Page 256 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
ner-structure, and at instances a strict adherence to symmetry of composition, all of which are exemplified in his work The Triumph of Heaven: study for a fresco (1907, tem- pera on cardboard, image 1). Andrew Spira has compared this work to a 15th century Russian icon of The Shroud of the Virgin shown in image 2.12 In this comparison, we im- mediately begin to detect that within Malevich’s development, the tradition of Russian iconography and the aesthetics of Late Byzantine painting were deeply embedded in his artistic consciousness.
More particularly, in The Triumph of Heaven: study for a fresco, Malevich places a de- piction of a deity in the strict center of the upper part of the composition, and, below this depiction he assorts to each side the two groups of saintly figures which stand on clouds – therein deliberately creating a sense of strict balance. In the lowest part of the same composition he also places another group of saintly figures – again in the very center. Thus, in this work there are three horizontally constructed levels which allude to a pro- cess of ascension towards Heaven and there is a strictly central axis according to which this ascension functions. As seen in image 2, similar characteristics are found in the 15th century icon of The Shroud of the Virgin: the three distinct horizontal levels of the com- position, the Virgin depicted to be standing in the strict center of the middle level as well as of the entire composition, a balanced arrangement of the figures of apostles which are standing on clouds and are assorted in two lateral groups, and a separate depiction of another group of figures in the lower part of the composition– foregrounding the figure in the centre (the figure of St Roman the Melodist). Both the theme and the structure of composition in Malevich’s work The Triumph of Heaven: study for a fresco also relate to another Byzantine icon, entitled The Victory of Orthodoxy. As seen in image 3, in this 14th century icon similar analogies can be observed.
Having noted these similarities, we pose the following question: what could this rela- tionship between a work of Late Byzantine iconography and Malevich’s relatively early work actually mean in view of Malevich’s later development? Or more precisely, could Malevich’s other influences which manifested after that period, such as the influence of Futurism, also be seen as related to his Byzantine iconographic experience? With this question we suggest that throughout Malevich’s development as a painter, the Late Byz- antine element in his work did not undergo a process of fading away, but rather, this element was “struggling” – so to speak, to find a new form of pictorial existence.
12 Andrew Spira, The Avant-Garde Icon: Russian Avant-Garde Art and the Icon Painting Tradition (Farnham: Lund Humphries, 2008), 53.
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