Page 18 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
pears to be in the existing scholarly literature. In the second part of this book, the exam- ination of influences from the aesthetics of Late Byzantine painting in the works of three great Modern painters, Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Mark Rothko, aims at demonstrating the diachronic character of Late Byzantine painting.
As it is very well known, since the Renaissance period until the late 19th and early 20th century, Byzantine art has been disliked and even held in contempt by the West. After a renewed interest in Byzantine art emerged at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, it contributed significantly to the rise of abstract art of Modernism and therein made the centuries during which Byzantine art was held in contempt seem like seconds of human ignorance. Today, in early 21st century we could say that, as a topic of scholar- ly discussion, Byzantine art is made rather popular.
In the existing scholarly literature there are a number of works which in various con- texts discuss Late Byzantine painting but even more of those which focus exclusively on painting or mosaic decoration at particular Byzantine shrines; the majority of the latter are in languages other than English. When considered collectively, the existing publica- tions lack a holistic approach that would present Late Byzantine painting in respect of its deeper aesthetic significance and its contemporary relevance. Nevertheless, since the publication of Talbot-Rice’s book entitled Byzantine Painting: The Last Phase (1968) until the present time, the field of Late Byzantine painting has become far less unfamiliar, and noteworthy publications now exist which have been translated in a number of languag- es. Of course, there are significant works available in English. For example, in regards to the Byzantine painting in Cyprus, there is a valuable publication by Andreas and Judith A. Stylianou entitled The Painted Churches of Cyprus: Treasures of Byzantine Art (first published in 1985). However, what is still missing in any language is a work that would touch on not only each of the main stages of the historical development of Late Byzan- tine painting but one that would also consider its contemporary aesthetic relevance, or rather, its diachronic character, through both contemporary and Byzantine eyes. As we asserted earlier, this will be the task of our present work.
We argue that scholarly investigation of the past can profoundly benefit from a crea- tive synergy with novel ways of appropriating past artistic expression, combining both the knowledge of what happened and the hindsight of what followed. But, as we said in the beginning, this cannot be accomplished unless we address the right questions through either science or art. In posing the questions and in his/her interpretation an art histori- an should ideally act both as a scholar and as a re-creator of the artwork being interpret- ed. Professor Henry Maguire has rightly pointed out that the practice of art history be-
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