Page 262 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
while she points to Him with her right hand, thereby indicating that the path of one’s heart should continuously lead towards Christ as the ultimate embodiment of Truth. Accordingly, in 1915 Malevich wrote: “Only the shortsighted and incapable painters hide their art under honesty. In art, the truth is required and not the honesty.”23
Further, if we compare the predominately expressionless gaze of Malevich’s Self Por- trait shown in image 12 to the slightly pensive yet rather neutral gaze of the Virgin Hodig- itria (image 11), our argument at hand becomes even clearer. Also, the robes of Christ in the icon Virgin Hodigitria are of distinctly warm and inviting, earthy-orange colour – which emphatically alludes to the state of the Virgin’s heart. Contrary to this, the black surface of the chest area in Malevich’s self-portrait (above his gesturing hand) could be understood to evoke the mysterious notion of the non-meaning of both life and art. We note that in 1920, thirteen years before he painted the above discussed Self Portrait, Ma- levich wrote: “Therefore, all of the human references which lead to the meaning of God are characterised by a non-meaning.”24
The difference between our last observation and that of Gilles Néret is subtle but sig- nificant. Néret rightly observes the inspiration from the traditional theme of Hodigitria in Malevich’s Woman Worker, as well as the fact that the depiction of the open hand in the Self Portrait (1933) sketches the outline of the absent square: “Above all, there is the Self Portrait, which presents him in the Renaissance garb of a reformer, indicating with a gesture expressive of the grave humor that pervades his entire oeuvre, that he is there to show us the way forward.”25
Building on this, we can claim that in comparison to his Woman Worker (image 10), Malevich’s Self Portrait (image 12) makes a more deliberate retrospective reference not only to his Black Square (image 26) but also to the Byzantine iconographical tradition of the Virgin Hodigitria. In fact, in this particular Self Portrait Malevich deliberately assumes the place of the Virgin: he assumes the sacred place of the Path-indicator (Hodigitria). This is especially evident in view of the characteristic hand gesture in Malevich’s self por- trait of concern (image 12) and its similarity to the hand gesture in the icon of the Virgin Hodigitria shown in image 11. It is noteworthy that the female figure depicted in his work Woman Worker does not indicate with a hand but simply “holds” the invisible child.
23 Our translation of: «Mόνον οι κοντόφθαλμοι κι ανίκανοι ζωγράφοι κρύβουν την τέχνη τους κάτω από την ειλι- κρίνεια. Στην τέχνη χρειάζεται αλήθεια και όχι ειλικρίνεια.» This is a citation from Malevich’s text entitled From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. See: Καζιμίρ Μάλεβιτς, Γραπτά, μετάφραση: Δημή- τρης Χορόσκελης (Θεσσαλονίκη: Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, 1992), 64.
24 This is a citation from Malevich’s text entitled God is not Cast Down: Art, Church, Factory. See: Καζιμίρ Μάλεβιτς, Γραπτά, μετάφραση: Δημήτρης Χορόσκελης (Θεσσαλονίκη: Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, 1992), 192. Our translation of: «Έτσι, όλα τα ανθρώπινα νοήματα που οδηγούν στην έννοια του Θεού χαρακτηρίζονται από το μη-νόημα.»
25 Gilles Néret, Kazimir Malevich 1878–1935 and Suprematism (Taschen, 2003), 89. 260