Page 376 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
While Spira does make the already mentioned references to the 14th century spiritual movement of Hesychasm and its advocator Gregory Palamas,17 as well as to the possible influence of the hesychast argument in Larionov’s Rayist works,18 he does not explore the extent at which Hesychasm has influenced the final phase of Late Byzantine painting – an influence which is argued by scholars to exist also in the medieval painting of Rus- sia.19 Our second chapter explores extensively the profound influence that Hesychasm had on Late Byzantine painting (mainly in Greece and Serbia). Further still, in our work, the topic of the hesychast influence in Late Byzantine painting is conceived as in itself an introduction to subsequently decoding the influences of Late Byzantine painting in Kandinsky’s, Malevich’s and Rothko’s work. This is conducted in separate chapters.
Given its topic, it is understandable that Spira’s book does not examine the work of El Greco, which we have explored in our first chapter. More particularly, in light of the fact that El Greco was considered by the 20th century expressionist and abstract painters to be their forerunner, in the relevant chapter we examine to what extent El Greco’s work, after he moved to Venice, owes its originality to his Byzantine artistic heritage. Thus, the topics of the chapters of our present work extend to new directions and differ from those in Spira’s work, while our specific arguments coincide in their initial foundations – the main one being that through the Russian avant-garde experience the influence from icons contributed significantly to the formation of European Modernism.
When elaborating on the aesthetic connections between medieval Russian icons and the examples of Russian avant-garde art, Spira insists mainly on visual comparisons. Similar comparisons have been made by other scholars who conducted research on Ma- levich before Spira.20 Our approach extends their conclusions in that, while also resort- ing to the method of comparison, we additionally take into account and examine the actual practical and artistic aspects of making of the examples of painting discussed. The
17 Ibid., 18, 62.
18 Ibid., 62.
19 Some of the noteworthy publications which relate to the influence of hesychasm in Russian medieval painting
are:
Mikhail Vladimirovich Alpatov, “Iskusstvo Feofana Greka i uchenie isikhastov,” Vizantiyskiy Vremennik 33 (1972):
190–202. URL: http://www.vremennik.biz/opus/BB/33/52152
Nikita Kasyanovich Goleizovsky, “Isikhasm i russkaya zhivopis XIV–XV vv,” Vizantiyskiy Vremennik 29, no. 54
(1968):196–210. URL: http://www.vremennik.biz/opus/BB/29/52007
Aleksandr Ilich Klibanov, “K kharakteristike mirovozzreniya Andreya Rubleva,” in Andrei Rublev i ego epokha, ed.
Mikhail Vladimirovich Alpatov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1971), 62–103.
20 See for example: Birnholz, Alan C. “On the Meaning of Kazimir Malevich’s ‘White on White.’” Art International
21 (January, 1977): 9–16, 55. See also: Susan P. Compton, “Malevich’s Suprematism: The Higher Intuition,” Burlington Magazine CXVIII, 881 (August,1976): 577–585.
374