Page 274 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
those which are contours of entities from those which are but distracting reflections.”53 Thus, Black Square constitutes both a critical and a critique-imbued aesthetic recapitula- tion of the history of painting until the Modernist period, as well as a presentiment of the ineffectuality of the art of posterity. Through Suprematism, Malevich attempted to disperse all notions of the singular and the autonomous into the infinite, and thus, by purely pictorial means he attempted to bring the infinite into the realm of human con- sciousness.
Finally, the argument put forward by Ziogas allows us to venture even further and conceive of an adequation between the abstract form in Malevich’s Suprematism and the anthropomorphic form in Late Byzantine painting. This is exemplified in the comparison between images 28 and 29. We placed Malevich’s work entitled Black Circle (1915) next to a 14th century Russian icon of The Not-made-by-hands Savior. In this icon we observe how to a significant extent the lighter layers of colour have eroded, and thus, the dark tone which prevails on Christ’s face is actually the tone of the firstly applied layer of colour – the proplasmos. Therefore, building on Ziogas’ argument, we can say that the passing of time has had an effect on this icon similar to the visual outcome of Malevich’s icono- graphic experimentation with colour-layers in Black Square. This means that, Malevich’s orientation towards Byzantine aesthetics which is exemplified in works such as Black Square and Black Circle, could be understood both as an esoteric recapitulation of the history of art and as a cryptic visualisation of the contemporary significance of the aes- thetics of Late Byzantine painting.
As part of our iconological experimentation, we have cut out the head area from the 14th century icon of The Not-made-by-hands Savior (Aheiropoiitos) and placed it over Ma- levich’s Black Circle – while retaining the original contours of the latter. As shown in image 30, this experiment resulted in an aesthetic impression which visually demon- strates the extent and significance of the influence of Late Byzantine painting in Ma- levich’s work, and perhaps even reflects unassumingly his theological theories.
In images 31 and 32 our experimentation continued: Image 31 shows Malevich’s Black Circle – but only with Christ’s eyes included. Image 32 also shows Black Circle – but only with Christ’s mouth included. These features of a 14th century Russian-Byzantine icon come to mind when observing this abstract painting, more than a century after it was
53 Our translation of: «θα λειτουργεί σαν ένα αντικείμενο πλέον, σε μια καινούργια εικαστική πραγματικότητα χωρίς αντανακλάσεις, και θα είναι η πυξίδα που θα μας έχει δείξει την τεχνική με την οποία θα μπορούμε να διαρρη- γνύουμε κάθε φορά τον απέραντο εικαστικό σωρό στιλπνών επιφανειών που μας περιβάλει, και να ξεχωρίζουμε αυτές πού είναι περιγράμματα οντοτήτων από εκείνες πού δεν είναι παρά ενοχλητικοί αντικατοπτρισμοί.» Γιάννης Ζιώγας, Ο Βυζαντινός Μάλεβιτς (Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Στάχυ, 2000), 92.
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