Mudrak, Kazimir Malevich and The Liturgical Tradition of Eastern Christianity

Byzantium/Modernism
iii
The Byzantine as Method in Modernity

Edited by
Roland Betancourt
Maria Taroutina
LEIDEN | BOSTON
This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV
Contents
Contents
Contents
AcknowledgmentsIX
PrefaceXI
List of IllustrationsXV
List of ContributorsXIX
Explanation of the CoverXXIII
Part 1
Byzantium and Modernism
Introduction: Byzantium and Modernism1
Maria Taroutina
Section 1
The Avant-Gardes and Their Counter Movements
1
Modernisms Byzantium Byzantiums Modernism15

Robert S. Nelson
Kazimir Malevich and the Liturgical Tradition of Eastern

Christianity37
Myroslava M. Mudrak
Section 2
Modernisms Precursors
3
Arts and Crafts and the Byzantine: The Greek Connection75

Dimitra Kotoula
Archaeology of Decadence: Uncovering Byzantium in Victorien

Sardous Theodora102
Elena N. Boeck
Section 3
Byzantine Tactics, Modernist Strategies in Architectural Discourse
5
Abstractions Economy: Hagia Sophia in the Imaginary of

Modern Architecture135
Tulay Atak
vi
6
Contents
Byzantine Architecture: A Moving Target?163

Robert Ousterhout
Part 2
The Slash as Method
Introduction: The Slash as Method179
Roland Betancourt
Section 4
Reading across Time: Modern Subjects, Byzantine Objects
7
Byzantium and the Modernist Subject: The Case of Autobiographical

Literature195
Stratis Papaioannou
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish: Byzantine Visual Structures in
the Light of Twentieth-Century Practice and Theory212
Anthony Cutler
Section 5
Byzantine New Media: The Photographic and Filmic Icon
9
Iconicity of the Photographic Image: Theodore of Stoudios and Andr

Bazin237
Devin Singh
10
Tarkovsky: Embodying the Screen254

Marie-JosMondzain
Section 6
Presence, Representation, and the Gaze: The Byzantine at the Ends
of Modernity
11
Action-Paradise and Readymade Reliquaries: Eccentric Histories in/

of Recent Russian Art271
Jane A. Sharp
12
Lacan and Byzantine Art: In the Beginning was the Image311

Rico Franses
Contents
13
vii
Beyond Representation/The Gift of Sight330

Charles Barber
CODA
14
We Have Never been Byzantine: On Analogy349

Glenn Peers
Select Bibliography361
Index367
Contents
Contents
v
Acknowledgments
ix
Preface: A Mosaic Approach
xi
List of Illustrations
xv
List of Contributors
xix
Explanation of the Cover
xxiii
part 1
xxv
Byzantium and Modernism
xxv
Introduction to Part 1
1
Introduction: Byzantium and Modernism
1
Maria Taroutina
1
Section 1
13
The Avant-Gardes and Their Counter Movements
13
Chapter 1
15
Modernisms Byzantium Byzantiums Modernism
15
Robert S. Nelson
15
Chapter 2
37
Kazimir Malevich and the Liturgical Tradition of Eastern Christianity
37
Myroslava M. Mudrak
37
Section 2
73
Modernisms Precursors
73
Chapter 3
75
Arts and Crafts and the Byzantine: The Greek Connection
75
Dimitra Kotoula
75
Chapter 4
102
Archaeology of Decadence: Uncovering Byzantium in Victorien Sardous Theodora
102
Elena Boeck
102
Section 3
133
Byzantine Tactics, Modernist Strategies
in Architectural Discourse
133
Chapter 5
135
Abstractions Economy: Hagia Sophia in the Imaginary of Modern Architecture
135
Tulay Atak
135
Chapter 6
163
Byzantine Architecture: A Moving Target?
163
Robert Ousterhout
163
part 2
177
The Slash as Method
177
Introduction: The Slash as Method
179
Roland Betancourt
179
Section 1
193
Reading across Time: Modern Subjects,
Byzantine Objects
193
Chapter 7
195
Byzantium and the Modernist Subject: The Case of Autobiographical Literature
195
Stratis Papaioannou
195
Chapter 8
212
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish: Byzantine Visual Structures in the Light of Twentieth-Century Practice and Theory
Anthony Cutler
212
Section 2
235
Byzantine New Media: The Photographic
and Filmic Icon
235
Chapter 9
237
Iconicity of the Photographic Image: Theodore of Stoudios and Andr Bazin
237
Devin Singh
237
Chapter 10
254
Tarkovsky: Embodying the Screen
254
Marie-Jos Mondzain
254
Section 3
269
Presence, Representation, and the Gaze:
The Byzantine and the Ends of Modernity
269
Chapter 11
271
ction-Paradise and Readymade Reliquaries: Eccentric Histories in/of Recent Russian Art
Jane A. Sharp
271
Chapter 12
311
Lacan and Byzantine Art: In the Beginning was the Image
311
Rico Franses
311
Chapter 13
330
Beyond Representation/The Gift of Sight
330
Charles Barber
330
CODA
347
Chapter 14
349
We Have Never been Byzantine: On Analogy
349
Glenn Peers
349
Select Bibliography
361
Index
367
212
271
37
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Kazimir Malevich and the Liturgical Tradition of

Eastern Christianity
Myroslava M. Mudrak
A Byzantine Christ is a symbol; the Jesus of the modern painter.
Maurice Denis, Dfinition du No-Traditionnisme (1890)
In his retrospective 1913 essay Neo-Primitivism, artist-theorist Alexander

Shevchenko (18821948) summarized a transitional and transformative period
in the consciousness of Russian artists, who, beginning in the first decade of
the twentieth century, began to divest themselves of Western academic convention to discover and reevaluate the autochthonous merits of their own cultural and artistic roots, not least of which was their Byzantine inheritance.1
The local Orthodox church, a temple of art and the locus of all liturgical functions, lay at the core of this legacy. Offering a totalizing sensorial experience of
catechism and conversion projected from wall frescoes, icon panels, and decoration, and reinforced by an animated exchange between the faithful and the
clergy, the celebration of the liturgical year in village churches was an integral
part of life, central to the hearts and minds of the Orthodox faithful. No less
compelling were the outdoor rituals of renewal (at Easter time, in particular, or
during the blessing of the Jordan waters at Epiphany), which brought masses
of people together in a display of shared conviction. Whether attended annually by the faithful (as at the Great Feasts), regularly on Sunday, or as a daily
observance, the liturgys structure and internal coherence would remain consistent for the celebrants, allowing believers to engage with the resurrectional
1 Alexis Gritchenko (Oleksa Hryshchenko, 18831977) was the first to theorize about the links
between modernist, specifically Cubist, painting and Byzantine art in Russkaia ikona kak
iskusstvo zhivopisi (The Russian Icon as Painting) (Moscow, 1917). His influential publication,
O sviaziakh russkoi zhivopisi s Vizantiei i Zapadom (The Ties of Russian Painting with Byzantium
and the West) (Moscow, 1913) reconciles the Eastern Byzantine tradition with Western art,
giving license to Russian avant-garde artists of the 1910s to fuse their urbane, cosmopolitan
modernist views with the sacred art of their Byzantine religious tradition.
koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004300019_004
38
Mudrak
symbolism of the liturgy in a conditioned way. The primitivist impulse, rooted

in both the reductive forms of Byzantine iconography and the genuine
expression of peasant devotion, shaped the trajectory of modernist painter Kazimir Malevich (18781935).2 Neo-Primitivism propelled him to scrutinize the
simple ways of peasant life, including the fervor of its established worship
practices: Through icon-painting I understood the emotional art of the peasantry whom I had always loved,3 he stated.
This essay does not presume to make any claims about Malevichs own religious orientation; instead, the objective here is to demonstrate how the communal expression of Byzantine liturgical symbolism defined Malevichs unique
role as a modern painter, which he conflated with the vocation of ancient iconographers, Orthodox sentiment, and the theme of resurrection. When Malevich proclaimed, I have transformed myself into the zero of form (God Is Not
Cast Down: Art, Church, Factory), his pronouncement would echo the Byzantine Paschal refrain, by death, you conquered death, affirming a consistent
Byzantine mindset that would define the peak achievements of Malevichs
artfrom Symbolism to Suprematism and beyond.
A close examination of a series of fresco designs completed by Malevich
in ca. 19074 and ensuing work in the years to follow provides insight into
2 In his memoirs, Malevich emphasizes his indebtedness to the peasants of Ukraine with whom
he spent his youth, remarking upon the striking sincerity of their nave pictorial renderings,
which Malevich tried to emulate in his own initial drawings. His first encounter with bona-fide
professional artists was in the small town of Bilopole (near Kharkiv, Ukraine) when three
painters from St. Petersburg were invited to restore the paintings in the old church. At twelve
years of age, Malevich recalls being impressed with their ability not only to work on prescribed
ecclesiastical imagery, but also to paint for their own pleasure en plein air, striking a balance
between religious and secular painting practices. Once Malevich began to take art classes and
learn about art, he openly acknowledged the effect of icons on shaping his aesthetic ideas: I
felt something native and extraordinary in icons I felt a certain bond between peasant art
and the icon and understand both Botticelli and Cimabue. Cimabue was closer to me. His
was the sort of spirit I felt among the peasants. (The Childhood and Youth of Kazimir
Malevich [Chapters from the Artists Autobiography], in K istorii russkogo avangarda
[Stockholm, 1976], 117.) I finally understood from the study of icons, claimed Malevich, that
it is not the study of anatomy and perspective that matters, nor that nature be relayed faithfully, but it is about the sensation of art and artistic reality (ibid., 123). Many years later, Naum
Gabo would echo Malevichs sentiments: implicit in Russian secular and ecclesiastical art as
a common characteristic of the Russian visual consciousness [is] that the link between the
artist and the common man was the closest. Naum Gabo, Of Divers Arts (New York, 1962), 146.
3 The Childhood and Youth of Kazimir Malevich, 11718.
4 No known commission or project was given to Malevich that would have required him to
prepare a cycle of his own fresco designs in 1907, yet the shared palette of yellowish tones and
the Cyrillic inscription on the reverse of the paintings indicates that these works must have
Kazimir Malevich
39
Malevichs lifelong concern for the economy (oikonomia) of community as

modeled by Byzantine religious practices.5 The liturgical nature of Malevichs
fresco cycle, in particular, set the stage for fulfilling his artistic vision. I am the
Beginning, he wrote: Those who will prepare themselves will be led out from
the ashes of earthly sin towards the sky and will be resurrected.6 The apogee
of Malevichs artistic output was the recondite, supreme black square he produced and displayed in the pristine gallery the way a domestic icon would
hang in the sacrosanct or beautiful corner of a peasant house. Black Square
on a White Background, shown at the 0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition in 1915,
functioned undoubtedly like an icon: a symbol of intimate renewal, spiritual
reinvigoration, and commitment to a better future. Yet, the summoning agency
of Byzantine liturgical practice made sacrosanct by Orthodox tradition in a
social space (the church) seemed far more auspicious than a single work and
its symbolic installation at the 0.10 exhibition. With the unfolding of historic
events after 1917, arts redemptive potential translated easily for Malevich into
a post-revolutionary ethos of community building for which he had been preparing all along.7 A single project of 1920, entitled 34 Drawings, reinstates Malevichs black square as a humble coda, which he uses in the repetitious way
that the simple response Lord, have mercy weaves throughout the Divine
Liturgy.8 The project serves as a kind of primer for understanding Malevichs
6
7
been conceived as an ensemble. The paintings are frequently referred to as The Yellow Series,
so named by Elena Petrova, curator of the Russian Museum in Moscow (see E. Petrova et al.,
Malevich: Khudozhnik i teoretik, ed. A. Sarabianov (Moscow, 1990, plates 12ff). Some of the titles
used today, e.g., Triumph of Heaven, Entombment, Prayer (or Meditation) were supplied by
Petrova as a way of distinguishing between the individual fresco compositions, though they
were probably not originally titled so by Malevich.
Although the term oikonomia specifically refers to the Byzantine concept of law and its social
functioning to serve the common good [see, for example, Alexander Kazhdan, Some
Observations on the Byzantine Concept of Law: Three Authors of the Ninth through the
Twelfth Centuries, Law and Society in Byzantium, NinthTwelfth Centuries (Washington, 1994),
pp. 199216], Malevich extends its implications to his aesthetics. In his essay On New Systems
in Art (Vitebsk, 1919) he employs the term economy to designate the new fifth dimension,
which evaluates and defines the Modernity of the arts and Creative Works () In transforming the world I await my own transformation. [K.S. Malevich, Essays on Art 19151933, trans.
Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin, ed. Troels Andersen (New York, 1968), 83, 87, 88].
K.S. Malevich. I Am the Beginning, in The Artist, Infinity, Suprematism: Unpublished Writings
19131933, vol. 4, trans. Xenia Hoffmann, ed. Troels Andersen (Copenhagen, 1978), 1226.
In his return to the use of common tempera paint, Malevichs mural project points to the
perceived necessity of sourcing the enduring material of ancient Orthodoxy and his affinity
for shared values with his viewer.
For an analysis of 34 Drawings, see Yve-Alain Bois, Imagining a Point of Origin: Malevich and
Suprematism, in Briony Fer, On Abstract Art (New Haven, 1997), 1314.
40
Mudrak
aesthetic system through which the artist sought to actively engage the viewer
by acting, as would a priest during the liturgy, as an enactor of enlightenment.9
In unison with the clergy, the faithful reenact the mystery of sacrifice and redemption, which is unveiled for the beholder. St. Symeon of Thessaloniki
spoke of the church as paradise, symbolizing the tree of life and the gift of
life itself.10 St. Paul wrote that God raised man up and gave him a place in heaven (Eph. 2:6) and so mankind is exalted to the heavens because its nature is
renewed.
The present essay argues for the fact that Malevichs fresco cycle of 1907 already hints at his nascent exploration of the themes of transcendence and redemption familiar to the Orthodox faithful of his immediate environment.
With works titled provisionally as The Triumph of Heaven and Meditation, Malevich explored the point of intersection between the earthly and the divine in
universal terms; specific references to liturgical artifacts such as The Holy
Shroud (1908), however, link his imagery directly to the liturgical customs of
the Orthodox community that he knew intimately.11 Based on these founda9
10
11
As John Bowlt reminds us: [The] Orthodox or ecclesiastical dimension of the Russian
Silver Age in general and of Symbolist philosophy in particular constituted a special feature of Russian Modernism, separating it from its European counterparts . Indeed, it is
important to remember that not only were some of the most original thinkers of the
Russian Silver Age priests, such as Fathers Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky, but many
of the poets and painters, from Blok to Malevich, were upholders of the Orthodox faith,
drawn to its rites and relics such as choral singing and the icon. See John E. Bowlt, Moscow
and St. Petersburg 19001920: Art, Life and Culture of the Russian Silver Age (New York,
2008), 70. Bowlt cites examples of Russian Orthodoxys mark on the Russian avant-garde,
such as Aleksei Kruchenykhs adaptation of the Lords Prayer to his transrational poem
Heights. One can also find neo-nationalist examples in music, specifically the Orthodox
hymn of the Beatitudes that served as the prelude to Tchaikovskys famous 1812 Overture.
Bowlt notes, In 1910 there were 480 practicing Orthodox churches in greater St. Petersburg
alone, not perhaps the legendary forty forty (1600) of Moscow . Also, a good number of
first and second generation modernists were educated in theological seminaries.
In the year following his fresco project, Malevich painted The Tree of Life (1908, watercolor
and gouache on paper, 21 28 cm, Collection N. Manoukian) on the theme of a celebratory paradisiacal scene of offering. Although Andri Nakov discusses this work, sometimes titled Oak and Dryads (1908), from a pantheistic perspective, which was particularly
well established in Russia (Tolstoy as well as Khlebnikov), he also claims that there is
nothing surprising about the existence of topological similarities between The Tree of Life
and the cosmogonic works of the Byzantine tradition out of Ravenna. Andri Nakov,
Malevich: Painting the Absolute (Surrey, 2010), 1:90.
Throughout this essay, reference will be made to various parts of the liturgy derived from
the original Greek. Citations from the Office of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy have been
intentionally sourced from a wide range of English-language Typikons used today by the
Kazimir Malevich
41
tional Symbolist works, Malevich built a lexicon of imagery that draws on Orthodox sentience and the rituals of the Byzantine liturgical tradition.
Although his father was Polish, and Malevich himself was baptized a Roman
Catholic, his mothers Orthodox faith predisposed him to the living faith of the
peasantry. For this mostly illiterate population, liturgical prayers were learned
by rote in regular attendance at church services. The entire Divine Liturgy was
recited by heart by the faithful without any special recourse to theological
training, or any form of patristic catechesis. Communal faith in Eastern Christianity was signaled by the liturgical symbolism of the Trisagion, when the
congregation would sing the ancient hymn of accountability to their baptismal
initiation: all you, who have been baptized into Christ, cloak yourself in
Christ.12 Malevich captures this instance in his Neo-Primitivist painting, Peasant Women in Church (1911) (Fig. 2.1) at the moment when the devout worshippers make the sign of the cross (Eastern style with three fingers together,
ending up at the left shoulder) and display the meaning of the thrice-holy
hymn on their very body. This prayerful gesture of humble metanie or cloaking of the individual believer in the mantle of their faith, visibly and openly
confirms their joint belief in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. The threefold
signing of the cross expresses the worshippers own self-offering and attests to
the spiritual inclusiveness of all members as the body of the church in the partaking of communion, which fulfills the goal of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Essential to this process of robing is the embodiment of two concepts found
within the tradition of the Eastern Christian church. The first encompasses a
certain ardor or fervency (stradannia)an intense emotional peaking with an
12
Eastern Church in modern translation. In Malevichs time, the Divine Liturgy was not in
the vernacular and liturgical imprints for wide distribution would not have existed;
instead, the Office of the Liturgy would have been intoned by the deacons and priests
with the faithful responding by chanting the Old Slavonic texts from memory. Believers
would be very familiar with (and know verbatim) the hymns, Tropars, Kontakia,
Prokeimenons, and other litanies in Church Slavonic used throughout the liturgy, which
they would join in singing.
The Trisagion hymn (Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us)
is ascribed to St. Proclus (446), Archibishop of Constantinople. It calls for the joining of
the angels with the community of the faithful through baptism as an invitation for availing oneself of the greater feast days of the church (the Nativity, Epiphany, Easter,
Pentecost, Saturday of Lazarus). The reference to cloaking is taken literally from the
Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians (Gal. 3:27) who exhorts the initiated to take responsibility for their baptism. United in the gesture of cloaking themselves in Christ by making
the sign of the cross, the faithful give witness to the sanctification of man (and, by extension, the whole world) as promised by God.
42
Mudrak
Figure 2.1 Kazimir Malevich. Peasant Women in Church (1911). Oil on canvas. 75 97.5 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Photo: Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
exalted spirit and/or an ecstatic longing. Akin to the instance of martyrdom (as
in Christs Passion) and His suffering (strasti), it is at once a process as it is a
final actthe fulfillment of a promise. A second conceptthe idea of communality and universality (sobornost)refers to the church assembly, or the
community as a wholea theme that Malevich explores with his Symbolist
frescoes.
Heaven on Earth
Malevichs fresco design The Triumph of Heaven (Fig. 2.2) shows a genderless
figure with arms outstretched and eyes closed, a halo around its head and a
cowl around its neck, emerging from a cloud beyond the horizon and hovering
as if delivered of the firmament above. The celestial form gently sweeps over
the landscape, framing with extended arms three groups of eleven haloed figures accommodated by the span of its gliding reach.13 Malevichs dominating
13
It is worth noting the numerological implications contained in this painting: in Christian

terms, one is inclined to read the figures as disciples, with the number 12 being aspira-
Kazimir Malevich
43
Figure 2.2 Kazimir Malevich. Study for a fresco painting. The Triumph of Heaven, from the
so-called Yellow Series (1907). Tempera/Oil? on cardboard. 72.5 70 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg (Inv. -9408). Photo: State Russian
Museum, St. Petersburg.
specter, floating in the composition above the throngs and filling the space
from the sides and beyond, visualizes words sung traditionally at Byzantine
vespers invoking Mosess description of the creation of the earth: Lord my
God, how great you are, clothed in majesty and glory, wrapped in light as in a
robe. You stretch out the heavens like a tent . You walk on the wings of the
wind . You make your angels spirits . You make the clouds your chariot .
tional, rather than actual. The incompleteness of a community of twelve apostles might
therefore be read as an unfulfilled discipleshipa state of potentiality and becoming,
rather than fulfillment or completion. (From another standpoint, three groups of eleven
figures combined result in the number 33the age of Christs death.)
44
Mudrak
(Psalm 103).14 As the contained crowds of figures move through Malevichs

composition, they embody the ambience of Byzantine worship in all its quintessential vibrancy, reenacting earnestly on earth the heavenly liturgy of angels (the Cherubikon). This idea is elicited visually by the plasticity of
Malevichs cloud forms, which invite the beholder to partake of what Hubert
Damisch refers to as the substance of the heavens, allowing the participant to
join in the ecstasy, ravishment, or effusion created by the cloud imagery.15
Moreover, it is this psychological element, i.e., the projection of being (Damisch) that manifests reciprocity between the divine and the profane, echoing
and illuminating patristic tradition and the teachings of the Church Fathers.
Gregory Palamas (12691359) specifically confirmed the symbiosis of the
earthly and heavenly liturgies by invoking the prophesy of Isaiah and his vision
of angels surrounding Gods throne.16 In liturgical practice, this idea became
codified in the Troparion for Lenten Matins (Sixth Tone) and again in the solemn evening psalm, Let my prayer ascend to you like incense, sung during the
Liturgy of Presanctified Gifts.17
14
15
16
17
Psalm 103, the invitatory psalm of vespers, reinforces the fact that the Eastern liturgy is
not just a service but a place of theophany. According to the Bible, the very first
theophany is creation. In chanting the invitatory psalm, therefore, special emphasis is
given to the Christological theme of darkness and light, which forms the fundamental
symbolism of the cathedral office. Robert Taft, S.J. The Liturgy of the Hours in East and
West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today, 2nd rev. edition (Collegeville, 1993), 285.
Hubert Damisch, A Theory of /Cloud/, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford, 2002), 20.
The Book of Revelation depicts God seated in the midst of angels and the twenty-four
elders (Rev. 5:13). John Meyendorff regards Gregory Palamas as a theologian who, in some
respects, is more in tune than others with the preoccupations of modern thought. John
Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. George Lawrence (Crestwood, 1998), 6.
Indeed, the element of the invisible light, which was central to Palamass discourse in
defense of Hesychasm, reached a certain resonance in the work of the Russian and
Ukrainian avant-gardes. One need only mention Mikhail Larionovs Rayist works, with
their penetrating rays of color, Klyment Redkos Spectralism and the concept of
Electroorganism, or the extinguishing of natural sunlight in Malevichs Victory over the
Sunall of which point to the attainment of a transfigurative experience.
There are three different Divine Liturgies that are celebrated during the Eastern Christian
liturgical year. The first, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (known as the Golden
Mouthed for his eloquent sermons), is most commonly celebrated on Sundays and feast
days. The secondthat of St. Basil the Greatis celebrated on only ten occasions during
the liturgical year, including the Sundays of the Great Fast, the fast of St. Basil, the eves of
the Nativity and Theophany, Holy Thursday, and Holy Saturday. The Liturgy of the
Presanctified Gifts is the third liturgy in the Byzantine Slavic recension. It is used during
the holy season of Lent during a period of fasting and repentance. The Eucharist, which is
Kazimir Malevich
45
The invocation of angels during these liturgies is equally symbolic. The Cherubic hymn represents the instance when the natural superior order of angels
in relation to man is reversed, thereby reinforcing the human aspect of the
Trinity in the redemptive act.18 St. Germanuss description of the church as
the heavens on earth, where God, who is higher than the heavens, lives might
easily describe the composition of Malevichs painting The Triumph of Heaven.
As if to give anamorphic presence to the Trinity, lateral groups of angelic figures, cradled by clouds, gird the symmetrical display of Malevichs image. The
pyramidal arrangement of the central figures walking with bare feet on the
verdant landscape comprises the base of an inverted triangular compositional
framework defined by the extended arms of the descending form.
In 1918, the theologian and philosopher Pavel Florensky described the totalizing nature of church ritual as a synthesis of the arts involving the tactile
and the physical through a perpetuity of movement.19 Indeed, the agitated
18
19
consecrated on the preceding Sunday, is distributed at this vesper service. For a fuller
understanding of symbolic and sensorial affects of the Byzantine vespers, see The Byzantine Office, in Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 27391.
According to Palamas, the mystery of Christs Resurrection is encoded in the Cherubic
hymn. That liturgical moment presents a shift of mode and tone within the celebration,
allowing the faithful to convert their earthly station to become the surrogates of the
angelic orders: Let us, who mystically represent the Cherubim now set aside all earthly
cares that we may welcome the King of all, invisibly escorted by angelic hosts. As the
elect are delivered into ordinary space, so the faithful, too, assume a hallowed role in the
divine condescension. The hymn signifies the interplay and merging of dual liturgical
registersthe angelic and the earthlycreating a virtual dialogue between the two
spheres in a temporally unified expression of worship and witnessing. The Byzantine historian, Cedrin (11th century) states that the Cherubic hymn was sung at the Divine Liturgy
from the sixth century, beginning with an original request of Byzantine Emperor, Justin II
(565574).
Pavel Florenskys major claim is that, it is shallow to [isolate] any one aspect of religious
art from the whole organization of church ritual [which is] a synthesis of the arts. His
comments were part of a lecture he gave in 1918, later published under the title, The
Church Ritual as a Synthesis of the Arts, with special reference to the Sviato-Troitskaia
Sergieva Lavra and the preservation of its liturgical objects. Florensky maintained that in
Byzantine worship, all the auxiliary forms of expression organize the liturgical ritual into
an artistic Gesamtkunstwerk: the art of fire, the art of smell, the art of smoke, the art of
dress, etc., up to and including the utterly unique Trinity holy bread (prosfora), with its
mysterious and secret recipe, the distinctive choreography that emerges in the measured
movements of the priests as they come in and out, in the converging and diverging of
their countenances, in their circling around the throne and the church, and in the church
processions. See Pavel Florensky: Beyond Vision. Essays on the Perception of Art, comp. and
ed. Nicoletta Misler, trans. Wendy Salmond (London, 2002), 107, 110.
46
Mudrak
movement of Malevichs brushwork in The Triumph of Heaven serves as a visual analogue to the sensorial excitation incurred by the recitation of the Cherubic hymn and the concurrent pulsating of the altar fans during the liturgy.
The palpitating fanning gesture animates the celebratory environment, reifying deific energies within the church body by bringing the heavenly and the
earthly into a frenetic junction. Repeated wafting of incense melds sight and
smell into an active absorption of the liturgical experience. In his memoirs,
Malevich described this as the aroma of visuality, remembering the redolent
strong fragrance of spring flowers at the 1907 Blue Rose exhibition20 and likening the scent synaesthetically to the perception of color: one could not see the
color of the material in the works; only patches of various forms gave off the
smell of the color.21 Filling the space with the scent of incense begins at the
table of preparation (the Proskomedeia).22 Here, the priest assumes the responsibilities of vicar and readies himself to celebrate the liturgy. From behind
the iconostasis, hidden from the public eye, the priest prepares the gifts, censes
the preparatory table, and quietly recites: Take me under the shadow of your
20
21
22
The Blue Rose denotes the group of sixteen exhibitors who comprised a very short-lived
Russian Symbolist movement active in Moscow until 1908. Their seminal exhibition took
place during Orthodox Lenten preparations. Lasting from 18 March to 29 April, 1907, the
exhibition was sponsored by Nikolai Riabushinskii, publisher of Zolotoe runo [The Golden
Fleece, 19081910] magazine and was held at the home of industrialist M.S. Kuznetsov. In
his memoirs, Malevich tellingly described the exhibition as a feast day. It was undeniably, a celebrationboth a dawning, and yet, at the same time, eventide. K. Malevich,
Zametka ob arkhitektury (1924). See A Note on Architecture (MS, private collection, St.
Petersburg), accessible at http://kazimirmalevich.ru/t5_1_5_13/.
Malevich, Zametka ob arkhitektury (1924). See A Note on Architecture (MS, Private collection, St. Petersburg), accessible at http://kazimirmalevich.ru/t5_1_5_13/. In their writings, theologian St. Maximus the Confessor and ascetic St. Sophronius identified the
living church not only as the site where the spiritual and physical worlds converge, but
where transcendence is experienced through sensorial means. St. Paul explicitly thanked
God for worshipping communities because it is the faithful who reveal and spread
throughout the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere (II Corinthians 2:14). For
a more developed discussion of the olfactory element in the Byzantine liturgy, see Bissera
Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park,
2010); and Susan Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory
Imagination (Berkeley, 2006).
At this Ceremony of Preparation, the priest divides the bread at the preparatory table,
invoking the sacrifice of the lamb. In Byzantine liturgical practice, the Rite of Preparation
(the Proskomedeia or Prothesis), bread is presented as the Lamb of God, with the main
prayer taken from Isaiah 53 to remind the faithful that it is Christ who sacrificed Himself
for mans sins.
Kazimir Malevich
47
wings. Making his first exit from the sanctuary after the Enarxis (the opening
litanies of the Liturgy) into the space of the congregation (the Little Entrance),23
another censing occurs when the priest recites a prayer imploring God to have
the orders and armies of angels serving in heaven join him, Gods servant, and
the faithful into one body on earth.24 The inherently symbolic act of censing
corresponds to the visual dematerialization of physical objects as the smoke
wafts through the space of the church, reminding us of the gauzy effects of
Blue Rose paintings on display at their famous exhibition of 1907.25 Malevich
was not included in this important exhibition, which would have firmly aligned
him with the Russian Symbolists; notwithstanding the rejection, he drew more
closely to the intimate metaphysical themes and communal orientation of
Maurice Denis and the early Nabis.
The Artist as Acolyte
Seeing Malevichs art through the lens of Byzantine thought and liturgical worship allows us to think, even if abstractly, about Symbolist notions of expectation and fulfillment. Like the staging of the liturgy, Malevichs art keeps turning
23
24
25
The Little Entrance, according to many commentators of the Divine Liturgy, symbolizes
Christs first public appearance after his baptism in the Jordan. Meletius Michael Solovey,
A Commentary on the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, trans. Demetrius E. Wysochansky (Warren,
1989), 70.
An additional silent prayer is recited just before The Great Entrance, when the priest
seeks to reconcile his weaknesses as a man and to humbly accept his responsibility as a
vicar. It is one of the longest of the silent prayers within the Divine Liturgy, underscoring
the priests unworthy human nature, including his carnal weaknesses and desire for
earthly pleasure. This prayer of self-offering leads to the dialogic prayer of the Anaphora
an exhortation of the faithful to celebrate worthily and to empower the priest to act on
their behalf in bringing their offering to God: Let us stand aright, let us stand in awe, let
us be attentive, to offer the holy oblation in peace. From that point onward, it is understood by all that what the priest does is not by his own power, but only by the gift of a
higher and sanctified vocation.
The 1907 Blue Rose exhibition effectively closed the chapter on Russian Symbolism and
brought to an end what Alexander Benois, as early as 1902, pegged as the insipid individualism of spiritually-tormented times. Aleksandr Benua, Istoriia russkoi zhivopisi v XIX
veke (St. Petersburg, 1902), p. 271. As if predicting Malevichs future commitment to community, Benois wrote: Historical necessity, historical sequence requires an age [to]
absorb mans individuality in the name of public benefit of a higher religious idea.
Translated and quoted by John E. Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant Garde: Theory and
Criticism 19021934 (London, 1991), 3, 5.
48
Mudrak
back on the principle of engagement with, and participation of, a beholder.

Equating the artist-creators calling to that of the local priest, Malevich seeks to
reconcile a restive secular world undergoing vast social changes by modeling
the way that the faithful invest their energies in spiritual renewal. By the example of their own faith practices, the beholders of his art, Malevich believed,
would attain a higher sense of their existence and thus be empowered to transform society. From this standpoint, as an artist of the avant-garde, Malevich
acknowledged his own self-offering to the masses, orienting them toward a redemptive modernism founded on the rhetoric of secular utopianism.
Malevichs negotiating role with the spectator is inferred by his demeanor in
a compelling Self-Portrait (1907) (Fig. 2.3) painted in the same period as his
fresco designs. The artists beckoning face seems to question his artistic calling
and the legitimacy of his mtier in fulfilling that mission. As Malevichs visage
submits to a tension that wavers between comprehension of the events unfolding around him and a questioning of them, it reveals the tenuous stance of an
individual who is not completely certain as to his place within the immediate
context. As the artist looks out beckoningly at the viewer, he withdraws temporarily from his immediate environment and creates a liminal space in which
the tentative relationship of the vanguard artist with his community is appraised. This relationship to community, especially one steeped in ritualistic or
religious practice, had been explored by Paul Gauguin, whose Symbolism Malevich followed closely. Gauguins Self-Portrait with The Yellow Christ (1890)
shows a questioning artist against the backdrop of one of the artists most compelling paintings, the crucified Christ rendered in acerbic sulfurous yellows.26
Like the humble attitude of the Orthodox acolyte clothed with the grace of
the priesthood, who during the Anaphora beseeches the perfect God to
cleanse the heart of His sinful and unprofitable servant and enable him to carry out his walk of life, Malevichs portrait, too, reveals some temporary trepidation about his self-appointed avocation. The portrait appears to be modeled
even more closely on Emile Bernards Symbolic Self-Portrait (1891), sometimes
referred to as Vision (Fig. 2.4) in which the French Symbolist paints himself
quizzically against the background of Adam and Eve in the company of the
saintly elect in the presence of the tortured face of Christ crowned with thorns
looming above. Like Bernard, who used depleted yellowish tones to render the
setting, Malevich engages the beholder with his own eyes the way that the
French painter seeks to do so with a slight bend of the head; and just as Gauguin
26
Like Gauguins paintings, in which the artist portrays himself as a savior or a martyr (e.g.,
Christ in the Garden of Olives and Jug in the Form of a Head: Self-Portrait, both of 1889), so
Malevich includes himself directly or indirectly in the paintings of his fresco cycle.
Kazimir Malevich
49
Figure 2.3 Kazimir Malevich. Self-Portrait (1907). Tempera/ Oil? on

cardboard. Inscribed on reverse in Russian, Study for a fresco
painting. 69.3 70 cm. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg (Inv.
-9413). Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
had previously painted himself as a sideline observer of a Breton religious observance (e.g., Vision after the Sermon), these Symbolist painters reveal themselves self-consciously to be both insiders and outsiders to the events taking
place around them. For his part, the somewhat self-wondering young Malevich, shown with steely eyes and disheveled hair, beard, and mustache, entreats
your gaze at the instance of his momentary retreat from the surrounding ceremony in order to have you look at him closely, and for him to take you in
penetratingly. Such visual reciprocity carries through in the rest of the action
depicted: the painter is shown at once as actor and surveillantboth an active
player and a witness to the mysterious events taking place.
Unlike the other figures depicted in this image, Malevich is without a halo;
what separates him even more from the crowd of figures are the vestments of
his secular profession: a painters smock tied at the neck into a thick, floppy,
and emphatically red painters cravat that seems to have a life of its own. Beneath the cylindrical knot of the bow, the painter includes (in the Byzantine
50
Mudrak
Figure 2.4
Figure 2.4 mile Bernard. Symbolic
Self-Portrait (also known as
Vision, 1891). Oil on canvas. 81
60.5 cm. Muse d'Orsay,
Paris. Photo: RMNGrand
Palais (Muse dOrsay) /
Herv Lewandowski.
manner of abbreviations on icons) the Cyrillic letters of his name K-M-A-L,

appropriately truncated just at the point that his surname coincides with the
words malarz or maliar, meaning painter in Polish or Ukrainian, respectively.27 At the same time, his bearded countenance and directly focused eyes
correspond to the conventional icons of the Fathers of the Church, most explicitly, the dark-haired, long-bearded St. Basil the Great, and the balding, but
short-bearded St. John Chrysostomthe very authors of the Byzantine Liturgy
(Fig. 2.5). Malevichs Self-Portrait appears to be a conflation of both icon renderings. The portrait thus takes on the characteristics of a manifesto. Even the
format appears to reinforce this quest: like his concurrent fresco designs, the
mostly square dimensions of Malevichs portrait offer an iconic completeness,
a totalizing effect that foreshadows the square perimeters of Malevichs Supre-
27
It is not commonly known that, until 1908, Malevich frequently signed his name only in
Polish, followed by a transitional period in his life when he used two signatures, writing
his last name in Polish, using the Latin alphabet, and his first name in Cyrillic characters.
Kazimir Malevich
51
Figure 2.5 Mosaic icon of Ss. Basil the Great and John Chrysostom. Cathedral
of St. Sophia, Kyiv, 11th century. Source: Lohvyn, Hryhorii,
comp. Sofiia Kyivska. Derzhavnyi arkhitekturnoistorychnyi zapovidnyk. Kyiv: Mystetstvo 1971: Fig. 75.
matism.28 Furthermore, the artists use of tempera (as opposed to oila clear
throwback to traditional iconography) as well as the use of simple cardstock
instead of primed canvas, imbues his works with a sense of physical tactility.
28
The more-or-less equilateral format of Malevichs yellow series appears to correspond to

a significant Russian measurementthe arshin. In John Milners view, this aligns
Malevichs Suprematism with the generative harmonies, symmetries, and proportions of
the Symbolists. Quoting Paul Srusier, Milner argues for Suprematisms square format as
coming directly out of contemporary Symbolist rhetorica clear communication of
some of the sacred measurements that so interested Srusier and Denis. Indeed,
Srusiers definition of Synthetism involves all possible forms within the small number of
forms which we are capable of conceiving: straight lines, several angles, arcs of circles and
ellipses . John Milner, Kazimir Malevich and the Art of Geometry (New Haven, 1996), 9.
52
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The scumbled paint strokes depicting willow leaves brushing up against the
artists body create a sense of immateriality to match the uneasiness of this
mysterious encounter.
Such revelatory formal links modeled on patristic icons secure Malevichs
self-professed vocation as a painter. Firmly ensconced within the religious culture of his community as artist-iconographer (i.e., bogomaz), he fulfills Basil
the Greats admonition that it is man who receives the order to become god.
Granted, unlike the priestly vestments of the Church Fathers, Malevichs painters smock and intensely saturated, highly animated, and exaggerated bow signal his lay status. Yet it is significant that Malevich renders his own very first
self-portrait hypostasized summarily as an acolyte, deacon, priest, painter, and
iconographer (or god?) precisely at the time that he is working on his fresco
designs. All the while he questions his calling; the censorious eyes of his selfportrait refer back to the maker (the artist himself) while simultaneously peering at the viewer, invoking the apophatic question: who am I?
Malevichs early works portend the painters growing self-awareness as an
artist-seer. The hieratic pose, showing the artistflat and frontalagainst a
background of a religious assembly reinforces the psychological introspection
that would preoccupy the artist in the decades to come. On first sight, the
Edenic settings and heathen imagery of his fresco designs appear altogether
far afield from the conventions of the Byzantine sacred imagery that he will
employ under the full sway of Neo-Primitivism. Indeed, they are not even the
kind of works that one readily identifies with the iconicity of Malevichs artistic trajectory that led to Suprematism.29 After completing the fresco cycle Malevich responded increasingly to the current impulse of Neo-Primitivism and
engaged more directly with Byzantine iconography. This is born out in a later
Self-Portrait (19101911, State Tretyakov Gallery) (Fig. 2.6), which serves as a
contrast to his self-image of 1907, for the later work links, most decisively, with
the Byzantine iconographic type of the omniscient Christthe Pantocrator.
Again, Malevichs translation of Byzantine iconography assigns to the artist
an anointed task in direct lineage to the hallowed state of the iconographer
one who is exalted in the realm of a chosen community (although, in this case,
the surrounding figures point to a somewhat reckless and profligate scene). In
the end, although Malevich aligns his artistic vocation with the sacred image of
the Pantocrator, or Christ the Savior, his primitivizing portrait of 19101911, inflected by the visceral painterly qualities of Fauvism, results in a crude imitation of Byzantinism, projecting an almost carnal sensuality that is absent in
29
See the exhibition catalogue Kazimir Malevich e Le Sacre Icone Russe: Avanguardia e
Tradizioni, ed. Giorgio Cortenova and Evgeniia Petrova (Verona, 2000).
Kazimir Malevich
53
Figure 2.6 Kazimir Malevich. Self-Portrait (19101911). Gouache on paper. 27 26.8 cm.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Photo: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
icons as a whole, and is most definitely absent in Malevichs earlier designs.

Modeled on the mandylionthe face not made with human hands (the
Acheiropoietas) offers the perfect compositional symmetry and linear harmony that define the play between the frontal plane and the vitality and energy
engendered by the middle and backgrounds, foreshadowing the spatial tensions that would soon thereafter define Malevichs pansophical Suprematism.
Malevichs emulation of icon elements constitutes only a brief period in
his artistic life. For instance, Malevichs Suprematist Self-Portrait in Two Dimensions (1915) (Fig. 2.7) seen in juxtaposition with the mosaic icon of the Fathers
of the Church, reveals a certain parallelism between their formal elements: the
blue angled plane and the black bar beneath it reduce the features of the bishops oraria to their most fundamental aspects and angles as they are translated
in the Suprematist work; the planar whiteness of the field parallels the gold
54
Mudrak
Figure 2.7
Figure 2.7 Kazimir Malevich.
Suprematist Self-Portrait in
Two Dimensions (1915). Oil
on canvas. 80 62 cm.
Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam.
Photo: Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam.
ground of the icon, translated indexically by the vertical yellow rectangle. In

this symbolic reference to the eternal and ever-permeating light of Gods presence, the black square mirrors the potency of the sitters mien (as well as its
position within the icon), bearing likeness only to a presence and not its physical form; the blue diagonal corresponds to the lapel of Malevichs suit jacket,
while the red square corresponds to the red vestiture of the artist (if not the
earlier cravat, its tight knot metonymized by the red circle). The essentialized
features of the figure, condensed by Suprematism, offer a kind of pictorial
kenosisan emptying out of the extraneous physical features and attributes
of the sitter to arrive at the pure essence of his personhoodcaptured by the
Self-Portrait in Two Dimensions. Here, only the tracings of a crystallized and
purified spirit remain. As with Malevichs earlier Self-Portrait, such works respond to the economy of the Byzantine religious inheritance where the painter-iconographer is fully integrated into the church community and fulfills his
role within its collective efforts. Together with the assembly of congregants, he
participates in a coordinated gathering of shared celebration. Malevichs 1907
Kazimir Malevich
55
Figure 2.8 Icon of the Virgin Enthroned Between St. Theodore and St. George (6th century).
Encaustic. 27 18 7/8 in. Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai. Brought to Kyiv in the
middle of the nineteenth century. Photo: Published through the Courtesy
of the Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to Mount Sinai.
56
Mudrak
Self-Portrait, with its aggregate of angled shapes thus brings to mind the shorthand of strokes in Byzantine depictions of the synaxis or gathering of saints
and angels shown seated or standing compactly side-by-side in tight rows,
flanking Christ or Mary (Fig. 2.8), or in witnessing the Last Judgment (Fig. 2.9).30
The stateliness of their postures expresses the anticipation and expected realization of the liturgical anamnesisthe mystery of the Eucharist, the death,
and the resurrection of Jesus Christthe very core of liturgical commemoration.31
A Sacred Spring
Just as The Triumph of Heaven brings to mind the cosmic symbolism of church
assembly, so a sacred spring defines the atmosphere of yet another oracular
fresco design within Malevichs so-called Yellow Series of 1907 (Fig. 2.10). The
metaphor of springs awakening is central to Malevichs entire fresco cycle; it is
especially relevant to the unifying theme of rebirth and spiritual transformation. The gently eroticized feminine forms that fill these compositions are at
once heathen and religious, teetering ambiguously between androgyny and
hallowed muliebrityall the while making reference to women as carriers of
the redemptive message. The image captures a mood that coincides with the
resurrectional notes of the Paschal season and provides the opportunity to
think of Malevichs art as linked to the liturgical feast of the Resurrection. So,
for instance, in this untitled work the artist paints seven figures occupying a
dense copse of tall, thin willowy trees that frame a verdant clearing. The linear
striations designating slender tree trunks capture the element of fin-de-sicle
decorativism, a singular representational unity, known to the Symbolists as
the principle of repetition that results in an exultant harmony.32 At the heart
30
31
32
Moscows Dormition church from Andrei Rublevs period offers a good example of an
iconographic scene of the synaxis of saints.
Embodied in the ceremonial parts of the Diving Liturgy, this synthetist moment recalls
not only the death of Christ, but also his resurrection and ascension, his glory in heaven,
and his Second Coming at the end of the world in one temporal space.
Ferdinand Hodler (18531918) called any kind of repetition parallelism. It is most visible
in the work of Maurice Denis, who, like Malevich, repeats the vertical elongation of tree
trunks to unify his fluid compositions by introducing a melodious line of movement. In
an essay entitled, Parallelism, Hodlers observation that, [w]hen an important event is
being celebrated, the people face and move in the same direction, seems to be literally
incorporated into Malevichs frescoes. Hodlers Parallelism was originally published in
Ewald Bender, Die Kunst Fedinand Hodlers: Das Frhwerk bis 1895 (Zurich, 1923), 1:21528.
Kazimir Malevich
57
Figure 2.9 Ss. Matthew and Luke from The Last Judgment. Fresco (1408).
Cathedral of the Dormition, Vladimir. Source: Frontispiece from
Viktor Lazarev. Old Russian Murals & Mosaics from the XI
to the XVI century. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1966.
of this composition are shrub-like forms that support a limp body stretched
over the top of the bushes. This figure commands a prayerful stance from the
figures surrounding it, indicating a scene of bereavement over the deceased.
Some of the mourners cross their hands over their chests; others place their
palms together; still others stand with arms to their sides in the Orthodox gesture of prayer. The draped figure in the middle of this scene alludes to a sacrificial act. One can postulate that the subject is an oblique liturgical reference to
the Lamb of God (or the Raising of Lazarus). The male bearded figure to the
58
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Figure 2.10 Kazimir Malevich. Untitled Study for a fresco painting (1907).
Tempera/Oil? on cardboard. 69.3 71.5 cm. State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg. Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
left and a female with long hair in the middle ground, standing close and leaning toward the head of the supine and expired body, would likely correspond
iconographically to Mary and Joseph (if one disregards gender specificity) or
might refer to Mary and Martha (if the scene is of Lazarus). The specifics of the
iconography are not at issue here. That the scene might be one of oblation is,
for it has a liturgical link, corresponding again to the Proskomedeia (Ceremony
of Preparation) as discussed above.
The scene also doubles as a Dormition and/or Lamentation, invoking the
Byzantine wake as described by the Greek word koimisisa sleeping place or
a state of in-betweenness as alluded to in the Byzantine Ektenia of the Deceased.33 The principal theme of this service, sometimes referred to as the
33
Tone 5 of the Hymn for the Deceased from the Byzantine Office of Christian Burial offers
an image taken directly out of Genesis: The choir of Saints has found the Fountain of Life
and the Gate to Paradise . Through you, mankind has found salvation; through you, may
we also find Paradise, O Blessed One.
Kazimir Malevich
59
Parastas, is a prayer of repose that reverences a liminal space occupied by the

deceased, where, as the prayer indicates, there is no pain, no sorrow, or mourning. Yet this is not a permanent condition; the repose is of a temporary quiescence as the dawn (i.e., the Second Coming) is anticipated and awaited. The
First Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians (Thess. 4:1317) from the Office of
the Deceased supports this notion: those who have died in Christ will rise first
[and] will be caught up with them [the angels] in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air. In the Podoben (Tone 2) of the same office, as if to give description to Malevichs painting, we also hear: Consider our life: it is indeed like a
flower, and smoke, and the morning dew . Christs coming is described as a
parousiaa triumphal parade of the king and attendants, arriving on the
clouds with great majesty and power (cf. Malevichs Triumph of the Heavens):
The Son of Man will come with His Fathers glory, accompanied by angels
(Matthew 16; 27) as lightning from the east flashes to the west. (Matthew
24:27). 34 The quiet reverie elicited by the figures in Malevichs fresco projects
the solemnity and the message of these Biblical passages chanted during the
liturgy, filling the minds and hearts of the Orthodox believers with expectation.35
By invoking the liturgical passage that intones Let us hasten, as the Magi,
and adore Christ and bring our myrrh as a gift to Him Who is wrapped not in
swaddling clothes but in a shroud, Malevich, in a painting of 1908 entitled
Holy Shroud (Fig. 2.11), brings us even closer, and more literally, to a consideration of the Byzantine liturgical services dedicated to Christs passion and
34
35
In the Byzantine tradition it is the hypostasis of the bridegroom for whom the faithful
prepare as expressed by the Midnight Service, which provides the theme for the first days
of Great Week: Behold the Bridegroom is coming in the middle of the night: Blessed is
the servant He shall find awake. But the one He shall find neglectful will not be worthy of
Him. Beware, therefore, O my soul! Do not fall into deep slumber lest you be delivered to
death and the door of the Kingdom be closed to you.
A parallel redemptive note is to be found in the liturgical icon of the Anastasis, where the
resurrected Christ reaches into Hades to release the deceased from the perils of damnation and deliver them to a beatified eternal state: Let us rise as early dawn and bring to
our Master a hymn instead of myrrh, and we shall see Christ, the Sun of Righteousness
who enlightens the life of all (Hirmos, Ode 5, Resurrection Matins). The female figures
that gather and frame the recumbent form at the feet of the deceased in Malevichs painting bring to mind a description offered by these Resurrection Matins: Early in the morning before sunrise, as if it were already day, myrrh-bearing virgins were seeking the Sun,
previously descended into the grave; and they cried out to one another: Come, O Friends!
Let us anoint with fragrant spices the life-giving body of Christ, Who has resurrected the
fallen Adam. (Oikos of the Resurrection Matins)
60
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Figure 2.11 Kazimir Malevich. Holy Shroud (1908). Oil on canvas. 23.4 34.3 cm.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Photo: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
burial.36 The image of a wanton reclining figure is modeled on lamentation

icons; decorously ornamental, it makes clear reference to the Epitaphios, the
Byzantine liturgical cloth that is carried in procession outside the church by
the Orthodox congregation on Good Friday. With Malevichs calligraphically
colorful Eastern style, the artist lends a certain exoticism to this work that
contrasts sharply with the neutralizing monochromism of his fresco designs
from the previous year, yet still brings a universal cosmogony into play and invites comparison with Eastern cultural ceremonies such as the nirvana rituals
in Asian art37: See your children coming to you. From the east, west, north and
south they come to you like stars of light divine . (Eighth Ode of the Resurrection Matins ).38 Indeed, the disposition and decorative quality of the
36
37
38
For a discussion of the liturgical function of the shroud, see Hans Belting, An Image and
Its Function in the Liturgy: The Man of Sorrows in Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Papers
34/35 (1980/1981): 116.
As in the Byzantine, so, too, does Indian iconography provide the artist both a model for
existence and a canon for expression, which the devotee uses to initiate spiritual ascent. I
am grateful to Philip Bloom for bringing my attention to the Buddhist iconography of the
Western Pure Land evoked by Malevichs Shroud. The twin, bejeweled trees behind
Buddha [Christ] point to the Western Pure Land iconography, as do the symmetrical
cloud banks in Triumph of Heaven discussed previously.
The mysterious, cosmological, and ritualistic art of Buddhism served as a source of discovery and artistic inspiration for the Neo-Primitivists. Shamanistic practices of the East
Kazimir Malevich
61
bejeweled trees that rise symmetrically behind the prone figure of Malevichs
Shroud recall Buddhist iconography associated with the so-called Pure Land
rituals.39 At the same time, the image registers a link with pre-Slavonic, quasihedonistic rites of ancient pagan worship performed by women al fresco,40
professing the sanctity of naturethe dwelling place of pagan spirits.41 While
39
40
41
and the esoteric images of Buddhist and Hindu art offered important counterpoints for
reinforcing a Russian or Eastern identity within modernism, separate from Western
influence. Works such as Malevichs Oak Tree and Dryads (1908) [cf. note 10)] point to
inspiration derived simultaneously from the paganistic world of the Slavs and early
Buddhist murals as seen in the Dunhuang cave paintings of the 6th8th centuries.
According to Buddhist belief, the Western Pure Land provides the ideal conditions for
achieving awakening within a single lifetime. Malevich seems to intuit this site of transcendence from his own Byzantine standpoint and experience and paints the setting of
the Shroud with exacting contours, maintaining the linear nature of icons; yet, the context is surely Far Eastern (conflating the Asian Eastern mentality with the Byzantine) in
its all-pervasive decoration. The various sinuous, sapling-like saints depicted among the
trees bring to mind a fundamental schism in early Buddhism between the monks of the
towns and the monks of the forests. The monks of the forests were ascetics who specialized in meditation and claimed to follow the Buddhas path in a more orthodox manner
than did the town-dwelling monks, whose interests were more scholastic. This might be
compared to the disposition of Malevichs Self-Portrait mentioned earlier, where the artist
is seen as being both included in and apart from the forest environment inhabited by
woodland spirits.
It is worth mentioning that once St. Basil the Great translated aspects of pagan archetypes
and pantheistic references into the Byzantine liturgy, liturgical rituals such as the blessing
of the Jordan waters at Epiphany or the procession with the shroud would take place
outside the church.
The procession with the shroud (known in Slavic communities as the plashchanytsia)
marks the great solemnity leading up to the greatest of liturgical feasts in the Eastern
churchthe Resurrection (or Pascha); its liturgical function is reified in the Good Friday
Troparion: The noble Joseph took down your most pure body from the cross, wrapped it
in a clean shroud and with fragrant spices laid it in burial in a new tomb. The sleeping
Christ laid out on the embroidered cloth images the Resurrection Matins: You, O Kind
and Lord, have fallen asleep in the flesh as a mortal man, but on the third day You arose
again. You have raised Adam from his corruption and made Death powerless. You are the
Pasch of Incorruption, the salvation of the world (Exapostilarion). The Shroud also symbolizes the message of the angel seated on a stone by the grave that exclaimed to the
myrrh-bearing women: Spices are meant for the dead, but Christ reveals Himself as not
subject to decay (The Kontakion of the Good Friday). Considered to be equal to the
Apostles for their loyalty and devotion to Christ, the myrrh-bearing women bear the
responsibility for Christs burial. They are afforded a privileged role in Eastern Christianity,
for they are entrusted with spreading the good news and bringing forth the immediacy of
the Resurrection.
62
Mudrak
Malevichs use of woman as symbol accords with Symbolist art, the ubiquity of
females focuses not so much on the decadent in Malevichs work as on the
transcendent and revelatory themes of Orthodox liturgical rituals.42 The female image, though still an alluring presence in all of the 1907 paintings, can be
seen as fulfilling a nuanced role that points to the overall Eucharistic and eschatological theme of Malevichs entire fresco project.
Paradise Redeemed
Within the series of Malevichs frescoes, the work titled Prayer (also known as
Meditation) (Fig. 2.12) depicts a brooding image of a contrite, sensual figure
(perhaps the profligate Mary Magdalene seated on a rock). On the one hand,
the upright vegetation of the setting recalls Buddhist cave murals, while, on
the other, the flat redness of the females thick mane aligns with the ruddy
earthen colors and the characteristic cinnabar tones of Novgorodian icons.43
The paintings subdued tones, the shock of orange-red hair, and the posture of
the womans fragile body, isolated and alone with her back to us, also conform
to Symbolist paintings such as Woman Brushing Her Hair (1897) (Fig. 2.13) by
Gauguins student, Wadisaw lewiskia Polish artist known to Malevich.
And yet, it is tempting to conflate this image with a liturgical reading. The singular figure seated in a lush grove might be Mary Magdalene, or the angel who
is encountered by the three Marys at Christs empty tomb. The solitude of grief
is addressed in the Hypakoje of the Byzantine Resurrection Matins: The women with Mary, before the dawn, found the stone rolled away from the tomb, and
they heard the Angel say: Why do you seek among the dead, as a mortal, the
One who abides in everlasting light? Again, referencing the shroud, the chant
continues: Behold the linens of burial. Go in haste and proclaim to the world
that, having conquered Death, the Lord is risen . Through the symbolism
42
43
Cf. Paul Gauguins Redheaded Woman and Sunflowers (ca. 1890), oil on painting, private
collection.
As evident in Maurice Deniss The Offertory at Calvary (1900), Symbolist artists strove for
a harmony and balance between line and color to express spiritual, if not specifically
Christian, subject matter. In Deniss seminal article, A Definition of Neo-Traditionism
(1890), considered to be a founding manifesto of Symbolism, the painter writes: Art is the
sanctification of nature, of that nature of all who are content to live! The great art, called
decorative, of the Hindus, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the art of the Middle
Ages and the Renaissancethose works of modern art which are decidedly superior:
what are they if not the transformation of vulgar sensationsof natural objectsinto
sacred, hermetic, imposing icons?
Kazimir Malevich
63
Figure 2.12 Kazimir Malevich. Study for a fresco painting. Prayer (also
known as Meditation, 1907). Tempera/Oil? on wood. 70 74.8
cm. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg (Inv. -9407).
Photo: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Figure 2.13 Wadisaw lewiski. Woman Brushing Her Hair [Czeszca si kobieta] (1897). Oil
on canvas. 64 91 cm. Muzeum Narodowe, Krakw. Photo: Muzeum Narodowe,
Krakw.
64
Mudrak
Figure 2.14 Kazimir Malevich. Collecting Flowers (also referred to as Secret of

Temptation), from the so-called Yellow Series (1908). Watercolor,
gouache, and crayon on cardboard. 23.5 25.5 cm. Formerly of the
N.I. Khardzhiev Collection. Present whereabouts unknown. Signature
(left bottom) in Latin letters, indicating the Polish spelling of Malevichs surname. Source: Jean-Claude Marcad. Malvitch.
Nouvelles ditions Franaises. Paris, 1990, p. 48.
offered by liturgical song, the barren rock is transformed into a throne of enlightenment: Bearing torches let us meet the bridegroom, Christ, as He comes
forth from His tomb; and let us greet with joyful song, the saving Pasch of God
(Ode 5).
The jubilant tone of this ode is perceived elsewhere, in Malevichs equally
evocative (and arbitrarily titled) painting Collecting Flowers (also referred to as
Secret of Temptation, 1908) (Coll. N.I. Khardzhiev) (Fig. 2.14). Again, a dominant
yellow palette reinforces the theme of renewal: bestowing upon the world a
new life and a new light, brighter than the sun (Prayer for the New Light).
When, in Byzantine liturgical worship, the faithful sing of celebrating the annihilation of death, the destruction of Hades, and the beginning of another life
which is eternal (Ode 7, Canon of the Pascha), they celebrate the Genesis
the first day of the new Creationwhich Malevich senses palpably in this
composition. His speckled treatment of the surface creates a mottled effect
showing early morning light peeking through the dense vegetation; foliage is
Kazimir Malevich
65
made tactile by paint daubs representing twinkling dew, settling, like jewels,
upon the shrubs. Here, three auburn-haired females emerge like nymphs from
an idyllic forest, an isolated primeval sanctuary reminiscent of Russian Symbolist painter and founder of the Blue Rose group, Viktor Borisov-Musatovs
reclusive settings from a time past. Yet again, a mysterious ritual is invoked
this time, not of mourning, but of exaltation, evoking the resurrectional theme:
Just as in Your holy birth a virgins vow was unbroken. You opened to us the
gates of paradise (Resurrection Ode 6). Amid the cadenced processional
movement of a sea of females (this time identifiable by the triangular red
patches on their pubic area), a male figure is shown in profile on the right, as if
exiting the scene. Given the bobbed silhouette of his hair, it hints at Malevichs
own profile as recognized by a caricatured likeness made by a fellow student at
Fedor Rerbergs Art Institute where Malevich was studying at the time.44
N.N. Goloshchapovs drawing (Fig. 2.15) shows the characteristic jaunty bow
that identifies Malevich as a painter, as discussed above. Malevich gained the
reputation of a rare bird, visionary, and even mystic during his time at the
Rerberg school (1904/061910). If the profile in Collecting Flowers is indeed Malevichs, then the characteristic peasant bowl-cut haircut gives him a monastic
appearance, if not that of a deacon, who moves ceremoniously in and out of
the sanctuary. The drawing also inserts a modest aureole along the arc of the
artists head, perhaps caricaturing Malevichs newfound and burgeoning interest in the conventions of Byzantine art. Framed by decorative bands along the
sides, the drawing alludes to ornamental motifs of the interiors of churches of
ancient Rus. At the same time, one is reminded of symbolism of a renewed
Adam in the garden of paradise.
Malevichs years at the Fedor Rerberg Art Institute exposed him to Quattrocento art and the contained spirituality and silent expression of faith by
artists such as Fra Angelico.45 In fact, Early Renaissance art, including the mute
manner of the Italo-Byzantine style, served as a pedagogic model for young,
developing painters at the school. Fellow student L.V. Zak parodies Malevichs
interests in these subjects taken up during his school years and points to the
44
45
Malevichs biographer identifies the portrait as that of Ivan Kliun, the artists close friend.
See Jean-Claude Marcad, Malvitch (Paris, 1990), 90.
The visionary paintings Malevich developed in 1907 were created while he was studying
at the Fedor Rerberg Art Institute in Moscow between 1906 and 1910. Among his many
interests, including the Style Moderne, Fedor Rerbergs fascination with the Quattrocento
as a way of seeing the present as a new Renaissance filtered down to his students. See John
E. Bowlt, Kazimir Malevich and Fedor Rerberg, Rethinking Malevich: Proceedings of a
Conference in Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of Kazimir Malevichs Birth (London,
2007), 126.
66
Mudrak
Figure 2.15 N. N. Goloshchapov. Caricature of K. Malevich: Rare Bird (19081909). Paper, pencil,
watercolor, wash. Source: From the album of F.I. Rerbergs School. n.d.
RGALI, Moscow.
Figure 2.16 L.V. Zak. Exhibition of Homemade Works by Malevich. Parody of a painting by
K. Malevich (19081909). Paper, watercolor, wash. n.d. Source: Malevich o sebe:
Sovremmeniki o Maleviche: Pisma. Dokumenty. Vospominaniia. Kritika,
vol. 2. Ed. and comp. I.A. Vakar and T.N. Mikhiienko. Moscow, 2004,
p. 459.
artists early preoccupation with religious subject matter (Fig. 2.16).46 He shows
seven haloed figures in his drawing, two winged ones and five attendees, sur46
Malevich o sebe: Sovremenniki o Maleviche. Pisma. Dokumenty, Vospominaniia. Kritika,

comp. and ed. I.A. Vakar and T.N. Mikhienko (Moscow, 2004), 2:459, 625. Poet and artist
Lev (Leon) Vasilievich Zak (18921980) was also known by his pseudonyms, Khrisanf and
M. Rossianskii.
Kazimir Malevich
67
rounding a long table referencing the Last Supper. Exaggerated three-barred

crosses serve as a decorative frame for the drawing.
Malevichs Symbolism and the Blue Rose
Simultaneously, from circa 1903 to 1907, under the influence of Borisov-Musatovs preparatory studies for gobelins and tapestry hangings, the artists of the
Blue Rose were producing filmy paintings depicting specter-like females and
aqueous embryos, breezy fountains and wispy willows, dominated mostly by
tones of elusive pinks and depleted blues. In keeping with the signature style
of the Blue Rose, using diaphanous yellow tones instead of blue, the gossamer
effects of Malevichs fresco designs similarly blur the figures barely outlined in
his compositions.
Having recently abandoned his Impressionist experiments for a more concentrated exploration of the contemplative, theurgic impulse cultivated by the
Blue Rose, Malevichs compositions of this period are suggestive of the drowsy
tranquility and silence of daybreak that describe the paintings of the key figures of the Blue RosePavel Kuznetzov and Sergei Sudeikin.47 Indeed, the
fluidity of Malevichs manner, the fading masses of form, and the mysterious
content of his fresco designs point to a strong connection to the Symbolist
fashion for panneaux, frescoes, and wall decorations that were taken up by the
members of the Moscow Blue Rose group. Malevichs attraction for mural
painting was no doubt also inspired by the magisterial projects of Borisov-Musatov, who had recently designed a mural for a church in the artists native
Saratova project carried out in 1904 by Kuznetsov. Notwithstanding this attraction, Malevichs straw-colored tints deviate from the concordant scale of
blues and dark grays of Kuznetsovs signature works.48 The limpid canvases of
the Blue Rose, the aspiration to emulate fresco murals, and the sharp turn away
47
48
The passage describes Sergei Makovskys critique of the Blue Rose works shown at the
12th exhibition of the Moscow Association of Artists in 1905.
Most of Viktor Borisov-Musatovs paintings engage esoteric spiritual environments that
explore timelessness through anachronism, as typical of the retrospectivism of Russias
Silver Age. Borisov-Musatov envisioned most of his themes (especially those of females in
procession) as potential subjects for fresco murals meant to adorn the perimeter walls of
salon interiors and to create a phenomenologically totalizing experience for its occupants, not unlike the sensorial experience of ritual worship around religious sites. In fact,
Autumn Evening (1905), an extant watercolor sketch by Borisov-Musatov showing a
landscape of dense vegetation covering ancient burial mounds, was intended for a fresco
that was never realized.
68
Mudrak
from Impressionist tendencies that had dominated the painting world inspired
Malevich to recover and explore the ancient medium of fresco49 in a new way,
and on his own, Byzantine, terms.50
The dewy settings of Malevichs depictions and the brightness of the golden
light that illuminates the environment like the refractive quality of gilded
icons (along with the supplicatory hands of the devout figures, who hold their
palms upward) associate his fresco designs with the rather lengthy prayers of
the Byzantine ritual of the blessing of the Jordan waters, especially the idea of
communal initiation through ritualized Baptism. The prayer of this liturgical
sanctification is attributed to St. Sophronius:
Today we are delivered from the ancient mourning [W]e are delivered
from darkness, and, through the light of the knowledge of God, we are
illumined [T]oday the darkness of the world vanishes with the appearing of our God; [T]oday the whole creation is brightened from on high;
[T]oday the inhabitants of heaven rejoice with those of the earth; and the
inhabitants of earth with those of heaven; [T]oday the noble and eloquent assembly of the faithful rejoices; [T]oday we have acquired the
kingdom of heaven; indeed, the kingdom of heaven that has no end.51
What is prominent and emphatic in this long (excerpted) prayer of sanctification is the emphasis on the presentToday. The word is repeated with every
new phrasing of the water blessing ritual, layering the sacramental ceremony
with meaning. It echoes the seven times (at a minimum) that a congregation is
49
50
51
An earlier revival of fresco painting was begun throughout the Russian Empire in the
1880s to coincide with the 900th anniversary of the introduction of Christianity to KyivRus in 988. Malevich must have been aware of the new artistic attention to ecclesiastical
frescoes that had become widespread since the 1880s. One can speculate that these projects piqued his interest in liturgical subject matter as well; however, stylistically committed to Western Symbolism, Malevichs art was far from appropriating the Byzantine form.
As Sarah Warren noted, some of Viktor Vasnetsovs Kyiv paintings (e.g., Baptism of the
Russians) aspire more to the flat monumentality of French Symbolist Pierre Puvis de
Chavannes and show a sensibility more akin to art nouveau and jugendstil than to
Byzantine painting. Sarah Warren, Mikhail Larionov and the Cultural Politics of Late
Imperial Russia (Burlington, 2013), 118.
The order for the Great Sanctification of Water is attributed to St. Sophronius, the
Patriarch of Jerusalem (634638). However, the prayer itself dates to the fourth century,
when St. Basil the Great spoke of this rite as a mystical tradition already established
before his time. It is also mentioned in the fourth century Apostolic Constitutions, a Syrian
work, and in the treatise On the Holy Spirit (27:66) by St. Ambrose of Milan (died 397).
Kazimir Malevich
69
called to Be attentive within the Diving Liturgy itself, a call directly to the
people to become alert over the duration of hearing the word of God and being
receptive to it.52 The instantiation of presentness constitutes a call to action,
while the liturgical enactment builds emphatically on an increasing rise of
emotional awareness and coming into consciousness, in which, as pronounced
by the Byzantine doxology, even the uninitiated are invited to partake: That
with us, they also may praise Your most honored and sublime name. The
shared attention of the laity and clergy, in full and heightened spatial and temporal awareness of the liturgical ritual, functions as a kind of convocation that
manifests a common faith in an eternal truth of a future redemption.53
Affirming the New
Like a fresco, Malevichs 1915 Suprematist launch at the 0.10 exhibition utilized the full expanse of the gallery wall space. What appeared to be an arrangement of images positioned helter-skelter was really an affirmation of
singular, totalizing experience. Similarly, each individual scene of Malevichs
fresco cycle constitutes a single symbolic, transcendent concept without resorting to conventional ordering traditionally sustained by festal icons lined
up in a linear and sequential way as seen in an iconostasis. Without regard for
successive ordering, Malevichs fresco designs form a cohesive content addressing the discrete themes of creation, sacrifice, resurrection, and redemption,
underscoring the expiatory aspect of the liturgythe eschatonpromising
redemption and the restoration of soul and body in a new, refashioned form
(Phil. 3:21). The tenor of Byzantine liturgical piety, which had set the tone for
Malevichs earlier cycle of fresco designs, also laid the foundation for the messianism of UNOVISthe Affirmers of the New in Art (1918)a collective of
Malevichs apprentices who comprised a kind of discipleship of communal art
52
53
Be attentive commands (in some form or another) occur in the Byzantine Divine Liturgy
at the instances when the faithful are receiving Christ in the form of the Word. These
exhortations occur before the Little Entrance; at the reciting of the Prokeimenon (a verse
from Scripture); before the Epistle and Gospel readings; prior to the recitation of the
Creed (also based on Scripture); at the Anaphora (the Eucharistic prayer); as well as during the preparation for Communion.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem defined the church as a convocation, in which all mankind unites
itself with others. As a reference to Christs Second Coming, Athanasius the Great, St. John
Chrysostom, and St. Augustine used the term church to refer to a summoning, or bringing from somewhere or convoking the presence and the promise of the Kingdom of God
to the fallen world.
70
Mudrak
making that operated within a congregational framework. All members of

UNOVIS professed and committed themselves to a singular belief system, in
this case, ideological proselytism. As a sign of their unity, UNOVIS inductees,
together with their leader (priest) Malevich, would sew little black squares
on their sleeves.54 Just as icons would be brought out of an Orthodox church
for festal day processions, so Malevich students would go into the streets to
radicalize the population. Though they were few in number, their fellowship
matched that of a church assembly ready to evangelize the uninitiated.
In the spirit of the avant-garde of the interwar period, Malevich forged an
aesthetic that synthesized the idiste principles of Symbolism, the numinous
transcendency of Suprematism, and the evangelizing aspects of Byzantine religious practice to create an art of urgency and social action based on the notion of being present in the moment, while aspiring toward the eternal.
Some have chosen to make a literal connection between the earthly and the
supremely divine in Malevichs art, professing his Black Square, for instance, to
be a modern icon equipped with all the formal attributes of religious Orthodox icons. Yet, the nihilism of Malevichs alogist period followed by the antimaterialist, non-objective aesthetic stance of Suprematismboth of which, it
must be admitted, represent the most radical manifestation of Malevichs
artwould seem to belie an antithetical posture, which some have described
as transgressive and, in fact, anti-iconic. Indeed, many have noted that the
iconoclastic gesture of Malevichs Black Square of 1915, now registers only as
a monument to an unfulfilled project.55 Instead, as a consideration of his earlier Symbolist works suggests, it turned out to be only a milestone. From his
early forays into a Symbolist art, Malevich occupied himself with the philosophical image. Abandoning Impressionism and its temporal relation to the
natural world, the artist engaged with the notion of infinity and timelessness
by using the tenets of Symbolism to project his own self-transformation in perpetuity. The artists developing yearning for an absolute and purer state of
existence aimed at a redemptive, albeit yet unknowable world to come. Ontologically preoccupied with a transcendent future, a higher reality, where his
perceived omnipotence as artist would be validated, Malevichs lifes work discloses a sometimes contradictory, internalized solipsistic relationship of the
artist-creator with an abstract, intangible concept of God.
By 1915, Malevichs engagement with liturgical ritual would pass beyond
its eclectic Neo-Primitivist hypostasis into a futuristic artistic philosophy that
54
55
It is noteworthy that the vestments of the deacon and higher ranks of clergy include cuffs,
called the Epimanikia, frequently embroidered with a cross.
Bois, Imagining a Point of Origin, 7.
Kazimir Malevich
71
aspired to a secular redemptive experience analogous to the eschatological aspects of Eastern Christianity.56 After the 1917 revolution, when Lenin mandated the framing of an ideologically edified community and enlisted artists of
the avant-garde to serve the cause, Malevich, as a self-anointed visionary, naturally assumed the role of constructor (creator) of a future perfect world. Akin
to the priesthood of pre-revolutionary days, his charges could be seen as the
laity, needing to be guided, carefully and systematically, toward the experience
and understanding of a new (revolutionary) faith. Then, in 1927, Malevich
revived his Symbolist impulses and returned to the expression of communal
transcendence by announcing a new approach to painting, which he called
Supranaturalisma style identified formally by the properties of thick linearity and vivid, isolated color. These figurative paintings express a metaphysical
inwardness that draws on the rarified asceticism of the desert fathers and engage, once again, as did Malevichs Symbolist paintings, with Eastern mystical
features reminiscent of the Ajanta cave painting of India.57 Supranaturalism
revives the rural wholesomeness of the peasantry and valorizes their agrarian
lifestyle. In monumentalizing his peasant subjects, Malevich imbues them
with a metaphysical character that can be likened to the superhuman manifested in static, hieratic gestures of the Ajanta.58 Through Supranaturalism
Malevich brings about a reconciliation of the Byzantine with the Symbolist,
the Ancient with the Modern, the Western with the Asiatic, without ever sacrificing the tensions between transcendent content and cultural-confessional
and sociopolitical realities. The extraordinary nature and unconventional form
of Malevichs life in artbe it the Symbolist fresco designs, Suprematism, or
Supranaturalismforces the viewer to negotiate a place of understanding between the mundane and the canonic, recognizing that the true apprehension
of Malevichs aesthetic is a process of self-discovery at a hyper-conscious level.
56
57
58
In 1913, Malevich introduced the promise of ultimate spiritual fulfillment in his collaboration on the production of Victory Over the Sun. Ironically, its message about an idealized
futuristic Tenth Land offers a parallel to the Pure Land rituals of Tantric Buddhism.
In describing the frescoes from the Ajanta cave, Mircea Eliade writes: Look at the arms
and fingers an amazing dynamics: round, live, but seemingly floating in infinity beyond
and on this side of the plane of the painting, continuing in the same harmonious motion
and shouting their joy to be floating freely, without tension of the muscles, without leverage of the bones. No other painting in the world has created shoulders, arms and fingers
more perfect in their organic life, in their gesture of full and free existence. Quoted from
Mircea Eliade, Notes on Indian Art, Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, ed. Diane
Apostolos-Cappadona (New York, 1985), 75.
Ibid., 76.
72
Mudrak
The 1907 fresco cycle initiated Malevichs own personal journey toward ethical perfection. Believing that art would carry him through in his new philosophical turn, his convictions remained constant, not only in his lifes work,
but in his writings as well, as he situated his aesthetics within the wider scope
of modernist objectives. While many have assessed Malevichs latter-day representations of featureless peasants positioned on vacated, barren, and burned
land as a kind of capitulation to the conservative tastes of the Stalinist regime,
it makes better sense, in light of the totality of Malevichs art, to see them as
continuing and completing Malevichs belief in the transcendent and redemptive not just for himself, but for a collective spectatorshipa theme first awakened in his exploration of the Orthodox and the Byzantine roots of their
worship.
Like Paul Gauguin, Malevichs artistic questioning of mans destiny and origins finds meaning within the simplicity of a ritualized community, which he
had come to know intimately: I search for God, I search within myself
I search for my face, I have already drawn its outline and I strive to incarnate
myself God is the intuitive predestination of our image.59 At once universal
and specific, Malevichs art, like Gauguins, captures a hybridity that draws on
both esoteric Eastern (including the influence of the oriental, aniconic cultures of the Far East) and contemporary Western sources (Symbolism) to create the kind of solipsistic effect occasioned by the disposition of Byzantine art
as a whole. The Orthodox liturgical ritual became an especially poignant context for elucidating Malevichs artistic mission. The village priest served as the
mediator and enactor of the liturgical texts in the same way that Malevich,
with his faceless Supranaturalist beings suspended motionless in time, would
provide a note of transcendence in modern pictorial form. It is the social function of Malevichs art that finds a contemporary analog in the Byzantine idea
of oikonomia. If one is willing to assume that Malevichs art making constitutes
a social project of sorts (as his UNOVIS period proved to be), then the redemptive possibilities of a universal, ethical position are brought actively into play
in his aesthetics, and the disposition of all plastic means to allow for sublimation and spiritual redemption to become a reality. The inherent teleology of
Malevichs art may bear no formal resemblance to the ancient canons of iconography, yet, like Byzantine art as a whole, it fully embraces a visual system
aimed at transforming the beholder.
59
Ibid., 12, 14.

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Mudrak, Kazimir Malevich and The Liturgical Tradition of Eastern Christianity

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Byzantium/Modernism

The Byzantine as Method in Modernity

Modernisms Byzantium Byzantiums Modernism15

Kazimir Malevich and the Liturgical Tradition of Eastern

Arts and Crafts and the Byzantine: The Greek Connection75

Archaeology of Decadence: Uncovering Byzantium in Victorien

Abstractions Economy: Hagia Sophia in the Imaginary of

Byzantine Architecture: A Moving Target?163

Byzantium and the Modernist Subject: The Case of Autobiographical

Iconicity of the Photographic Image: Theodore of Stoudios and Andr

Tarkovsky: Embodying the Screen254

Action-Paradise and Readymade Reliquaries: Eccentric Histories in/

Lacan and Byzantine Art: In the Beginning was the Image311

Beyond Representation/The Gift of Sight330

We Have Never been Byzantine: On Analogy349

Kazimir Malevich and the Liturgical Tradition of

In his retrospective 1913 essay Neo-Primitivism, artist-theorist Alexander

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004300019_004

symbolism of the liturgy in a conditioned way. The primitivist impulse, rooted

Malevichs lifelong concern for the economy (oikonomia) of community as

It is worth noting the numerological implications contained in this painting: in Christian

(Psalm 103).14 As the contained crowds of figures move through Malevichs

back on the principle of engagement with, and participation of, a beholder.

Figure 2.3 Kazimir Malevich. Self-Portrait (1907). Tempera/ Oil? on

manner of abbreviations on icons) the Cyrillic letters of his name K-M-A-L,

The more-or-less equilateral format of Malevichs yellow series appears to correspond to

icons as a whole, and is most definitely absent in Malevichs earlier designs.

ground of the icon, translated indexically by the vertical yellow rectangle. In

Parastas, is a prayer of repose that reverences a liminal space occupied by the

burial.36 The image of a wanton reclining figure is modeled on lamentation

Figure 2.14 Kazimir Malevich. Collecting Flowers (also referred to as Secret of

Malevich o sebe: Sovremenniki o Maleviche. Pisma. Dokumenty, Vospominaniia. Kritika,

rounding a long table referencing the Last Supper. Exaggerated three-barred

making that operated within a congregational framework. All members of

Ibid., 12, 14.

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