Page 270 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
in 1920, he also states: “Existence is action, but ‘I act’ does not necessarily mean ‘I am’: ‘I am’ means that I make objects which have a certain destination, whereas an action without a destination can be regarded as a zero.”41
Thus, besides the geometric structure, there are three most dominant aesthetic char- acteristics in Malevich’s Suprematism, which also exist in Late Byzantine painting: the colour incorporated as light within (abstract) forms, the sense of the otherworldly di- mension, and within the latter, the coexisting notions of motion and stillness. Conse- quently, we observe how, though adhering to purely abstract means, in his painting practice Malevich made creative shortcuts to the aesthetics of Late Byzantine painting.
In the paintings of the white phase of Suprematism, Malevich applied the white colour as a non-colour, as a negation of colour in higher levels of existence. In Declaration/ White Manifesto (1918) he states: “long live the suprematist federation of the colourless.”42 Of special interest is the fact that not only his paintings, but also the theoretical ideas of Malevich’s Suprematism, are to an extent relatable to Orthodox Christian theology. Al- though some 20th century art historians and theorists have briefly referred to the rela- tionship between Malevich’s theories and the theology of the Orthodox Church, a prob- lematic but nevertheless conceivable connection between Malevich’s post-physics and the Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite has been mainly overlooked.
For example, in the introduction he wrote for a publication of Malevich’s texts entitled Writings: Kazimir Malevich, Andrei Nakov relates Malevich’s rejection of logical reason- ing as well as his frequently reoccurring reference to a “non-objective thought,” to the mysticism of the Christian West (Meister Eckhart, Jakob Boehme and Jan van Ruysbro- eck) and the mysticism of the East (Lao Tse).43 However, further on, Nakov does observe that the last paragraph of Malevich’s text God is not Cast Down constitutes “one of the most eloquent proofs of the close relationship of the creator of Suprematism to the thought of the Russian Orthodox Church.”44
41 Our translation of: «Η ύπαρξη είναι δράση, αλλά δρω δεν σημαίνει υποχρεωτικά και είμαι: είμαι σημαίνει φτιά- χνω αντικείμενα που έχουν κάποιο προορισμό, ενώ η δράση δίχως σκοπό μπορεί να θεωρηθεί σαν το μηδέν.» 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), 206–207.
42 Our translation of: «ζήτω η σουπρεματιστική ομοσπονδία του άχρωμου.» This is a citation from Malevich’s text entitled Declaration: White Manifesto. See: Καζιμίρ Μάλεβιτς, Γραπτά, μετάφραση: Δημήτρης Χορόσκελης (Θεσσαλο- νίκη: Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, 1992), 95.
43 Καζιμίρ Μάλεβιτς, Γραπτά, μετάφραση: Δημήτρης Χορόσκελης (Θεσσαλονίκη: Εκδόσεις Βάνιας, 1992), 46–47.
44 Ibid., 51. Our translation of: «Η τελευταία παράγραφος του κειμένου του «Ο Θεός δεν είναι έκπτωτος» αποτελεί μια από τις πιο εύγλωττες αποδείξεις της στενής συγγένειας του δημιουργού του σουπρεματισμού με τη σκέψη της ρωσσικής Ορθόδοξης Εκκλησίας.»
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