Learnings and thoughts about Mark Rothko
Why Rothko?
End of 2023, I had a chance to revisit the National Gallery of Art in D.C. after my initial visit more than ten years ago. With more art education in the past decade, I felt more free to roam around the museum and find artworks I could connect with. This time, I found Mark Rothko’s work very intriguing. Because they’re all very simple rectangular color blocks stacking on each other.
But I don’t get tired of looking at them. Maybe because of Rothko’s choices of color? Or because when I look at the entire room of Rothko’s painting, I can imagine varieties of unknown worlds and stories, told by each different painting, yet composed by the same simple language.
Rothko from books
After my visit to the National Gallery, I kept thinking about Rothko’s artwork. So, I researched his life and work with my book collections, one of which is History of Modern Art by H.H. Arnason et al.
Here’s some interesting quotes that can describe Rothko’s artwork pretty well. (p392–394)
Mark Rothko seek to establish
“spiritual kingship with primitive and archaic art”.
His early work
“made compositions based on classical myths”
and then
“by the mid-1940s, [Rothko]painted biomorphic, surrealist-inspired, hybrid creatures floating in primordial waters.”
later on
“These forms began to coalesce at the end of the decade into floating color shapes with loose, undefined edges within larger expanses of color.”
eventually
“[Rothko]simplified his shapes to the point where they consisted of color rectangles floating on a color ground”
Rothko’s goal:
“by the sheer sensuousness of their color areas and the sense of indefinite outward expansion without any central focus, the paintings are designed to absorb and engulf the spectator.”
The critics have different ways of understanding Rothko:
“some critics have argued that Rothko’s painting are essentially landscapes, with their insistent horizontal bands demarking the horizon and blocks of color indicating receding planes of earth and sky, thus participating in a dualistic cosmology that dates back thousands of years.”
‘[other critics] sees instead cityscapes defined by rectilinear forms competing for prominence, thereby finding in Rothko’s painting the long-standing modernist critique of urban life.”
But despite all these interpretations,
“Rothko instead stated that he was striving for the ‘elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.’”
Why is Rothko relevant?
Recently, I realized that artwork, such as Rothko’s, is so free to interpretation. Would it be interesting to learn people’s opinions about different things using art?
So, I created a visual survey to get to know people with a series of questions, and the other person can answer the question with a picture that describes their thoughts best.
One of the questions was:
‘What picture describes your life the best?’
The options include iconic artwork by modern artists Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Andy Warhol.
Mark Rothko’s artwork was one of the most popular options. In my opinion, the answers of the people who chose Rothko are also the most diverse and interesting.
Some say it describes their life because the smaller color block represents the 1/3 of the time when you’re sleeping, while the larger color block represents the 2/3 of the time when you’re awake.
Some say the large red block represents the stronger emotions, while the smaller blue block represents the weaker and more subdued emotions.
Some say the rectangular triangle shapes, with blurry boundaries, represent the tension between the perfect ideal and the broken reality.
Memorable story of Rothko
My favorite art documentary is BBC’s production of Power of Art, narrated by art historian Simon Schama. His narration of various artists’ life stories introduced me to some of my favorite artists, like Caravaggio and Rembrandt.
But the last episode in the series about Mark Rothko never intrigued me until this day; now is the perfect moment. Simon Schama mentioned the most impactful event: Mark Rothko, already a renowned artist in the late 1960s, received a $35,000 ($327,000 in today’s money) commission to create artwork for the walls of Four Season restaurant, which is on the ground floor of the Seagram building in Manhattan.
Rothko replicated the restaurant space with a 1:1 scale in his studio to plan his paintings that best suit the space. He even tried a meal with his wife at the Four Seasons to experience the vibe.
But for a man who once proclaimed it was “criminal to spend more than $5 on a meal,” it comes as no surprise that he found the experience off-putting. Eventually, he rejected this commission after realizing, “Anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine.” The paintings by Rothko that would be displayed at Four Seasons were eventually donated to the Tate Museum of Modern Art in London before he ended his own life.
Speaking of Rothko’s tragic death, it was preceded by long period of depression and noticeable change of use of color in his paintings, from vibrant orange, blue to darker maroon and brown, and eventually to almost pitch black filled up the entire canvas, exemplified by the works in last stage of his life, hanged in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.
This progression of colors seems to synchronize with his worsened state of depression and the growth of pessimism and prophetically speaks of the unavoidable death in the end.
What’s engaging about Rothko in my opinion?
How did Rothko fall into such depression that cost his life?
Some said it was because he thought no one would look at his art anymore, as he perceived the era belonged to the pop artists, leaving no space for abstract expressionists such as himself. Some said painting is no longer enjoyable but painful and hateful for Rothko.
This is thought-provoking; how can an established artist start hating what he’s doing if I supposed he’s already a master of his type of art? After finding his signature style of art making, I could only guess that even a renowned artist like Rothko has exhausted all the possible combinations or colorful rectangles.
What’s more depressing is that even towards the end, the type of art Rothko created could bring him temporary fame and tremendous wealth, but it cannot sustain his mission of what he had in mind for his artwork to carry on through the generations?
In the end, I guess why Rothko fascinates so much has to do with his desire for a transcendental mission through his work. Any intermediate gain or success cannot fulfil this mission.
But what mission is worth such a cause? I think that’s a question that remains for us.
