Page 314 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
following segment of this chapter, the peculiar uniqueness of Rothko’s art, and more specifically the uniqueness of the transcendent in his work of the classic period, cannot be a subject of a one-sided interpretation.
On the Sacral Dimension of Rothko’s Work
Among the other Abstract Expressionists, Rothko’s work is easily discerned. Howev- er, the painting of other leading protagonists of Abstract Expressionism, in particular, that of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman, is also particularly distinct. Nevertheless, in retrospect, it seems that Rothko’s Jewish background and education,17 but also the years of his early childhood spent in Russia, constitute an experience that might have signifi- cantly contributed to the distinction of his later artistic development and style from oth- er American artists of his time. He once stated that: “A painting is not about experience. It is an experience.”18
The mystery behind the earthly existence, or behind the absurdity of living, is insep- arably embodied within the creative experience of a religious artist. For a religious artist, the core of life’s tragedy is not the temporality of life, but life’s impenetrable non-mean- ing. Thus, in a manner of speaking, authentic religious painters could be perceived as rare ‘professionals of living,’ whose main task is to employ their inner vision in order to overcome the countless deceptions about earthly life – which are imposed on them by the sensory and emotional experience.
Over a number of decades, Rothko’s religious background was combined with his over- all life experience, and thus, in his classic paintings, this religious background became objectified as a highly idiosyncratic spirituality. Therefore, in view of the paintings of his transitional period (images 6, 7 and 8) one should attempt to enter the peculiar and con- voluted thought process of the mystic that Rothko was in order to conceive how the
Ryman: “Yes. That’s just in the mind of the viewer. It’s not Rothko’s intention. It strictly had to do with composition, colour, plane, and presence, working with the wall plane. I don’t believe it represents anything. It has no symbolic meaning. People can read all kinds of things into it.” From the interview conducted by Jeffrey Weiss, included in: Jeffrey Weiss, et al. Mark Rothko (Washington: National Gallery of Art, in association with New Haven and London: Yale Uni- versity Press, 1998), 369.
17 The fact that Rothko’s father insisted that Rothko, starting at the age of five, receives a strict religious education at the cheder (a religious school run by the synagogue) is noted in Rothko’s biography, but also in related scholarly literature. For example see: Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Rothko (Taschen, 2003), 20.
18 This statement by Rothko is cited in: Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Rothko (Taschen, 2003), 57. 312