Page 373 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Apendix
Ιn the fourth chapter, Spira commits most of his attention to Malevich’s Suprematism and points out that Malevich’s post-Suprematist works have none of the universal sig- nificance attributable to his Suprematist development.7 While exploring the variety of influences in Malevich’s Suprematist crosses (both those clearly rendered and those im- plied within the overall composition) but also in the Black Square and Black Circle, Spira points out the influences from Russian iconography most insightfully.
However, one earlier publication on the related topic has brought to light much of the Byzantine influences of Malevich’s Black Square. In particular, the book entitled The Byz- antine Malevich, written in Greek by a contemporary painter and art theorist Yannis Ziogas and published in 2000 examines the Black Square precisely in terms of Byzantine influences. The bibliography of Spira’s book does not include Ziogas’ The Byzantine Ma- levich – most likely because the latter is written and published in Greek and is yet to be translated into English. As it occurs, although Spira’s book published in 2008 and Zio- gas’ book published in 2000 do not address precisely the same problems, at points they inevitably speak of the same phenomena. One such phenomenon is the peculiar position of the Black Square over the corner of the gallery. In this, the influence from icons is ac- knowledged by both authors, the difference being that Ziogas’ book commits to compre- hensively decode this influence by adhering not simply to visual comparisons but also to a visual explanation of the painting process – an explanation of how in Malevich’s Black Square one can observe a reinvented Byzantine icon of the Virgin. To quote from the actual book, one of Ziogas’ revealing observations is that: “In 1913–14, Malevich had started to construct the painting surface with overlapping layers, turning his painting into an icon whose layers have been re-assorted.”8
Spira has detected a certain relationship between Orthodox theology (Gregory Pala- mas) and Malevich’s writings.9 This connection is indisputably present and important for understanding Malevich’s work. But we should bear in mind that, unlike the Ortho- dox Fathers whose teachings most likely did inspire him, Malevich was no systematic theologian and his writings, when read theologically, are at points not just theologically inconsistent but also clearly agnostic. For example, in 1920 he wrote: “Therefore, all of the human references which lead to the meaning of God are characterised by a non-mean-
7 Ibid., 163.
8 Our translation of: «Το 1913–14 ο Μάλεβιτς έχει αρχίσει να κατασκευάζει τη ζωγραφική επιφάνεια με επικαλυ- πτόμενα επίπεδα, μετατρέποντας τον πίνακά του σε μια ανακατεμένη εικόνα.» Γιάννης Ζιώγας, Ο Βυζαντινός Μάλεβιτς (Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Στάχυ, 2000), 64.
9 Andrew Spira, The Avant-Garde Icon: Russian Avant-Garde Art and the Icon Painting Tradition (Farnham: Lund Humphries, 2008), 147–148.
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