Page 254 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
Introduction to Case Studies
Throughout the following case-studies, we shall examine how, although Late Byzan- tine painting concerns itself with experiencing the Gospel events it is describing, Ma- levich succeeded in selecting from the post-physical aspects which exist in its aesthetic articulation. We shall also corroborate how through his artistic practice, Malevich pre- sents a novel form of human nature, reconstructing through it the perception of the human presence.
If we compare Malevich’s Suprematist works, which are completely abstract, to vari- ous examples of Late Byzantine painting, and if in doing so we disregard the form in the latter – in order to detect the actual intertextual relationship between them, we can then readily understand that the post-physics of Malevich’s painting of the Suprematist period is in a tangible dialogic relationship with the post-physics of Late Byzantine painting. This relationship is most evident at two following levels respectively: (a) the geometric configuration of pictorial space, and (b) the deliberate projection of the form towards the infinite. In Late Byzantine painting, the latter characteristic is generally manifested through the inverse perspective, whereas in Malevich’s Suprematism, since there is no representational form, each abstract feature is the fragment of “infinity accomplished.”
Consequently, in the following case-studies we aim to elaborate on a relationship be- tween Malevich’s work and Late Byzantine painting which is more than just visual. We shall explain how Malevich, in a peculiar esoteric manner, through the formation of his Suprematist expression, as if psychologically flying over the last centuries of Byzantine art with feet on modern ground, selected and condensed the experience of the post-phys- ical in Late Byzantine painting and reinvented that experience by inscribing it in his intellectual concerns and artistic influences. Besides comparing aspects relating to com- position, form and colour, our methodology shall entail an interpretation of how Ma- levich’s theoretical ideas relate both to Late Byzantine painting and in part to certain aspects of Orthodox theology relevant to the understanding of Byzantine aesthetics.
Before proceeding, we note that the two assisting factors to our research aims are, firstly, the fact that Malevich himself wrote extensively on the topics which concern both the practice and the theory of his art, and secondly, the fact that since the beginning of the 21st century new and introspective insights about his work have emerged in the
252