Considered one of the most important figures in the Color Field Painting movement and modern art in general, Mark Rothko has often been hailed as one of the great masters of color. However, an analysis of his artistic career and the artist's own words reveal that, in reality, an exploration of color, or an interest in aesthetics in general, did not occupy a central place in his artistic vision.
Although Rothko's work evolved dramatically throughout his career, both visually and chromatically, a common thread runs through all his pieces: a philosophical concern with how to communicate the tragedy of the human condition through art. Despite his masterful use of color, especially in his mature work, it was this almost spiritual quest to evoke an experience of the transcendent that most preoccupied Rothko when creating his art.
Consuelo Kanaga, “Photograph of Mark Rothko, painter,” c. 1940s. © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher RothkoArtists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of Wikimedia.jpg
Rothko's early work is characterized by its focus on everyday scenes of New York life. With works such as Street Scene (c. 1937), Untitled (Female nude standing by a fireplace) (c. 1937), and Subway Scene (1938), Rothko depicts street scenes or moments from his personal life. These works often evoke a sense of unease; of claustrophobia created by the desolation of the scattered backgrounds or the tension between the almost sculptural forms that play with unreal proportions; or of loneliness, even when several figures are present. The color palette during this period is mostly muted, with a strong presence of grays, beiges, browns, and blacks. In The Romantics Were Prompted , Rothko's artistic manifesto published in 1947, the artist reflects that the works that move him most are “the pictures of the single human figure—alone in a moment of utter immobility,” something he apparently sought to replicate in his own works from the early years of his career (Breslin, 1993, p. 63). His interest in exploring this loneliness and desolation through everyday portraits reveals that Rothko was preoccupied with the darker side of human experience from the very beginning of his artistic life.
Mark Rothko, “Street Scene,” c. 1937. © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher RothkoArtists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of WikiArt
2. Mark Rothko, “Sacrifice of Iphigenia”, 1942.© Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher RothkoArtists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of WikiArt
In terms of visuals and content, Rothko's second-period works mark a drastic departure from his first. They are characterized by an obsession with the "spirit of myth" and stem from a conscious and intentional effort to create a universal language through mythological symbols. Along with Barnett Newman and Adolf Gottlieb, Rothko moved away from depictions of everyday scenes and immersed himself in symbolism, particularly Greco-Roman. In his choice of mythological symbols and scenes, Rothko often opted for the most tragic or dramatic stories: the failed sacrifice of Isaac at the hands of his father, Abraham (Sacrifice, 1946), ill omens and scenes of violence from the Oresteia (The Omen of the Eagle, 1942; The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, 1942), and Nietzsche's tragic vision of the god Dionysus (Heads, 1941-1942). During this period, which lasted almost a decade, Rothko's color palette remained relatively muted; touches of yellow, orange, green, or blue occasionally appeared, but gray and brown remained dominant, as before. In his unpublished notes for a joint letter to the New York Times by Rothko, Gottlieb, and Newman in 1943, Rothko reveals that a philosophical, rather than an aesthetic, vision guided his work during this time. Rothko wrote, “A picture is not its color, its form, or its anecdote, but an intent, entity, idea whose implications transcend any of these parts” (Breslin, 1993, p. 201). Here again, form and color are secondary tools in communicating the artist's vision of our existence.
Mark Rothko, “Untitled,” 1941-1942.© Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of WikiArt
In the late 1940s, Rothko gradually moved away from his mythological style, slowly simplifying his work into floating forms. Initially vertical, he later adopted what would become his most recognizable format: groups of two or three horizontal rectangular shapes floating on a field of color. Although his mature works may seem to mark an abrupt break from his earlier periods, Mark Rothko's desire to communicate the tragic realities of the human experience remained.
However, it is in his more abstract works that he finally finds the ideal language for his purpose. In this series of paintings, color plays a role unlike anything he had done before. His palette includes a much wider range of colors, generally vibrant and intense, although in the last years of his life he increasingly opted for whites, blacks, and dark grays. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Rothko arrived at his color combinations through theoretical study or an analysis of which colors would "look best" together. On the contrary, during this period Rothko again claimed to be uninterested in relationships of color or form.
"I may have used colors and shapes in the way that painters have not used them but this was not my purpose…The form follows the necessity of what we have to say. When you have a new view of the world you will have to find new ways to say it.”
— Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko, “Untitled (No. 11)”, 1957.© Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of WikiArt
In a conversation with the writer Selden Rodman in the late 1940s, where Rodman called him “a master of color harmonies and relationships on a monumental scale,” Rothko replied, “I’m not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else.” The painter reiterated that he was only interested in “…expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on” (Breslin, 1993, p. 309). On another occasion, in the late 1950s, in a talk with students at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, transcribed by the writer and art critic Dore Ashton, Rothko delved a little deeper into his process, offering an ironic list of how to make a work of art. The seven-point list makes no mention of specific techniques, formalism, or color combinations. On the contrary, he details the philosophical concerns that the artist must address in his work—death and a sense of our mortality, sensuality, tension, irony, play, the ephemeral and the casual, and finally hope. These, according to Rothko, are the “ingredients” or “formula” of a work of art, and an elegant sense of color is not listed among them (Breslin, 1993, p. 390).
Mark Rothko, “Untitled,” 1967.© Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of WikiArt
Whether intentional or not, it is clear that one of the most striking and powerful characteristics of Rothko's mature works is his use of color. The tension between the colors, and between the floating forms that, when viewed in person, seem to move, grow, and consume the viewer , is one of the factors that induces a spiritual and transcendental experience in all who contemplate his works. Although Rothko can certainly be described as a master of color, if the analysis ends there, it falls short. As Rothko himself said, “I may have used colors and shapes in the way that painters before have not used them, but this was not my purpose… The form follows the necessity of what we have to say. When you have a new view of the world, you will have to find new ways to say it” (Breslin, 1993, p. 395). Communicating this “new vision of the world” and of the human condition, which is clearly present in his work throughout his career, was the artist's primary concern, and it is the most compelling legacy of his oeuvre. Rothko's mature style, with its planes of color, is so impressive not because of its aesthetic combinations or its particularly vivid or beautiful colors, but because it evokes an almost religious experience and conveys "human drama" in a particularly transcendent way.
