Page 45 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter I
the background, while the head of the apostle to the left is bowed in the opposite direc- tion; in this way, the painter makes sure that there is no monotony in the flow of the movement. Also, in the figure to the left, the contrapposto stance is clearly derived from the classical Greek forms. Our drawing over the photograph of this detail of the Dormi- tion of the Virgin also aims to demonstrate the existence of the musical kind of flow of the invisible intersecting currents which the stances and gestures of the depicted figures rhythmically follow.
That which is most important here is the fact that the painter most decisively treats the line as rhythm and colour as harmony. In fact, the lines as rhythmic currents inter- relate throughout the entire composition of the Dormition of the Virgin. The figure of Christ holding the Virgin’s soul is the central axis of this scene, and it is from this axis that the rest of the composition musically expands to both sides in quite a symmetric and reciprocal manner. Our two drawing-interventions on top of the photograph of this fres- co (images 27 and 29) demonstrate that there is simultaneously a circular-kind of expan- sion and a recession of the entire composition – one which is particularly atmospheric and very similar to the sound produced by a church bell: both expanding from and re- treating back to its source. If this effect is considered independently from the existent depictions of human form, the composition of the Dormition of the Virgin can become quite reminiscent of examples of abstract paintings, such as those by Vasily Kandinsky. Of course, the abstract qualities and the associations with music observed in Late Byz- antine painting are not aspects simply owed to some unprecedented experimentation conducted by certain artists, but are a product of a centuries-long developing tradition and an explicitly liturgical purpose of this art.
George Kordis, an iconographer, has contributed to the contemporary understanding of certain related phenomena with his book entitled In Rhythm (Ἐν ῥυθμῷ), although the scope of his study is not to incorporate an examination of the possible relationship of the tendency towards abstraction in Byzantine painting to Modern, abstract art of the 20th century. In another study, which does compare the tendency towards abstraction in Byz- antine painting to the 20th century abstract painting, the basic view presented by Kordis is rather one-sided. In particular, in his book entitled The Character and the Reason of the Abstraction in Byzantine Painting, Kordis concludes that the aspect of abstraction in Byz- antine painting does not seem to have connection with analogous tendencies of Modern, abstract painting of the 20th century.26 As we have already noted in the introduction,
26 More particularly, Kordis states in the conclusion of his book: “The observed abstract mood (in Byzantine paint- ing) does not seem to relate to the analogous tendencies of Modern painting, where the attrition of the natural form serves by rule the expressionistic inquiries and expresses beyond the form some spiritual, ideological or emotional
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