Chroma’c Abstrac’on/ Color Field
Chroma'c Abstrac'on/ Color Field
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) Rothko’s style evolved over 'me
Mark Rothko, An#gone, c. 1941 Na'onal Gallery of Art
Mark Rothko, Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea, 1944 Museum of Modern Art
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) 1947-‐1949 Rothko began series of mul'-‐form canvases
Mark Rothko, Number 7, 1947 Guggenheim Museum
Mark Rothko, Un'tled (Mul'form), 1948 Collec'on of Kate Rothko Prizel
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) 1949 “classic” style
Canvases typically consist of soQ edged rectangles stacked on the canvas
Mark Rothko, No. 3/No. 13, 1949 Museum of Modern Art
Mark Rothko, Green and Maroon, 1953 Phillips Collec'on Mark Rothko, Ochre and Red on Red, 1954
Phillips Collec'on
Mark Rothko No. 20 1957 Na'onal Gallery of Australia
Mark Rothko White, Red, on Yellow 1958 Metropolitan Museum
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) Rothko’s method of working was different from the “ac'on painters”
Rothko in his West 53rd Street studio, pain'ng what may be a version of Un#tled,1952-‐1953 (Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao), photograph by Henry Elkan, c. 1953
Na'onal Gallery of Art
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) Thin washes of color
Rothko in his West 53rd Street studio, pain'ng what may be a version of Un#tled,1952-‐1953 (Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao), photograph by Henry Elkan, c. 1953
Na'onal Gallery of Art
Henri Ma'sse, Red Studio, 1911 Museum of Modern Art
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) Envisioned his pictures as “environments,” rather than “pictures”
Viewer looking at a Mark Rothko pain'ng in the Na'onal Gallery of Art, Washington DC Image source: hbp://www.societyofcomposers.org/user/williamdougherty.html
Mark Rothko, 1961 Image source: hbp://www.portlandart.net/archives/2009/07/the_rothko_brid.html
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) Medita've environment; doorway to another reality
A woman views Mark Rothko's 'Orange, Red, Yellow', 1956 on display May 9, 2008 at Sotheby's in New York hbp://www.independent.co.uk/arts-‐entertainment/art/features/mark-‐rothko-‐s'll-‐hip-‐to-‐be-‐square-‐940133.html
“Rothko wrote that the great ar's'c achievements of the past were pictures of the human figure alone in a moment of uber immobility. He sought to create his own version of this solitary medita've experience, scaling his pictures so that the viewer is enveloped in their luminous, atmospheric surface.” Tate Gallery
"Small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels; large pictures are like dramas in which one par'cipates in a direct way." Mark Rothko
Image source: hbp://www.interna'onalheralddailynews.org/world_arts1.htm
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) The “black form” pain'ngs seem to look out into an expansive abyss
Mark Rothko, No. 7, 1964 Na'onal Gallery of Art
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) The Roman'c Sublime -‐-‐ the sense of awe we experience when confronted with the boundlessness of nature
Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Seashore, 1809-‐10 Staatliche Museum, Berlin
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) Seagrams commission violated his ideas about the purpose of his pain'ngs
Mark Rothko’s Seagrams Murals, as installed at the Tate Gallery MSNBC
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970) Rothko Chapel – realiza'on of his dream of a “sacred art”
Rothko Chapel, Houston Texas Founded by John and Dominique de Menil in 1971 as an in'mate sanctuary available to people of every belief hbp://www.rothkochapel.org/
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970)
Image source: hbp://thisvignebe.com/
“By the late '50s Rothko was a very successful painter, and he hated it. . . . . "I have imprisoned the most uber violence in every inch of their surface," he claimed. But the more violence Rothko pumped into the pictures, the more plush and collec'ble they turned out to be . . . Christopher Benfey, Slate.com
Mark Rothko (1903-‐1970)
Mark Rothko in his West 53rd Street studio, c. 1953, photograph by Henry Elkan, courtesy Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Ins'tu'on; Image source: hbp://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/intro1.shtm
“Meanwhile, he is chain-‐smoking, drinking heavily, and abusing barbiturates . . . He has a heart aback in 1968, leaves his wife in 1969, and on Feb. 25, 1970, slits his wrists and dies on the studio floor.” Christopher Benfey, Slate.com