Page 269 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter V
“There, that’s how I settle my accounts with Nature. Because it does not smile... it is perfect.”39
We observe in Malevich’s both theoretical and practical work, especially in the white phase of Suprematism, that his concern with space is in essence an attempt to transcend beyond the third dimension and therein become spaceless, or rather, transfigured in new dimensions.
Therefore, in consideration of the white phase of Suprematism we firstly attain two distinct notions: geometry and absolute treatment of colour, where white plays a crucial role. White is associated to a free abyss. In effect, here we have a step into a “fourth” dimension where only one “foot-print” is visually detectable, more particularly, the ab- stract and geometrical appearance of compositions. The other “foot” is in actual motion towards the abyss – which is conveyed through white colour. This colour white, through the self-referentiality of the manner in which it is employed vanishes into an other- worldly kind of non-depicted space.
Here is where we encounter the paradoxical unison between motion and stillness at its most refined point of expression. White itself becomes the embodiment of both the movement and the stillness. It becomes the absolute being. It becomes the manifestation of God’s creative act – which at the same time is his “face” of meditating stillness. Works which are most representative of this aesthetic phenomenon are: Suprematist Composi- tion: White on White (1918, image 23), Spheric Evolution of a Plane (1917–1918, image 24) and Dissolution of Construction (1918, image 25).
In the manifesto of his white Suprematism, a text entitled Declaration: White Manifes- to, written on the 15th of June 1918, Malevich describes his experience of the otherworldly space: “The skull has opened by the power of intuition and the consciousness dives its stare into the abyss of the space.”40 In his later text entitled God is not Cast Down, written
39 Καζιμίρ Μάλεβιτς, Γραπτά, μετάφραση: Δημήτρης Χορόσκελης (Θεσσαλονίκη: Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, 1992), 45–46. Our translation of:
«Ψάχνω τον Θεό, ψάχνω το πρόσωπό μου
Σχεδίασα ήδη το περίγραμμά του και προσπαθώ να μπω μέσα
Και η λογική μου είναι το μονοπάτι προς αυτό
Που είναι σχεδιασμένο από τη διαίσθηση
Το χαμόγελο φωτίζει το πρόσωπό μου κι αυτό το χαμόγελο σημαίνει σοφία
(...)
Να πως κανονίζω τους λογαριασμούς μου με τη Φύση.
Γιατί δεν χαμογελάει... είναι τέλεια.»
40 Our translation of: «το κρανίο ανοίχτηκε από τη διαισθητική δύναμη και η συνείδηση βυθίζει το βλέμμα της
στην άβυσσο του χώρου.» This is a citation from Malevich’s text entitled Declaration: White Manifesto. See: Καζιμίρ Μάλεβιτς, Γραπτά, μετάφραση: Δημήτρης Χορόσκελης (Θεσσαλονίκη: Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, 1992), 96.
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