Oil paint on canvas. 2305x1527x38mm
Rothko's paintings are well known for consisting of few, broad rectangles, centred on large canvases. In their iconic presence, his paintings are characteristically simple and the stillness that follows from this effect is stunning and gradual. The directness of strokes and brash colours used and emphasised by the canvas size, but so elementary are his pictures that they come across as direct and commanding. So unassuming we are until it's presence becomes, perhaps, haunting, with its suggestions of emptiness and absence.
This absence often strikes a chord within many viewers, evoking emotions described as mystical, spiritual and religious.
On the surface Rothko's work is unremittingly abstract, his paintings carrying massive refusal for narrative. Although he often rejected the notion that his paintings were abstract, instead referring to them as "realistic" as having "real and specific" meaning, although was continually vague about what these paintings would be subjectifying.
A common assumption with Rothko's almost obsessive nature over the reuse of a simple graphic format is that he could concentrate more thoroughly on the affects he could achieve by manipulating colour. Although, he repeatedly denied being labelled as a colourist, instead explaining he simply uses colours an instrument for expressing something larger, the 'subjects' in his pictures.
Various descriptions of his classic paintings:
"window on an odd sunset"
"old stained glass windows"
"powerful sunlight pouring through thick panes of glass and open doorways"
"architecture seen through layers of moving fog"
"landscapes bathed in thick fog"
"sidereal landscapes"
"cosmic haze"
"tinted, hallucinated cloth"
"segments of metal or stone tablets that once carried inscriptions"
"phosphorescent surface of a T.V screen"
"a Buddhists television set"
Richard Wollheim observed: "The spectator will always understand more than the artist intended, and the artist will always have intended more than any single spectator understands.
Oil paint, acrylic paint, glue tempera and pigment on canvas. 2667x3812mm
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