Page 333 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter VI
Introduction to Visual Demonstrations
Besides the treatment of white and the concept of inner light, the stacked colour-bands of Rothko’s classic compositions, as well as the soft brush-work characteristic of their edges, are also evocative of the kind of non-naturalistic space rendered in frescoes, icons and manuscripts of the Late Byzantine period. Further, we shall demonstrate that in Rus- sian iconography of the same period, as well as in that of a later date, we find certain tones of colour which are strikingly similar to those characteristic of Rothko’s classic paintings.
As the most appropriate introduction to the visual demonstrations that follow, we shall here include a citation of Rothko’s own words. In a text included under a subtitle Plasticity and Space in his earlier mentioned book, Rothko discusses the “reality of tactil- ity” and the “reality of appearance,” and subsequently, perhaps quite unintentionally, pro- vides us with the following insight into the significance of the Byzantine influences in his classic paintings:
“Yet, should we go somewhat back in time and examine Giotto’s forbears, the Byzan- tine painters, we shall find the notion of tactility carries further and can therefore illus- trate our point. I doubt whether Berenson himself would have conceded the logical con- clusions to follow. He wrote, however, before modern art had brought these painters back into repute.
These Byzantine painters were in the habit of embellishing their works with actual precious stones, and the halos which encircled the heads of their saints were of real gold. These stones, this gold, and the brilliant colors which were really an extension of the same idea and would have not been used if additional materials of great intrinsic and sensuous value were available, were not employed to convey a picture of the garments of the dignitaries pictured, but rather, in themselves, in their own costliness, to give a sense of the power and the sumptuousness of the church. Obviously this sensuousness could have been conveyed by illusory means, as witnessed in the representation of jew- elry in either our portraiture or in the painting of the sumptuous costumes of the eight- eenth century. To say that these Byzantine artists had not the skill would not be true, for they had the Coptic examples to learn from, where such skill is readily displayed. The only explanation was that they did not seek to create illusions but instead to directly convey their meanings.”65
65 This text is included in: Mark Rothko, The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art, edited by Christopher Rothko (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 51.
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