Page 367 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

CONCLUSION
This work has considered the possible ways in which, after a period of negative attitudes towards Byzantine art in the West – occurring initially during the Renaissance and fur- ther enhanced during the 18th and 19th centuries – a subsequent revival of interest in Byz- antine aesthetics greatly contributed to the rise of 20th century abstract painting. Through visual demonstrations and formal hermeneutics, we primarily aimed at shedding light on the significant but previously insufficiently examined parallels and analogies that exist between 20th century Modernist painting and Late Byzantine painting. More par- ticularly, in the second half of this book we have argued that, being predominately a product of the contemplation of Eastern Orthodox experience, the ‘irregular’ aesthetics of Late Byzantine painting were analogically reinvented by three of the most renowned abstractionists of the 20th century: Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Mark Rothko.
Regardless of the variety of their influences, through their work, these three great Modernists have each in their own way pointed to the diachronic character of the aes- thetics of Late Byzantine painting. We have attempted to show that they have achieved this in a manner which is systematic and original, and one which often involved esoter- ic and transcendental contemplation while unassumingly pertaining to the methods and processes of science. Most importantly, this means that the aesthetics of Late Byzantine painting played a significant and hitherto unjustly underappreciated role in the forma- tion of 20th century Modernism. Once again, the heritage of Western civilisation reveals how much it owes to and depends on the Eastern experience. Seeing both Late Byzantine and 20th century Modern painting simultaneously through contemporary and Byzantine eyes, is one of the ways to appreciate how particular aspects of a creative experience may ‘travel’ across centuries between distinctly different civilisational experiences.
Concisely speaking, in the first half of this book we have attempted to interpret the aesthetics of Byzantine painting of the late period primarily in the light of its mystagog-
365