Byzantine Pink: Alexis Gritchenko’s Narrative of Constantinople
Ukrainian artist Alexis Gritchenko (Oleksa Hryshchenko), who lived in Istanbul between November 1919 and April 1921 during the occupation of the Allied forces, opened the Constantinople Bleu et Rose exhibition in Paris in 1923, where he displayed his works on Constantinople. In 1930, while living in...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
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Istanbul University Press
2021-06-01
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| Series: | Sanat Tarihi Yıllığı |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://cdn.istanbul.edu.tr/file/JTA6CLJ8T5/B1F371AAA32E45B0843FFE273E5A9785 |
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| Summary: | Ukrainian artist Alexis Gritchenko (Oleksa Hryshchenko), who lived in Istanbul between November 1919 and April 1921 during the occupation of the Allied forces, opened the Constantinople Bleu et Rose exhibition in Paris in 1923, where he displayed his works on Constantinople. In 1930, while living in Paris, he published a chronicle of his life in Istanbul (Deux ans à Constantinople). It depicted the Byzantine history, culture, art, and architecture in Constantinople. While his knowledge benefited from both the contemporary historiography and his scrutiny, he presents them as sensory experiences. What emerged was an ahistorical Constantinople, an amalgamation of eclectic features from the Ancient, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods of the capital. Gritchenko was a modernist artist who produced Byzantinism, much like his cohort, including Vladimir Tatlin or Vasily Kandinsky. His art reflected sensuous oral descriptions and eclectic representations of history, reproducing Byzantinism. The Historical Peninsula in Gritchenko’s journal is a hierotopos, a carefully rendered, fantastic atmosphere with ahistoric yet harmoniously functioning spaces, buildings, people, and daily life. This article evaluates and assesses the journal’s references to Byzantine history, monuments, and culture in the context of both the contemporary literature on Byzantine history and the literature that Gritchenko may have accessed. Thus, we reveal how Gritchenko constructed a Constantinople based on his readings and observations. |
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| ISSN: | 2717-6940 |