Rothko and His Art World

05/11/2019, Book Review

During my visit of Tate Modern, I was at the first time to directly touch Rothko’s artworks and get moved deeply by his huge paintings at an intimate distance. Subsequently, I bought Jacob Baal-Teshuva’s book Rothko in order to find the reason of the powerful impression of these works. From this book, I could have an overview of Mark Rothko (1903-1970), as known as a great influential painter and protagonist in the process completely revolutionising the essence and design of abstract painting in American modern art history, and his development of personal art style, art thinking and views.

Last century when the American art was dominated by two currents——Regionalists focusing on rural American population and Social Realism reflecting urban life of the Great Depression during postwar time of WWI——which both upheld a rather conservative attitude to figurative representation, the vanguard of abstract art who were inspired by exhibitions of Dada and Surrealism from Europe had begun their passion and enthusiasm even under a poor quality of life. Following the new trend, Rothko was regraded as a leader and pioneer of American abstract art group.

When I trace back to his birth in this book, I occasionally found that Rothko’s sophisticated childhood and teenager time had a deep impact on his final way towards art and emotions. Born as a Russia-Jewish (named Marcus Rothkovich) in a merchant family of a well-educated class (his father was a pharmacist) but experienced several immigrations during the turbulence of nations and anti-Jewishness, Rothko had to confront the hit from strictly religious education of Jew and later American culture shock as an immigrant when he was a kid. Although he acted very intellectually at school, he still became sensitive to the atmosphere of radical emotions——which are the most motif in his works.

Mark Rothko’s painting career can be divided into four period: the Realist years (1924-1940); the Surrealist years (1940-1946); the Transitional years (1946-1949); and the Classical years (1949-1970).

In his first stage after university studies and commencing art career in 1920s, Rothko was mainly inspired by two artists: Max Web, who taught still life and had an impressively romantic idealism emphasising the power of emotion and spirit——which opened Rothko’s mind of art representations and motif; and Milton Avery, known as “the American Matisse”, whose simplified forms, expressive application and thin layering of colour still exists in some of Rothko’s mature works. Like we could see in his subway series of paintings, Rothko used simplified colour fields as different architectural elements isolated or in couples, but all compressed to a nearly planar picture surface in order to draw the thorough urban or downtown space, and big city light. Based on his own story as a immigrant outsider looking at subway as a metaphoric place of alienation, of homelessness and of the ‘underworld’ of minds, Rothko chose an expression of cleanly figures from delimited spaces that seemed to be locked up or imprisoned in alternately channeled and obstructed space. Thus, these paintings are defined by expressive distortions with undertones of melodrama. And Rothko kept this kind of lyrical and mythical theme till the mid-1940s.

From the second period, Rothko suffered hard life of broken marriage and precarious financial problems under a conversing world where art group was fighting for independence and free expression away from nationalist, political, economic or historical issues dominating through war time. Therefore, he made a radical shift in the art style and went deeply into Greek myths and music. Rothko considered myths as an access to emotional roots which is effectively cross-cultural, including barbarism, pain, passions and violence as tragic phenomena. In terms of this point, Rothko renewed the interpretation of the “essence of the myth” and viewed observing art paintings as transporting prophetic or ethical messages. He also thought music to have same expressive power as abstract art. When influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, Rothko took the visual dissolution of the human form and became totally saturated with colours, like music. He was soon affected by Clyfford Still’s picture of haunting, dim and raw, lacking any figuration, with large and unrefined fields of dark colour interspersed with a few patches shining bright, and plains in North Dakota. His shapes began to systematically eliminate any figurative elements in his paintings as “unknown adventures in an unknown space”.

The year 1946 was considered as a turning point in Rothko’s artistic career. From that year, Rothko’s art went into a crucial period named as his new series of pictures, the “multiforms”——which had a transition from pervious biometric forms to multifarious, blurred colour blocks without permanence or depth, and seeming to grow organically from inside the picture itself. He called these “organisms” full of the passion for self-expression. During the following winter, he reduced his physical objects to two or three rectangular and overlaid colour blocks. In order to creat a feeling of a mysterious quality and an intimate sense to humanity, Rothko chose a much larger format of his works and recommended an ideal distance of 45 centimetres in a dim environment that can make observers feel inside the picture. People can experience the colour blocks’ inner movement and absence of clear borders like two characters expanding outward in all directions or falling into dramatic conflict through the tension of contrasting colours. To some extent, it likes a tragic emotion within the tension of eruption, fixation and flotation.

Since 1950s, Rothko was exploring for forms owning life themselves, something beyond material boundaries and creating communication among basic human emotions. At the beginning, he preferred bright, radiating reds and yellows which brought a sensuous or even ecstatic feeling and a religious power into his works. In his words, his art is more alive and could breath than just being objects.

Although Rothko made a great breakthrough on his art, he lived up and down these years. He ended the friendship with Barnett Newman after an exhibition, which harmfully affected him deeply. Then he made another exhibition in 1958 as a vital step in the assertion of American painting in Europe, letting his works more valuable to the public. Meanwhile, he did some commissions about murals and one year later had a travel for recess. When came to the 1960s, many young artists imported British PoP Art and developed it into new, previously unseen forms in the USA. Due to its basis from the visual world of mass media and advertisement to be the commonplace, PoP Art subsequently gained widespread popularity, even though it was seen as a king of “anti-art” by the old New York School of Abstract Expressionists. Some such as Rothko criticised it with his angry conclusion.

During Rothko’s last two years of his life, he continued his art exploration of dark colours. In his opinion, Rothko wanted his paintings to be intimate and timeless. Hence, he placed his pictures (the Seagrams) together in one room in order to create a universe of stillness and lead visitors into an atmosphere of meditative contemplation and awe. Before his death of suicide, his last works appeared rigid, dark and hermetic, which seemed to reflect his innerself: despondent, depressive, frustrated, melancholic, lonely.

In conclusion, Mark Rothko’s touch of religious thoughts, and tragic experience of violent history and separated family all putted himself into a long-lasting pursuit of emotions, love and divine sense of the unknown, the God, in other words. These are all illustrated in his paintings. And his art world has a strong nexus with his spiritual world and real experiences.