The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko Video Lecture - Art

(somber piano music)
Voiceover: In the 1950s, Mark
Rothko explored how forms
could float in space,
sometimes advancing toward you,
other times quietly
receding away from you.
Now by looking at his paintings,
there's a number of ways
that we could discern
how these effects are achieved.
However, Rothko was notoriously hermetic
about his studio practices.
We don't know all that
much about what materials
he used and how exactly he did it,
but by looking closely,
we can learn a lot.
Now how these forms
are liberated in space,
how they even have this
ability to move via color
is also about the way Rothko handles
the edges of these
floating cloud-like forms.
Rothko layered zone over
zone over zone of paint.
Here we can a very bright
blue, almost totally
overpainted by a dark burgundy.
It appears that Rothko
often flared out paint,
one layer over another and
as we look at the edges,
we realize that there's
kind of a buzzing sensation
as these two colors
compete for our attention
and almost vibrate against one another.
To further allow these forms to float off
and away from the surface of the canvas,
Rothko often softened the
corners of these forms
and here we see something
called a "turpentine burn",
where the artist likely
took some solvent on the rag
and scrubbed back into
the surface of the canvas,
blending all of those
colors together meanwhile
erasing a hard corner,
which would visually
locate that form in space.
In addition to leaving
hints of these colors
around the edges of forms,
crucially, Rothko allows
you to see through
veils of paint because
he painted so thinly.
Now let me show you exactly
how Rothko painted so thinly.
Rothko would add so much
turpentine to his paint,
that he would stain the canvas,
less painting on the canvas, but really
pushing his paint into it as a stain.
Because these stains are so thin,
you're able to read one color
quite literally through another.
In thicker areas of paint,
you see the over layer.
In thinner areas of that over layer,
you begin to see the under layer.
And because Rothko layered
color over color over color,
any given zone is infinitely complex.
Rothko thought that if the
viewer properly experienced
his paintings, that he or
she would very often cry.
We're quite literally
talking about a painter
who wanted his viewers to experience
the kind of emotions that
he very likely did himself.
It's not uncommon for people
to be emotionally moved,
perhaps even to cry
when listening to music.
However, it's very rare that visual art
can evoke those same emotions.
Rothko, if you will, is competing
on the territory of music,
trying to evoke very, very
strong emotions through paint.
The experience of viewing his painting
is a very somber one.
It lacks resolution.
Although it's very quiet,
although it's a quite
beautiful painting, it's a painting that
never has a finality to it.
It's one that almost unravels in time.