Page 261 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter V
ly green is very common in Byzantine painting of the late 13th and early 14th century. Admittedly, the portrait of St John the Theologian is not the most characteristic example of this phenomenon.
Our view is that, at the time he completed this self-portrait (1908–09 or 1910–11),19 and in part because of his artistic influences such as Cubism and Futurism, Malevich was about to accomplish an authentic and radical reinvention of the aesthetics of Byzantine painting of the 14th and 15th century. He was about to step over Cubism and Futurism into the completely abstract world of Suprematism. This “step” was manifested in his artistic practice somewhat suddenly, and as a result, its precise cause remained largely an enig- ma for contemporary art theorists.
Accordingly, because of this predominately concealed artistic experience, long after 1915, the year in which his abstract painting (Suprematism) blossomed, Malevich was able to return to figurative themes – which are closely associated to Byzantine iconog- raphy. Thus, as indicated by Gilles Néret, in the last years of his life it was not because of the diktats of the State that Malevich turned to “real” portraiture.20 Néret also observes that Malevich’s work Woman Worker painted in 1933 (image 10) depicts a maternity from which a child has been omitted, and that this is implied by a gesture similar to that of the Byzantine iconographic theme of Hodigitria.21 The most interesting of Néret’s observa- tions concerns Malevich’s other Self Portrait completed also in 1933 – two years before Malevich’s death: “The generously opened hand sketches the outline of the absent square, signaling all that Malevich knew that he had brought to the history of painting. And he leaves us with the message that the entire life of man can thus be reduced to a single gesture.”22
In our view, in spite of the fact that in his Self Portrait made in 1933 (image 12) Ma- levich is shown to be standing in a Renaissance garb of a reformer, he has deliberately depicted himself in a position of the Virgin Hodigitria (image 11). Also, it is not at all ac- cidental that the gesture of his hand, which sketches the outline of the absent square, is depicted near the heart area and below an intensely black segment of clothing. In fact, as we shall explain, the hand gesture is related to the intensely black area in a very par- ticular way. The Byzantine portrayals of the Virgin Hodigitria – which in Greek means The Indicator of the Path, most often depict the Virgin to be holding Christ with her left hand. In this way, the depiction of Christ is located in the area of the Virgin’s heart,
19 There is an uncertainty regarding the year in which this work was completed, 1908–09 or 1910–11. 20 Gilles Néret, Kazimir Malevich 1878–1935 and Suprematism (Taschen, 2003), 86.
21 Ibid., 89.
22 Ibid.
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