Page 303 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

MARK ROTHKO
and
the Late Byzantine Experience
“Why paint at all?” – is a question which Rothko poses at the very beginning of his short text indicatively entitled Art as a Natural Biological Function.1 He then continues: “A ques- tion well worth asking all those thousands who, in the catacombs or the garrets of Paris and New York, in the tombs of Egypt or the monasteries of the East, have throughout the ages covered millions of yards of surface with the panoramas of their imaginings.”2
In his classic phase, Mark Rothko painted as a man out of time, which is why his ar- tistic achievement remains diachronically relevant. To approach a large painting by Roth- ko closely, such as the one shown in image 14, is to encounter and enter a new kind of space. The viewer feels that they are notionally invited to expand into the mist before them, as they become absorbed by the dimmed light which is delicately embodied in the layers of colour. The painters of the Late Byzantine period (13th–15th century) experienced their monumental frescoes in a very similar way, though they were additionally relying in their compositions on the inverse perspective, a perspective that expands the viewer’s vision towards infinity.3
Like late Byzantine fresco painters, Rothko always carefully thought of and even wor- ried about the lighting conditions of the space where his works were to be observed. Similarly to portable icons in Late Byzantine churches, Rothko’s works were typically installed rather than merely hung within the exhibition space. These Late Byzantine anal- ogies do not ignore the multitude of previous interpretations of Rothko’s work. On the
1 This text can be found in Rothko’s posthumously published book: Mark Rothko, The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art, edited by Christopher Rothko (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 6.
2 Ibid.
3 We have discussed this phenomenon in our third chapter entitled Modernism of the Frescoes of Mistra.
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