Byzantium Endures

A few days ago, I went with a friend to the Royal Academy of Arts to see the exhibition of Byzantium treasures that were on display. The time frame was the start of the split of the Roman Empire into East and West halves. The western side succumbing to the various invading migrating tribes, but the eastern half surviving into the 15th century before falling to the Ottoman Turks and a some non help from the west.

It was one of those exhibitions that tried to raise your awareness of the past. The large chandelier that hung in the first room and showed a timeline of the period. It was wrought iron work, looking delicate, but heavy as well. The show developed in a chronological time line. The first few rooms showed how the world of Eastern half of the Roman Empire developed out of the Romans' culture and developed over the period. I was taken with how the paintings of the earlier period began to change from a stylise portraits to more realistic, yet would then veer into icon images.

It was like watching western art grow up, but then follow an entirely different line from the perspective of the Renaissance. Was Byzantium a dead end? Maybe history suggests that it was, but is that more political than artistic? Looking at some painting that had been surrounded by riveting pieces. I was unusual and I would have liked to have know more about it. Seeing a painting on the door, which was surrounded by metal pieces, in a way it was using the metal as they might have used gold leaf around icons or the marvellous books that were presented.

Travelling around the exhibition with my friend, our minds were not focused on what we were seeing, but what we had experienced lately with all our trials and tribulations in the book industry. We looked at the books created during this long period, using our experience to think how we would produce them now, using our expertise.


I like this image of the ladder to heaven with people progressing up or being tempted or fought over by devils. I think it is the black lay down of the ladder crossing the image frame and the strong diagonal going from corner to corner that effects the way you look at this picture. The two halves are split between heaven above and hell below.

This reminds me of a Francis Bacon picture at Bolton Art Gallery, I saw on my foundation course, that at first looked like a human figure. We were asked to consider the the black pillars either side and how the arms looked as if it stretched across the frame, linking black to blackness, is this all life is? Yep, a typically bleak Bacon, but it was the first time that I was shown how a painting that at first was just a straight forward nude could have something more read into the image.