Mark Rothko Video Lecture - Humanities/Arts

Abstract expressionism
is often divided
into two classifications,
one of which
is action painting, which is
the work typified by Bill de
Kooning or Jackson
Pollock, where you feel
the action of the
artist on the canvas.
The other side doesn't
really have a name,
but you might call
it still painting,
because in fact, there's
an absence of gesture,
or activity, or
angst on the canvas.
Instead, what you have
is quiet contemplation,
a mood of deep
immersion in color.
In a Rothko painting, you
have three or four zones
of different thinly-washed
layers of color
all interacting with each
other in a subtle way.
Not like bold
contrasts, but instead
almost swimming into each other
to get your eye and your brain
working optically to almost
immerse your consciousness
in these fields that
Rothko has created.
They may look simple.
On the other hand,
to really figure out
how he created those effects
is far more complicated.
And it's not easy to understand
what colors are actually
in which layers on the canvas.
The mystery of the
whole thing is actually
appropriate to Rothko's goals.
He's wanting to
make a picture which
advertises its own mystery,
its solitary quality,
its introspective quality.
It's a quality that he felt was
reflecting his own state while
painting.
And I think it's
a quality that he
wanted to inspire
in the viewers who
were in the space
of his paintings.
In the exhibition, we've
installed an entire room
only of Rothko, not
only for the reason
that we have many beautiful
paintings to present,
but because of this power they
have to create an environment.
You feel the intimacy
of the atmosphere
that he has made for you.
The point of Rothko's art is to
provide a universe for viewers
that they don't have
in the real world.
There is definitely a spiritual
side to what Rothko was doing.
It's not at all an
ironic art, or a kind
of calculated, clever,
sort of tactical art.
In fact, one of the
quotations of Rothko's that's
repeated often is,
"Silence is so accurate."
What he was really doing
was extolling the power
of an abstract
language to say so much
more than words could do.
I think when you look
at a painting by Rothko,
you also realize what is meant
by the term "all over," which
is often used in regard
to Abstract Expressionist
painting.
It's not like there's a
center point and the edges,
or the corners, or the sides
are of lesser importance
than the core.
In fact, the action of the
painting, if there is action,
is distributed equally from
top to bottom, and from side
to side.
And there's no way
that you can complete
your experience of that
picture without letting
your eye wander, or
even your body wander,
all over the surface
of that canvas.
You end up feeling like you're
in a zone with no gravity,
almost as if there
is not a weight.
Rothko often said that
he liked his paintings
to be hung rather
low to the floor.
The reason for that is that
he really saw these paintings
as something that
mattered in terms
of the physical
presence of the viewer.
The physical presence of the
viewer starts with their feet
being on the floor.
And he wants the paintings
to not literally begin
on the floor, but as close to
that as is reasonably possible,
so that you're almost
standing in the painting,
rather than admiring some kind
of separate object on the wall.
Your space is the painting
space and vice versa.
Like many of the artists in
the Abstract Expressionism era,
Rothko did not want his
paintings to be framed.
Paintings that were made on
easels and then put on frames
were understood to be
illusions of another scene,
of an imagined place.
Rothko and his
peers did not feel
that they were alluding
to another space,
or place, or time with
what they were making.
What they were making
was the reality
that they wanted to
present to the viewer.
And for that reason, it
didn't need the borderline
of a frame separating its
reality from their reality.
What they wanted was
the joint reality
of spectator and painting.