MARK ROTHKO
“Often, towards nightfall, there’s a feeling in the air of mystery, threat, frustration—all of these at once.
I would like my paintings to have the quality of such moments.”
I would like my paintings to have the quality of such moments.”
Three dappled colour panels pulsate against a restless, radiant dusk in Mark Rothko's Number 16 (Red, Brown and Black. The horizontal rectangular forms float in a series of evening hues; faded dark blue black, the muted roasted orange-red slit in the middle, and a murky muddy brown filling the bottom half, with their edges blurred through their gentle flux against the plum purple background's nocturnal glow. Breathing and buzzing beneath the shadows, these clouds emerge buoyant and liberated in the “violent” space of softened colours, only to submerge back into the impending, ebbing, transient cycle once more. It’s overwhelming, and not just for it's grand scale. Rothko's work is immense and irrepressible, imposing a reflective reverence and suffocating silence. This haunting conjuring is equally affecting as it is intolerable, in which by creating an enveloping atmospheric depth, the artist allows one to both project emotions onto it, as well as be consumed by its engulfing evocation of eluding tension and mystery that Rothko so desired to render in his artworks and practice.
Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was a postwar American Abstract Expressionist whose colour field artworks have enraptured and challenged the art world since their conception in the mid 20th century angst that emerged from the depths of the depression and war. Whilst meditatively pervasive for some, Rothko’s works are regarded rather confronting due to their huge scale and unnerving potency on an emotional and psychological scale. As author Zadie Smith recently discussed in her New York Review essay “Man vs Corpse”, Rothko’s atypical paintings, such as Number 16 are the epitome of “something you don’t want to look at”, despite their obvious abstraction. Rothko’s work is recognized by his soft edged rectangular forms floating on stained fields of colour on large scaled canvases, a distinctive style that matured as a means to manifest the conflicting pain and numbness of the postwar era, and to explore aspects of ancient mythology, Nietzsche and Jungian philosophy, spirituality and his Russian-Jewish heritage. As he expressed in a 1957 interview, "If you are only moved by colour relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom."
The artist’s painting process commenced with painting on unprimed canvas, initially brushing a thin layer of binder into which he had already mixed colour pigments. He would then fix this foundation with oils, spreading them around to the unframed edges of the canvas. Then, very lightly and quickly, he scumbled in thin, almost transparent colour in multiple individual layers of warm colour over cool, light over dark, and their vice-versas, allowing the luminance of the layers to float to the surface. Afterwards, Rothko would retreat back and gaze at his work for long stretches of time to review his last touches, plan his next, or declare it complete. The artist’s practice continued long after his “dramas” were finished. Not only did he simplify his titles down to bare description of number or colour, but he was moreover steadfast and emphatic in his conceptual insistence that his works were to be presented with particular lighting, hung at certain claustrophobic heights, not shown alongside anyone else’s work, and best viewed at 45cm away in order to experience the intimacy, awe, obscurity and transcendence of the individual as he intended: “The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them.”
Rothko ultimately focused on spatial relationships, colour, and their emotional weight creating vertically stacked forms of different shades that had the power to radiate and emit inner glow in buoyant yellows, as well as absorb the responder in oppressive darkness and the tension in the gaps between the forms that he entitled the “violence”. Believing that art was a vehicle for reflection fundamental for resonating on spiritual levels, the artist’s ideals and own diminishing psychological and physical health are highlighted in his colours becoming progressively darker until his suicide at age 66. The New York School of Abstract Expressionist painters in which Rothko was an active member also shared this focus on self-awareness and the contemplation of existential themes. As an assembly of eminent artists of the late 1940s-50s, they combined elements of Surrealism and Abstraction to generate a new style that imbued the profound postwar mood of anxiety and trauma. The celebrated group was composed of prolific artists including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and is remembered as an innovative and pioneering force in art at the time, as well as for their diverse expressive styles and intriguing individual personalities.
In order to appreciate Mark Rothko’s contribution to modern art history, one can only grasp the true stirring nature of his paintings in the flesh. Totally immersive, intimate, compelling and completely frustrating, but once those shrouded clouds clear…reach for the tissue.
Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was a postwar American Abstract Expressionist whose colour field artworks have enraptured and challenged the art world since their conception in the mid 20th century angst that emerged from the depths of the depression and war. Whilst meditatively pervasive for some, Rothko’s works are regarded rather confronting due to their huge scale and unnerving potency on an emotional and psychological scale. As author Zadie Smith recently discussed in her New York Review essay “Man vs Corpse”, Rothko’s atypical paintings, such as Number 16 are the epitome of “something you don’t want to look at”, despite their obvious abstraction. Rothko’s work is recognized by his soft edged rectangular forms floating on stained fields of colour on large scaled canvases, a distinctive style that matured as a means to manifest the conflicting pain and numbness of the postwar era, and to explore aspects of ancient mythology, Nietzsche and Jungian philosophy, spirituality and his Russian-Jewish heritage. As he expressed in a 1957 interview, "If you are only moved by colour relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom."
The artist’s painting process commenced with painting on unprimed canvas, initially brushing a thin layer of binder into which he had already mixed colour pigments. He would then fix this foundation with oils, spreading them around to the unframed edges of the canvas. Then, very lightly and quickly, he scumbled in thin, almost transparent colour in multiple individual layers of warm colour over cool, light over dark, and their vice-versas, allowing the luminance of the layers to float to the surface. Afterwards, Rothko would retreat back and gaze at his work for long stretches of time to review his last touches, plan his next, or declare it complete. The artist’s practice continued long after his “dramas” were finished. Not only did he simplify his titles down to bare description of number or colour, but he was moreover steadfast and emphatic in his conceptual insistence that his works were to be presented with particular lighting, hung at certain claustrophobic heights, not shown alongside anyone else’s work, and best viewed at 45cm away in order to experience the intimacy, awe, obscurity and transcendence of the individual as he intended: “The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them.”
Rothko ultimately focused on spatial relationships, colour, and their emotional weight creating vertically stacked forms of different shades that had the power to radiate and emit inner glow in buoyant yellows, as well as absorb the responder in oppressive darkness and the tension in the gaps between the forms that he entitled the “violence”. Believing that art was a vehicle for reflection fundamental for resonating on spiritual levels, the artist’s ideals and own diminishing psychological and physical health are highlighted in his colours becoming progressively darker until his suicide at age 66. The New York School of Abstract Expressionist painters in which Rothko was an active member also shared this focus on self-awareness and the contemplation of existential themes. As an assembly of eminent artists of the late 1940s-50s, they combined elements of Surrealism and Abstraction to generate a new style that imbued the profound postwar mood of anxiety and trauma. The celebrated group was composed of prolific artists including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and is remembered as an innovative and pioneering force in art at the time, as well as for their diverse expressive styles and intriguing individual personalities.
In order to appreciate Mark Rothko’s contribution to modern art history, one can only grasp the true stirring nature of his paintings in the flesh. Totally immersive, intimate, compelling and completely frustrating, but once those shrouded clouds clear…reach for the tissue.
My own photo when I visited this painting in New York 2012