκδόσεις, 1992), 29. (Our translation). The cited excerpt reads as follows in Greek: «Από την Αναγέννηση και μετά, ο κόσμος δεν μπορεί πλέον να γίνεται αντιληπτός ως ένα όλον συγκροτημένο και συνεκτικό, η δε σημασία του μένει πάντα μερική.»
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