(A recently discovered book manuscript by Mark Rothko, off...)
A recently discovered book manuscript by Mark Rothko, offering a landmark discussion of his views on topics, ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary art, criticism and the role of art and artists in society.
Mark Rothko was an American painter of Jewish descent. Although Rothko himself refused to adhere to any art movement, he is generally identified as an abstract expressionist. His use of colour as the sole means of expression led to the development of Colour Field Painting.
Background
Mark Rothko was born on September 25, 1903 in Daugavpils, the Russian Empire (present-day Daugavpils, Latvia) into the family of Jacob (Yakov) Rothkowitz, a pharmacist and intellectual, and Katherine Anna (Goldin) Rothkowitz.
Jacob, Mark's father, encouraged secular education over orthodox religious fervor. By 1910, to avoid the tsarist pogroms, Jacob had emigrated to Portland, Oregon, sending for his eldest sons first and then the rest of the family. Seven months after the family was united Jacob died, leaving his widow and children, struggling to make a living.
Education
Despite Mark's father's modest income, he provided his children with good education, and Mark was able to speak Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew. Following his father's return to the Orthodox Judaism of his own youth, Rothko was sent to the cheder (a traditional elementary school, teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language) at the age of five, where he studied the Talmud, although his elder siblings were educated in the public school system.
After the family immigrated to the United States, Mark began to attend a school there, namely in 1913, quickly accelerating from third to fifth grade. Being an excellent student, Rothko completed his studies at Portland's Lincoln High School, the educational establishment, from which he graduated in June 1921. It was there, that he learned English.
In the fall of 1921, Mark entered Yale University on a scholarship. At the end of his freshman year in 1922, the scholarship was not renewed, and he worked as a waiter and delivery boy to support his studies. At the end of his sophomore year, Rothko dropped out and did not return until he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1969.
It's also worth noting, that Mark studied briefly under the painter Max Weber at the Art Students League of New York. However, he was essentially self-taught.
After leaving Yale in 1923, Rothko settled down in New York City. Over the next few years, he took odd jobs, while enrolled in Max Weber's still life and figure drawing classes at the Art Students League, which constituted his only artistic training. Rothko's early paintings were mostly portraits, nudes and urban scenes. After a brief stint in the theatre on a return visit to Portland, Rothko was chosen to participate in a 1928 group show with Lou Harris and Milton Avery at the Opportunity Gallery. This was a coup for a young immigrant, who had dropped out of college and had only begun painting three years earlier.
To supplement his income, in 1929, Rothko began instructing schoolchildren in drawing, painting and clay sculpture at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he would remain active in teaching until 1952.
By the mid-1930's, the effects of the Great Depression were being felt throughout American society, and Rothko had become concerned with the social and political implications of mass unemployment. This encouraged him to attend meetings of the leftist Artists' Union. Here, amongst other issues, he and many other artists fought for a municipal gallery, which was eventually granted. Working in the Easel Division of the Works Progress Administration, Rothko met many other artists, yet he felt most at ease with a group, that consisted mainly of other Russian Jewish painters. This group, which included such figures, as Adolph Gottlieb, Joseph Solman and John Graham, showed together at Gallery Secession in 1934 and became known as "The Ten". In 1936, "The Ten: Whitney Dissenters" showed at the Mercury Galleries, opening just three days after the Whitney show they were protesting.
Rothko's painting in the 1930's, influenced by Expressionism, was typified by claustrophobic, urban scenes, rendered often in acidic colors (such as "Entrance to Subway" (1938)). However, in the 1940's, he began to be influenced by Surrealism, and abandoned Expressionism for more abstract imagery, which spliced human, plant and animal forms. These he likened to archaic symbols, which he felt might transmit the emotions, locked in ancient myths. Rothko came to see mankind as locked in a mythic struggle with his free will and nature. In 1939, he briefly stopped painting altogether to read mythology and philosophy, finding particular resonance in Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy". He ceased to be interested in representational likeness and became fascinated with the articulation of interior expression.
While Rothko tends to be grouped with Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still as one of the three chief inspirers of Color Field Painting, Rothko's works saw many abrupt and clearly defined stylistic shifts. The decisive shift came in the late 1940's, when he began creating the prototypes for his best-known works. They have since come to be called his "multi-forms": figures are banished entirely, and the compositions are dominated by multiple soft-edged blocks of colors, which seem to float in space. Rothko wanted to remove all obstacles between the painter, the painting and the viewer. The method, he settled on, used shimmering color to swamp the viewer's visual field. His paintings were meant to entirely envelope the viewer and raise the viewer up and out of the mechanized, commercial society, over which artists, like Rothko, despaired. In 1949, Rothko radically reduced the number of forms in his pictures and grew them such that they filled out the canvas, hovering on fields of stained color, that are only visible at their borders. These, his best known works, have come to be called his "sectionals", and Rothko felt they better met his desire to create universal symbols of human yearning. His paintings were not self-expressions, he claimed, but statements about the condition of man.
Mark continued working on the "sectionals" until the end of his life. They are considered to be rather enigmatic, as they are formally at odds with their intent. Rothko himself stated, that his style changes were motivated by the growing clarification of his content. The all-over compositions, the blurred boundaries, the continuousness of color and the wholeness of form were all elements of his development towards a transcendental experience of the sublime, Rothko's goal.
During his lifetime, Rothko received many honors, including being invited to be one of the United States representatives at the Venice Biennale in 1958. Yet acclaim never seemed to soothe Rothko's embattled spirit, and he came to be known as an abrasive and combative character. When he was given an award by the Guggenheim Foundation, he refused it as a protest against the idea, that art should be competitive.
Rothko often stood up for his beliefs, even if it cost him dearly. In what was surely a self-defeating act of retaliation, he refused a 1953 offer by the Whitney to purchase two of his paintings because of "a deep sense of responsibility for the life his pictures will lead out in the world". Another pivotal project, which would end unhappily, was the series of murals he completed for the Seagram Building in 1958. Initially, the idea of incorporating his work within an architectural environment appealed to him, since he had great admiration for the chapels of Michelangelo and Vasari. He spent two years, making three series of paintings for this building, but was not pleased with the first two sets; then, he became dissatisfied with the idea, that his paintings were to be hung in the opulent Four Seasons restaurant. Characteristically, Rothko's social ideals led him to quit the commission, as he could not reconcile his personal vision or his integrity as an artist with the ostentatious environment.
In 1964, Rothko received a large commission from major Houston art collectors and philanthropists, John and Dominique de Menil. He was to create large wall murals for a non-denominational chapel they were sponsoring on the campus of St. Thomas Catholic University, where Dominique was the head of the Art Department. He generated fourteen paintings while working closely with a series of architects to construct a meditative environment with a dark palette. The Rothko Chapel has since been the setting for international meetings of some of the world's great religious leaders, like the Dalai Lama.
In 1968, Rothko was diagnosed with heart trouble and suffered from depression. He committed suicide in his studio on February 25, 1970. The remaining work was eventually divided between the Rothko family and museums around the world. "Black on Grays" was his last major series, which included twenty-five canvases and marked a clear deviation from his previous work.
Mark Rothko was undoubtedly one of the most highly-regarded painters to emerge from the New York art scene. As one of the most renowned figures in the history of Abstract Expressionist movement, Mark left a significant legacy as an artist - he created over 800 paintings. It's also worth noting, that he was instrumental in the development of Colour Field Painting.
Mark Rothko's most notable works include "Crucifixion" (1935), "Entrance to Subway" (1938), "Oedipus" (1944), "Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea" (1944), "No. 9" (1947), "Four Darks in Red" (1958) and others. "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)" (1950) and "Orange, Red, Yellow" (1961) are also his famous paintings, which have broken many sale records and collected huge sums of money. While the "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)" was sold for 72.8 million dollars, the latter work was sold for 86.9 million dollars in New York.
Painting consumed Rothko's life, and although he did not receive the attention he felt his work deserved in his own lifetime, his fame has increased dramatically in the years, following his death.
(A recently discovered book manuscript by Mark Rothko, off...)
2004
installation
Rothko Chapel
painting
Blue, Green and Brown
Gethsemane
Green and Tangerine on Red
Hierarchical Birds
No. 3 / No. 13 (Magenta, Black, Green on Orange)
Number 14
Number 16
Orange, Red, Yellow
Plum and Dark Brown
Untitled (Purple, White and Red)
Rites of Lilith
Untitled (Black on Grey)
White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)
Black on Maroon
Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea
Self-Portrait
Untitled
Portrait (Untitled)
No. 21
Untitled
Untitled
Rural Scene
Underground Fantasy
No. 20
Untitled
Blue, Orange, Red
Untitled
Untitled
Yellow, Cherry, Orange
Untitled
Primeval Landscape
Untitled
Black, Red and Black
No. 7
Orange and Yellow
No. 18
No. 5
Lavender and Mulberry
Earth & Green
Cubierta
Tentacles of Memory
Untitled
No. 3 (Bright Blue, Brown, Dark Blue on Wine)
No. 16
Untitled
Untitled
Entance to Subway
Untitled
No. 8
Black on Dark Sienna on Purple
Interior
Untitled
No. 1
Yellow, Charcoal, Brown
Untitled
Red
Untitled (Black and Gray)
Untitled
Untitled (Standing Man and Woman)
Untitled
Aubade
No. 5 / No. 22
Yellow Band
Purple Brown
No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)
No. 37 / No. 19 (Slate Blue and Brown on Plum)
No. 3
No. 2
Blue and Gray
Untitled (Red-Brown, Black, Green, Red)
Untitled
No. 46 (Black, Ochre, Red Over Red)
Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange)
Black on Maroon
Multiform
Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue)
No. 9 (Dark over Light Earth)
Red, White and Brown
Street Scene
Green and Maroon
Red on Maroon
Untitled
Number 24 (Untitled)
Untitled
Untitled (Gray, Gray on Red)
No. 19
Untitled
Red
Sacrifice of Iphigenia
United (Blue, Yellow, Green on Red)
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled (No. 17)
Black in Deep Red
Red and Orange
Untitled
Religion
Mark's parents vacillated between atheism and faith. However, when Mark was a boy, they sent him to the cheder, a traditional Jewish school for children.
Politics
In his youth, Mark was preoccupied with politics and social issues. Having grown up around radical workers' meetings, Rothko attended meetings of the Industrial Workers of the World, where he developed strong oratorical skills he later used in defense of Surrealism.
With the onset of the Russian Revolution, Rothko organized debates about it. Despite the repressive political atmosphere, he wished to become a labor union organizer.
By the mid-1930's, the impact of the Great Depression was being felt throughout American society, and Rothko had become preoccupied with the social and political implications of mass unemployment. He began to attend the meetings of the leftist Artists' Union. Together with other artists he fought for a municipal gallery (which was ultimately granted), among other issues.
It's worth noting, that Rothko frequently described himself as an anarchist, a declaration he repeated right up until the year he committed suicide. He did not mean to suggest, that he embraced chaos or violence. He just meant, that he distrusted authority. Mark believed, that the only true authority was contained within the age-old moral questions, that humans have been grappling with for all time.
Views
Highly informed by Nietzsche, Greek mythology and his Russian-Jewish heritage, Rothko's art was profoundly imbued with emotional content, that he articulated through a range of styles, that evolved from figurative to abstract. His search for new forms of expression led to his Color Field paintings, which employed shimmering color to convey a sense of spirituality.
Rothko maintained the social revolutionary ideas of his youth throughout his life. In particular, he supported artists' total freedom of expression, which he felt was compromised by the market. This belief often put him at odds with the art world establishment, leading him to publicly respond to critics, and occasionally refuse commissions, sales and exhibitions.
Mark was always confident and forthright in his belief. He distanced himself from the classification of his work as "non-objective color-filled painting". Instead, he stressed, that his paintings were based on human emotions of "tragedy, ecstasy and doom". He claimed, that art was not about the perception of formal relationships, but was understandable in terms of human life. He also denied being a colorist - despite the fact, that color was of primary importance to his paintings.
Quotations:
"A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience."
"To me art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those, willing to take the risk."
"There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: one day, the black will swallow the red."
"The most interesting painting is one, that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees."
"I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on."
"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. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point."
"There is more power in telling little, than in telling all."
"You think my paintings are calm, like windows in some cathedral? You should look again. I'm the most violent of all the American painters. Behind those colours there hides the final cataclysm."
"Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit."
Membership
Mark, together with Louis Harris, Adolph Gottlieb, Ilya Bolotowsky and Joseph Solman, formed the group called "The Ten". The painters exhibited together eight times between 1935 and 1939.
member
American Artists' Congress
,
United States
1940
member
American Academy of Arts and Letters (formerly the National Institute of Arts and Letters)
,
United States
1968
founding member
Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors
,
United States
1940
Personality
Mark's friend, Dore Ashton, described him as "a highly nervous, thin and restless".
Physical Characteristics:
Mark reportedly drank too much, smoked heavily, avoided exercise and maintained an unhealthy diet. In 1968, he suffered an aortic aneurysm and spent three weeks in a hospital. This brush with death would shadow him for the rest of his life. He became resentful, that his work was not being paid the proper respect and reverence he felt it deserved.
At the age of 66, Rothko committed suicide by taking an overdose of anti-depressants and slashing his arms with a razor blade. On the morning of February 25, 1970, his assistant, Oliver Steindecker, arrived at the East 69th Street studio to find him on the floor of the bathroom, covered in blood. Many of his friends were not entirely surprised, that he took his own life, saying, that he had lost his passion and inspiration. Some suggested, that like others, who had died before of an internal struggle, such as Arshile Gorky, Rothko had submitted to the tortured artist's ritual of self-annihilation.
Quotes from others about the person
"We talked and I found Rothko sympathetic, but I also found him very square. Later, he got pompous. But he always stayed a little square." - Clement Greenberg, an American essayist
"Rothko had reduced painting to volume, tone and color, with color as the vital element." - Harold Rosenberg, an American writer
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Nietzsche
Artists
Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall and Joan Miró
Connections
It was during a 1932 visit to Lake George, that Mark met Edith Sachar, a jewelry designer, whom he married later that year. The couple divorced in 1943.
Mark's second wife was Mary Alice "Mell" Beistle, whom he met in 1944 and married in early 1945. Their marriage produced two children - Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko.
In his later years, Rothko's second marriage became increasingly troubled, and his poor health and impotence, resulting from the aneurysm, compounded his feeling of estrangement in the relationship. Mark and his wife, Mell, separated on New Year's Day 1969.
Father:
Jacob (Yakov) Rothkowitz
Jacob (Yakov) Rothkowitz (born November 10, 1859 - died March 27, 1914) was a pharmacist and intellectual. According to Mark, his Marxist father was "violently anti-religious".
Mother:
Katherine Anna (Goldin) Rothkowitz
(born 1870 - died October 11, 1948)
ex-wife:
Mary Alice "Mell" Beistle
Mary Alice "Mell" Beistle (born January 3, 1922 - died August 26, 1970) was an illustrator.
ex-wife:
Edith Sachar
Edith Sachar (born 1912 - died 1981) was a sculptor and jewelry designer.
Son:
Christopher Rothko
Christopher Rothko (born August 31, 1963) is the second child of Mark Rothko and Mary Ellen "Mell" Beistle. He attended Yale University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature. Also, he holds a Doctorate in Psychology from the University of Michigan.
Christopher has worked as a clinical psychologist and has also written for national publications as a classical music critic. He is the editor of his father's book of philosophical writings, "The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art", published in 2004. His book of essays, "Mark Rothko from the Inside Out", was published in 2015.
Dr. Rothko has helped prepare more than two dozen Rothko exhibitions at museums and galleries around the globe and has lectured on his father's work at institutions, such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Hermitage Museum; the Fondation Beyeler, Basel; and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Dr. Rothko is Chair of the Board of the Rothko Chapel, an ecumenical chapel, designed by his father, and whose mission is to champion human rights and foster interfaith understanding.
Sister:
Sonia Allen (Rothkowitz) Rabin
Sonia Allen (Rothkowitz) Rabin (born March 19, 1889 - died March 5, 1985) was a dentist.
Brother:
Moishe (Rothkowitz) Roth
(born November 2, 1892 - died 1989)
Brother:
Albert (Rothkowitz) Roth
(born December 19, 1895 - died May 5, 1977)
Daughter:
Kate Rothko
Dr. Kate Rothko (born December 30, 1950) is a pathologist in Lakeville, Connecticut. She has been in practice for more than 20 years.
Friend:
Dore Ashton
Dore Ashton (born May 21, 1928 - died January 30, 2017) was a writer, as well as professor and critic on modern and contemporary art.
Clyfford Still (born November 30, 1904 - died June 23, 1980) was an American painter and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who created a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately following World War II.
Friend:
Aaron Director
Aaron Director (born September 21, 1901 - died September 11, 2004) was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Also, he was instrumental in the development of the field Law and Economics and the Chicago school of economics.
Ilya Bolotowsky (born July 1, 1907 - died November 22, 1981) was a leading early 20th-century painter, who created works in abstract styles.
colleague:
Joseph Solman
Joseph Solman (born January 25, 1909 - died April 16, 2008) was an American painter, who co-founded The Ten, a group of New York City Expressionist painters, in the 1930's. His most notable works include "Subway Gouaches", depicting travellers on the New York City Subway.
References
Rothko: The Color Field Paintings
Mark Rothko's iconic paintings are some of the most profound works of twentieth-century Abstract Expressionism. This collection presents fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's color field period (1949 - 1970) alongside essays by Rothko's son, Christopher Rothko, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator of painting and sculpture, Janet Bishop.
2017
Mark Rothko: From the Inside Out
Mark Rothko, world-renowned icon of Abstract Expressionism, is rediscovered in this wholly original examination of his art and life, written by his son. Synthesizing rigorous critique with personal anecdotes, Christopher, the younger of the artist's two children, offers a unique perspective on this modern master.
2015
Rothko
From his early development through to his most famous color fields, this book introduces the intellect and influence of Rothko's dramatic, intimate and revolutionary work.
2003
Mark Rothko
A book of heroic dimensions, this is the first full-length biography of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century - a man as fascinating, difficult and compelling as the paintings he produced. Drawing on exclusive access to Mark Rothko's personal papers and over one hundred interviews with artists, patrons and dealers, James Breslin tells the story of a life in art - the personal costs and professional triumphs, the convergence of genius and ego, the clash of culture and commerce.
1993
Mark Rothko: The Decisive Decade: 1940-1950
This work represents the first publication, dedicated exclusively to Mark Rothko's art during the critical formative period of the 1940's.
2012
Mark Rothko
This richly illustrated book reproduces 100 of Rothko's paintings, prints and drawings in full color and features commentaries by many noted art experts.
1998
Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel
From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, a fascinating exploration of the life and work of one of America's most famous and enigmatic postwar visual artists.
