-Mark Rothko and Adolph Gotllieb manifesto, published in 1943 in the New York Times.
Anyone who knows me knows, my favorite artist is Mark Rothko. But it always seems to me that he gets overshadowed by other artist in the late 20th century or simply no one knows who he is. This Blog is meant to correct fix that.
Posts tagged: National Gallery of Art
“Black was a frequent, sometimes imposing presence in Rothko’s early work (nos. 1–9)—from his expressive figures of the 1930s to the surrealist-inspired canvases of the mid-1940s to the abstract “multiforms” of the late 1940s. Interestingly, black did not play a major role in Rothko’s classic works of the 1950s. Thus his dramatic turn to black in 1964, with the black paintings featured in this exhibition (nos. 10–16), was something of a return, but one whose significance remains mysterious.”
- In the Tower: Mark Rothko, a past exhibit at the National Gallery of Art
In The Tower: Mark Rothko
Produced by the National Gallery of Art and narrated by Harry Cooper.
The video is a short explaintion of Rothko’s life and how his artistic style developed. I don’t particularly agree with everything in the video. The narrator describes the Segrum Murals as somber and I personally believe they are anything but. He also states that Rothko was moving away from color with the black on black paintings at the end of his career. If that were so then I think the paintings would be white as that is the absence of color.
It’s not a bad video to watch though…its a tad dry but it’s only 8 minuets and filled with pictures of Rothkos art as well as Rothko himself.
Mark Rothko (painter)
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
The Party, 1938
From the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C
Not Currently on Display
![“Some critics have seen these [The Black on Black paintings] paintings as Rothko’s pointed reminder that there was more to his work than lyric color—that his real subject was (as he had declared in 1943) the “tragic and timeless.” Others have seen them as tokens of the illness and depression that began to plague Rothko in the 1960s, even as harbingers of his suicide at the end of the decade.
But does black = tragedy and despair? While it does absorb more light than any other color, it is not just a void. Depending upon the quality of paint and its application, as well as shifting angles of light, the blacks here can look like steel or velvet, silver screens or black holes. Other colors lie in wait under a surface or peek around an edge. But to notice all this takes time: unless we look at the paintings slowly, we will not see what Rothko called their “inner light.”“
- From the National Gallery of Art Website](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsapyqSSkC1qjy996o1_400.jpg)
“Some critics have seen these [The Black on Black paintings] paintings as Rothko’s pointed reminder that there was more to his work than lyric color—that his real subject was (as he had declared in 1943) the “tragic and timeless.” Others have seen them as tokens of the illness and depression that began to plague Rothko in the 1960s, even as harbingers of his suicide at the end of the decade. But does black = tragedy and despair? While it does absorb more light than any other color, it is not just a void. Depending upon the quality of paint and its application, as well as shifting angles of light, the blacks here can look like steel or velvet, silver screens or black holes. Other colors lie in wait under a surface or peek around an edge. But to notice all this takes time: unless we look at the paintings slowly, we will not see what Rothko called their “inner light.”“ - From the National Gallery of Art Website
Mark Rothko (artist)
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Sketch in the Shade, 1925
From the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C
Not Currently on display.
Both paintings belong to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
“He [Rothko] aimed for the most extraordinary level of impact, with the most minimal of means. According to Kuh, he found most painters of the past - apart from Turner and Rembrandt - “slightly distasteful”. He felt, although his work looked very unlike Rembrandt’s, that he shared the same aim as the great Dutchman, “a maximum of poignancy”.”
- From “The Mysterious Tragedy at the Heart of Rothko’s Tranquil Masterpiece” by Martin Gayford. Published by the Telegraph in 2008
Rothko moving Untitled,1954 (seen inverted), photograph by Henry Elkan. Picture from National Gallery of Art website.
“Alternately radiant and dark, Rothko’s art is distinguished by a rare degree of sustained concentration on pure pictorial properties such as color, surface, proportion, and scale, accompanied by the conviction that those elements could disclose the presence of a high philosophical truth. Visual elements such as luminosity, darkness, broad space, and the contrast of colors have been linked, by the artist himself as well as other commentators, to profound themes such as tragedy, ecstasy, and the sublime. Rothko, however, generally avoided explaining the content of his work, believing that the abstract image could directly represent the fundamental nature of “human drama.”“
-From National Gallery of Art website, Washington, DC
Mark Rothko, Sacrifice of Iphigenia,1942, Collection of Christopher Rothko
Taken from the National Gallery of Art Website.
It may be easy to assume that Rothko’s color fields and early abstract paintings would be easy to reproduce. That may be true, however, Rothko clearly stated on more than one occasion that his paintings were not about technique but about emotion and were meant to convey a spiritual atmosphere. I think thats the reason that Rothko’s paintings resonate with me so much. There is more then techinque on the canvas.
“In a 1943 letter to the New York Times, written with Adolph Gottlieband Barnett Newman, Rothko said,’It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints, as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.’”
Taken from the National Gallery of Art website: http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/myths2.shtm
![Rothko, painting in his studio in the early 1950s. Picture from the National Gallery of Art website and taken by Henry Elkan
“In 1954 Rothko asked that his largest pictures be installed “so that they must be first encountered at close quarters, so that the first experience is to be within the picture.” He said:
Since my pictures are large, colorful, and unframed, and since museum walls are usually immense and formidable, there is the danger that the pictures relate themselves as decorative areas to the walls. This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative; and have been painted in a scale of normal living rather than an institutional scale. I have on occasion successfully dealt with this problem by tending to crowd the show rather than making it spare. By saturating the room with the feeling of the work, the walls are defeated and the poignancy of each single work…become[s] more visible. ”
- From the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C website: http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/classic5.shtm](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll9v92C0Tt1qjy996o1_r1_400.jpg)
Rothko, painting in his studio in the early 1950s. Picture from the National Gallery of Art website and taken by Henry Elkan
“In 1954 Rothko asked that his largest pictures be installed “so that they must be first encountered at close quarters, so that the first experience is to be within the picture.” He said:
Since my pictures are large, colorful, and unframed, and since museum walls are usually immense and formidable, there is the danger that the pictures relate themselves as decorative areas to the walls. This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative; and have been painted in a scale of normal living rather than an institutional scale. I have on occasion successfully dealt with this problem by tending to crowd the show rather than making it spare. By saturating the room with the feeling of the work, the walls are defeated and the poignancy of each single work…become[s] more visible. ”
- From the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C website: http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/classic5.shtm
