Page 266 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
ages 35 and 37 of the first chapter of this book). More particularly, Malevich’s Suprematist works share a similar sense of abstract weightlessness and can be compared not only to these frescoes but also to other examples of Late Byzantine painting.
In other words, when we ignore the figural form in the two aforementioned composi- tions at Protaton, we then acquire a sense of free flight characteristic of Malevich’s Su- prematist works. This is not to imply that Malevich was necessarily familiar with the two particular frescoes at Protaton, as a different kind of relationship is more plausible: Ma- levich consciously abandoned representational art in favor of the post-physics in which there is no mediation of form. In doing so, he appears to have drawn inspiration from post-physical qualities of Late Byzantine painting, such as the sense of abstract weight- lessness.
Thus, in Malevich’s compositions Magnetic Construction (1916, image 15), Suprematist Composition (1915, image 16), Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying (1915, image 17), Magnetic Composition, motif (1916–1917, version 1929, image 18), Composition of Combined Suprematist Elements Expressing the Sensation of Metallic Sounds – Dynamic / Pale, Metal- lic Colours (c.1920, image 19), and most clearly in Dynamic Suprematism / Supremus No. 57 (1916, image 20) and Supremus No. 56 (1916, image 21), the abstract features intercross into each other and collectively emanate a sense of otherworldly harmony and ethereal balance, a quality which occurs as analogous to that in the overall impression of the two aforementioned frescoes at Protaton (Resurrection and Baptism), as well as reminds of many later Byzantine depictions of the same two themes rendered either as portable icons or as frescoes.
It is not without consequence that Malevich argues that “all of the human notions which lead to the meaning of God are characterised by non-meaning.”32 This distinctly agnostic understanding of the divine is only to a degree reminiscent of an early 6th cen- tury text entitled The Mystical Theology, written by an author known to us as Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite,33 as it corresponds exclusively to its apophaticism and ignores the implied cataphatic meanings. More particularly, in Dionysius’ theology the apophat- ic and the cataphatic methods are not mutually exclusive but are always applied simul- taneously and thus when understood properly they do not lead to agnostic formulations
32 See Malevich’s text entitled God is not Cast Down: Art, Church, Factory. Καζιμίρ Μάλεβιτς, Γραπτά, μετάφραση: Δημήτρης Χορόσκελης (Θεσσαλονίκη: Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, 1992), 192.
33 The real name of this author is not certain, as he signed his writings with a pseudonym “Dionysius the Areopag- ite,” which is a name of a 1st century biblical figure converted by Apostle Paul in Athens (Acts 17:34). Because of this, the author of The Mystical Theology is most often referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius. We prefer to refer to him as Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, as there is some indication that his name was in fact Dionysius, in which case he should be properly referred to as Pseudo-Areopagite and not Pseudo-Dionysius.
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