Page 272 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
Case Study 5: A discussion with Ziogas’ Byzantine Malevich
One of the most significant of Malevich’s Suprematist works is Black Square (1915) shown in image 26. The studious examination of its external surface, as well as the X-rays, have confirmed that Black Square is a composition resting on a number of previous ones, which further validates Ziogas’ argument that the Byzantine system of application of colours in distinct layers has been reinvented by Malevich’s Suprematism. According to Ziogas: “In 1913–14, Malevich had started to construct the painting surface with overlap- ping layers, turning his painting into an icon whose layers have been re-assorted.”48
In the same book, entitled The Byzantine Malevich, Ziogas employs pictorial criteria in order to assess the aesthetic genesis of Black Square, and arrives at a conclusion that Ma- levich had, on both the conscious and the subconscious level, disconnected the col- our-layers of the figural features which comprise the traditional Byzantine icon of the Virgin and Child (Hodigitria) and fused them differently into their one final black ap- pearance. More particularly, Ziogas argues that in Black Square, the last (black) layer of colour is analogous to the layer which in Byzantine iconography is applied as first, and that underneath this layer, there is another Suprematist composition analogous to the layer of colour which in Byzantine iconography is applied as last. According to this view, as pointed out by John Panteleimon Manoussakis, Malevich’s technique employed in Black Square is not exactly a technique of abstraction but rather that of negation. Manous- sakis also points out that this technique of negation is something that makes the Black Square the visual analogue of negative theology.49
According to Ziogas, the white border of Black Square is painted with the procedural logic with which the Byzantines were painting a red border around the completed icon compositions of the theme of the Virgin and Child.50 Further, Ziogas states that the white border around the Black Square is “one illogical frame which encompasses one non-icon, which becomes a non-icon precisely because its placement suggests a Virgin that doesn’t exist.”51
48 Γιάννης Ζιώγας, Ο Βυζαντινός Μάλεβιτς (Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Στάχυ, 2000), 64. Our translation of: «Το 1913–14 ο Μάλεβιτς έχει αρχίσει να κατασκευάζει τη ζωγραφική επιφάνεια με επικαλυπτόμενα επίπεδα, μετατρέποντας τον πίνακά του σε μια ανακατεμένη εικόνα.»
49 John Panteleimon Manoussakis, God after Metaphysics: A Theological Aesthetic (Indiana University Press, 2007), 33. 50 Γιάννης Ζιώγας, Ο Βυζαντινός Μάλεβιτς (Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Στάχυ, 2000), 80–81.
51 Our translation of: «Είναι ένα Ά-λόγο πλαίσιο που περικλείει μια μη-εικόνα, που γίνεται μη-εικόνα ακριβώς
επειδή η τοποθέτηση υπονοεί μια Παναγία που δεν υπάρχει.» Γιάννης Ζιώγας, Ο Βυζαντινός Μάλεβιτς (Αθήνα: Εκδό- σεις Στάχυ, 2000), 81.
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