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I so much didn't get Rothko back in the day. When visiting the Tate Gallery where they had a room full of them -- gloomy suicidal maroon and black paintings -- I stopped to ask the guard how he felt about working that room. He was non-committal. I egged him on asking if he knew about the painting in Texas, Rothko's "final somber dance of death" as they were called. The aesthetes who coined such phrases made me guffaw.
This was in the early 70s. Rothko made me mad. I felt he was the art world's version of the Emperor and his new clothes. Then I went to work at the LA Museum of Art and I made it my quest to figure out WHY he was of value as an artist. I sort of did but that didn't translate to a great deal more appreciation; only understanding his goal. Here's the deal. Rothko moved from surrealism and became more and more reductive in his style. He was trying to get to the essence. Painters of the past had done representational art. They had done symbolic art, expressionistic, impressionistic. What was it within any close up section of a painting that gave the overall image its meaning. Its glow. It was paint alone. He distilled his work down to paintings of PAINT. His technique involved raw unprimed canvas and thinned down oil paint and then multiple layers of oils. The technique had been used by Rembrandt and Michelangelo and others for centuries and is what gives flesh tones their depth -- underlying blues and greens shining through peachy-golden hues.
Okay, so each layer is built up with multiples of finely differentiated tones of a few different pigments. But they all breathe through. If you look at the back of the canvas, you'll see the colors have leeched through. When completed, they are meant to pulsate from the wall. Often there would be one center "stripe" with a different color above and below it. If you stand back, stare at that stripe, within seconds the painting will literally recede and advance, seemingly hovering on the wall. They are meant to be contemplative. Zen. And it works. They will induce a state of mind if you allow them. The problem is that the same doesn't work with a PHOTO of the painting no matter how well shot the photo may be. You have to be there in the room with them. They do work best in multitudes without the distraction of other paintings. The other problem was personal for the tortured soul of Mark Rothko. After he reached the end of his exploration with reducing paintings to their essence, there was no place else to go. His quest was over and with his depressive alcoholic frame of mind, that left him only one option. Or so he must have believed. He slit his wrists. This has added value to his remaining works. Oh, and try as they might, no one has been able to successfully fake a Rothko. Five year olds don't have the patience. Susan
“Half a truth is often a great lie.” Ben Franklin
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