Page 336 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
When interviewed by John Fischer, Rothko said that Michelangelo’s wall-paintings in the Laurentian Library (Florence) were a source of inspiration for his Seagram Murals.66 The Seagram Murals, one of them shown on the right of the above diptych (image 22), were painted between 1958 and 1959 for the Four Seasons restaurant in then a newly finished Seagram Building on Park Avenue in New York. However, having felt that his work would not be appreciated by anyone who dined in such a pretentious place, Rothko returned the deposit of the commission and kept the work in hope of subsequently find- ing it a better home. The Seagram murals comprise the first related series of paintings and a first instance where Rothko created works for a specific interior space. We shall here consider to what extent the Seagram Murals could be related to traditional Russian iconography. At first consideration, in view of the above diptych, it could be argued that there are very few common aesthetic characteristics between a Russian icon and Roth- ko’s Seagram Mural.
Demonstration 3
21. Left: St John Climacus with Saints George and Blaise, Russian icon, second half of the 13th century, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
22. Right: Mark Rothko, Untitled (Seagram Mural), 1958, mixed media on canvas, 266.1 x 252.4 cm (104.3⁄4 x 99.3/8), National Gallery of Art, Washington.
66 Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Rothko (Taschen, 2003), 62.
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