Page 252 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
state of painting is most precisely expressed by the Russian leading artists and by the meaning of the non-objective art.”3
The rejection of visual art, which characterises the early 20th century, created a critical climate within which Russian artists, such as Kazimir Malevich, Vasily Kandinsky, Nata- lia Goncharova and others, created artworks of immense artistic and aesthetical signifi- cance. These artists entered the world history of painting by shifting its orientation away from the naturalistic and away from the representational, therein directing it towards the abstract. The path towards abstraction which was followed by these artists has in each individual case been a subject of comprehensive theoretical research, and the exist- ence of the Byzantine influences in their work has been long detected – but these influ- ences have not hitherto been sufficiently interpreted.
In this respect, the life-work of Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (1878–1935), especially its phase known as Suprematism, is of particular interest to our aesthetic inquiry. In spite of his Polish background, Malevich’s development as a painter was mainly conditioned by the Russian culture in the midst of which he grew up. However, throughout his artis- tic development he was influenced by a number of different painting orientations, such as Russian Symbolism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, the painting of Paul Gaugin, Henri Matisse, as well as by a variety of philosophers and thinkers, such as a Polish writer Stanislaw Przybyszewsky4 (in 1908), Arthur Schopenhauer5 (in 1908), G.W. F.Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, P.D. Ouspensky and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (founder of the Theosophical Society).6
In spite of the distinct Byzantine influences in Malevich’s work, certain scholars do not note these and often argue that the peculiarity of Malevich’s abstraction is rooted elsewhere, and therein, by consequence the significance of the Byzantine element in Malevich’s contribution to the emergence of Modernism is undermined. For example, Golding argues that Malevich’s disparate intellectual sources can be best apprehended if we consider them as hiding under Malevich’s own characteristically eccentric Hegelian umbrella.7 In specific regards to Malevich’s intellectual sources, our premise is that, not- withstanding the variety of influences, Malevich’s theoretical aspirations should primar-
3 Καζιμίρ Μάλεβιτς, Γραπτά, μετάφραση: Δημήτρης Χορόσκελης (Θεσσαλονίκη: Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, 1992), 33–34. (Our translation) «Η νέα οντολογική κατάσταση της ζωγραφικής εκφράζεται σαφέστατα από τη ρωσική πρωτοπορία και την έννοια της μη-αντικειμενικής τέχνης.»
4 Ibid., 12.
5 Ibid.
6 John Golding, Paths to the Absolute: Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky, Pollock, Newman, Rothko and Still (Thames &
Hudson, 2000), 62.
7 John Golding, Paths to the Absolute: Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky, Pollock, Newman, Rothko and Still (Thames &
Hudson, 2000), 74.
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