Author: Klara Jelinkova

Cited by

• Tom McCarthy (1)
  • IN: Men in Space (2007) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Despite the richness of thier colour, it is the line that is the basic means of expression in the work of the Backovo masters. Executing a rigorous set of formal procedures, lines never allow themselves to become mere accessories to the expression of volume, to imply depth or to confer realism: instead, they help present the world they depict as unreal, flat and dematerialized. Using inverted perspective and multiple points of view which they place within the painting itself, the Backovo masters set up a continuous style that enables them to represent several moments of a story on a single panel. As for the human figures, their sensory organs are drawn out and isolated, relinquishing their biological functions as they become sanctified. Their faces, serene and concentrated, are not configured to produce dramatic effect, but rather to foreground their owners' elevated sorrow.
    FROM: Murals of the Backovo Ossuary, (1986), NULL, NULL