Byzantine Style in Commercial Art
The apse mosaic at the church of St. Paul's Outside the Walls, near Rome, Italy, is a gorgeous work of Byzantine style art. Here is a photograph Isaac took of the central figure of Christ, shown in a variant of his portrayal as "Christ Pantocrator". Near the Christ's right foot is a small, white thing looking rather like a hermit crab. Closer inspection reveals that it is actually a portrait of Pope Honorius III being very, very humble.
We recognize this convention in art of portraying the donors (or other supplicants) of religious paintings with portraits within the painting itself, but usually as very small people, being a graphic representation of their relative importance to the other figures portrayed. We recognize it but most modern viewers seem to look on it as something affected, something silly and very old fashioned. We moderns are much more sophisticated–we've got perspective, after all!–and our art would never do anything so ridiculous and unrealistic as portraying people or objects with relative sizes that demonstrate their relative importance.
Well, not quite. I was sitting in my usual place for luncheon, looking at the illuminated, illustrated menu board, when that thought passed through my mind and I laughed aloud.
Examine, if you will, this sign offering for sale a "Cheesy Beefy Melt Combo Meal" at a Taco Bell (a limited-time menu offering that evidently did not appeal to the taste of NYC Food Guy). It's representative of the way menu items are displayed here and on many other similar menus.
What do we see? We see the central food item, the Cheesy Beefy Melt, displayed at a large, juicy, enticing size, large enough to dominate the space alloted to portraying the combo-meal offer. But what else do we see? We see a depiction of a crunchy taco and a large drink, the ancillary food items that make the combo meal a "combo".
Oddly, it passes as so unremarkable as to be almost invisible, but please note the relative sizes of the ancillary food products. They are tiny! If the accompanying crunchy taco were as shown, it would be about a centimeter across. Likewise the "cruiser cup" for the soda is so small that it might hold as much as one cubic centimeter of soft drink.
And yet I have never seen anyone point and laugh at this depiction, nor point out how "unrealistic" it is, nor demand the tiny taco with their meal. This matter of relative-size silliness must pass totally unprocessed in people's minds, too, because there's not much that they won't ask for based on the way things appear in the picture menus, or even on what they imagine may be shown in the picture menus.
So, maybe we're not so modern and sophisticated as we think. Or, perhaps the people in earlier times were not so unsophisticated as we frequently impugn. This could, of course, be the starting observation for an essay about how painters in a Byzantine style merely had other priorities in their depictions of "reality" and that they found their portrayals quite realistic and life-like, not unsophisticated and primitive. Those latter ideas merely result from changes in perception and priorities in visual representation as they accord with reality.
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Friday, 8 August 2008 at 03.08
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Although I can't think of a specific example this minute, I've seen the relative size thing on movie posters. No doubt was left about who the leading male and female stars were, and who the supporting players were.
on Friday, 8 August 2008 at 03.19
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The food guy's negative reaction to that cheesy, beefy thing reminds me of a McDonald's fish sandwich handed me once. A chunk of the none-too-generous fish rectangle was missing. The flavorless yellow plastic, supposedly cheese, applique was applied sloppily, so about a third of it was out the side of the sandwich making a sticky mess on the bun and sticking to the paper wrapper. The usually overly generous dollop of minimally flavored white glop McD's refers to as tartar sauce was, on this sandwich, less than a teaspoon's worth.
I took the sandwich back, showed it to a counter person and asked for another one. The second one had a full fish rectangle with cheese where it was supposed to be. I used a coffee stirring rod to remove the excess tartar sauce — enough for two or three fish sandwiches.