Page 348 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Byzantine Painting through Contemporary Eyes
In the middle of this triptych is Rothko’s untitled work of the classic period, where, when compared to the two Late Byzantine icons67 on its sides, a peculiar anti-absence of the divine could be detected: this is an absence of figure (subject) compensated by the absolute presence of colour, one that echoes an otherworldly, numinous-kind of light. “Like a lamp in the fog” and “the mist of my dreams” are the words of a poem (which includes images of Heaven) written by Rothko; this poem is quoted by James Breslin in 1993,68 and later, in 1998 by John Gage.69 In Rothko’s work included in this triptych, the square patch which is painted over a distinctly darker layer of previously applied colour, radiates the chromatic immediacy comparable to the background of the two Late Byzan- tine icons shown on the sides.
Demonstration 13
47. Left: The Virgin Pelagonitisa, Byzantine icon, 1421-1422, 135 x 95 cm, Art Gallery, Skopje, FYROM. 48. Middle: Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1964 (alternatively dated to 1961), mixed media on canvas,
236.2 x 203.2 cm (93 x 80), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
49. Right: St John the Forerunner, Russian icon, 16th century, 124 x 87 cm, Ryazan State Regional Art Museum.
67 The Russian icon of St John, shown on the right, dates to the early Post Byzantine period, but on the basis of its style it can certainly be regarded as Late Byzantine.
68 See: James E.B. Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography (University of Chicago Press, 1993), 43.
69 John Gage has quoted the segments of this poem in his essay entitled Rothko: Color as Subject, which is included in: Mark Rothko, ed. Jeffrey Weiss (Washington: National Gallery of Art, in association with New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 254.
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