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Mark Rothko, a significant artist in his generation, still captures the attention of people worldwide. Born in Dvinsk, Russia (now Latvia), Marcus Rothkovich was the fourth child of Jacob Rothkovich, a prosperous pharmacist, and Anna Rothkovich. Due to the hostile environment for Zionist Jews in Russia, Jacob immigrated to the United States with his two older sons in 1910, eventually bringing the rest of his family in 1913. The family settled in Portland, Oregon. Despite graduating early from Lincoln High School, Mark showed more interest in music than visual art.
He received a scholarship to Yale University but found the environment conservative and exclusive, leaving without graduating in 1923. Mark's first exposure to art came when he visited a friend attending an art class and was captivated by a picture of a nude model. He moved to New York City and took Max Weber's still life and figure drawing classes at the Art Student's League, his only formal artistic training. He once remarked that his evolving style was influenced by a clearer understanding of his artistic content.
As the painter progresses in his work, moving through time, he aims for clarity.
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He believes that a painter creates for human beings, seeking their reactions as the true satisfaction. Rothko's artistic journey includes various shifts in style, from figurative to mythological themes, culminating in his multiform works with warm and dark colors. Early on, Rothko painted landscapes of Portland hills and created watercolors depicting the natural surroundings. One example is his Untitled work (color plate 4), where he captures the view from the hills south of Washington park, looking towards the eastern side of the river.
In his self-portrait painting, Rothko stands out against a brown and yellow background, appearing strong yet vulnerable.
His facial features convey both definition and character. Other early works depict scenes of the subway and streets of New York, where he used warm colors to create a sense of peace. The subway scene shows passengers as faceless figures moving through the flat screens and receding tracks.
Rothko's paintings of urban street scenes reveal a city life that lacks the vibrancy and freedom of nature. The sharply drawn lines in his street scene (color plate 1) separate public buildings from human figures against a black background, creating a distinction between public and private spaces. The architectural elements in the paintings are associated with art, highlighting classical influences (Breslin107). Rothko later transitioned his style to focus on myths and religion, incorporating mythological subjects, particularly from Greek mythology, in his work. This shift was influenced by contemporary political realities, as Newman later remarked that painting traditional subjects like flowers and nudes was no longer possible (Breslin163). In January 1942, Rothko exhibited a new painting titled "Antigone," marking a significant departure in his artistic direction.
The painting by Rothko shows several intermeshed figures seated on a row, rectangular, bench-like box. Quasi-classical heads compose one amalgamated from sitting on top of a row of bodies in its own horizontal register. The center tier of Antigone features a row of dismembered torsos. Between the head and the bodies are two pairs of arms nailed through the hands to the timbers which strongly refer to the crucifixion (Papas). “Antigone” reflects Rothko’s feelings about the war and his response to World War II, which plays an important role in accounts that discuss his search for a universalizing subject matter and imagery to go with it (Pappas). Rothko stated, “The immediate presence of terror, and fear recognition and absence of brutality in the natural world as well as the eternal insecurity of life.” Another painting titled “The Omen of the Eagle” explores the spirit of Myth, which is generic to all myths at all times (Breslin 166). In The Omen of the Eagle, Rothko equated mythological consciousness with pantheistic unity merging man, bird, and beast.
Instead of using well-known stories like the tragedies of Aeschylus, the Omen of Eagle aggressively presents something real and repressed in the viewers themselves. While criticizing war as a primal irrationality, the artwork seeks an irrational communicative power aimed at the unconscious (Breslin 168). In 1946, Rothko created new paintings that marked the development of his signature style. Known as "Multi-forms," these paintings involved a series of bold rejections in an attempt to eliminate myth, symbol, landscape, figure, and any kind of drawing to focus on painting patches of hazy, luminous color (Breslin 232). The artwork features warm, intense colors with a variety of shapes and hues, such as Untitled (1948: color plate 13), which consists of glowing, brightly colored, soft-edged, translucent, predominantly horizontal, two-dimensional forms.
According to Breslin (235), the shapes in Rothko's paintings come in various geometric forms like circles, ovals, and rectangles, which are arranged in an organized manner. Most of the shapes are unique and irregular, giving the painting an amorphous quality. Rothko does not manipulate external elements to convey his vision; instead, he allows his inner vision to emerge on the canvas through patches of color. By eliminating obstacles like memory, history, and geometry, Rothko creates a language of deep psyche in his art. His colors achieve a new luminosity, as if the paint itself could communicate with the viewer. Rothko described his paintings as dramas, with the shapes acting as performers. One example is his painting No.16 (the green and red in tangerine) from 1956.
According to Weiss, Rothko suggested that the tangerine symbolized "the normal, happier side of living" while the dark blue green represented "black clouds or worries that always hang over us." Rothko intended the large scale of his canvases to create an intimate and human experience for the viewer, rather than a grandiose one. He believed his paintings were intense and intimate, providing a key to the ideal relationship between the viewer and the artwork. Rothko likened small pictures to novels and large pictures to dramas in which one directly participates. He even recommended a viewing distance as close as eighteen inches. Despite these explanations, the public continued to criticize his work.
The two art-journal reviews of Rothko’s 1949 Parsons Exhibit primarily focused on composition, with Margaret Breuing judging that the paintings lacked form or design and Tomas Hess criticizing Rothko's emphasis on grand gestures and hue scale. Rothko viewed color as a means of expressing various moods in painting, with critics often viewing him as more of a colorist rather than an artist. His work took a darker turn in the late 1950s, signifying a significant shift in his artistic vision.
Here he utilized a color palette of red, maroon, brown, and black. Rothko's darker works consist of several variations of maroon that have come to be associated with a sense of drama or tragedy. Some view this wine color as having ceremonial and ritualistic meanings in our society (Weiss 269). Rothko desired to be understood and seen in a profound way. In his chapel project, the use of dark paintings symbolizes a significant shift in Rothko's artistic vision. Breslin notes that Dominique de Menil described the paintings in the chapel as "intimate and timeless," encompassing us without confining us (Weiss 284). The dark surfaces of the paintings do not obstruct our gaze; rather, we can look through these purplish browns and into the infinite (Weiss 274).
Mark Rothko, a notable figure who transitioned through various artistic styles from landscape and portrait to his iconic motif of soft, rectangular forms floating on a stained field of color. His work was heavily influenced by mythology and philosophy, resulting in an image so distinctive that he often did not sign his paintings.
His identity was spread across his canvases, blending personal and marketing imperatives: a distinctive object, a "name" brand, a known value, all enhancing their marketability. He aimed to cultivate a signature style with unique expressions that highlighted the painter's individuality while also being easily recognizable. Working on various forms until his death in 1970 at age 66, his fame surged significantly in the years that followed.
Mark Rothko: A Journey Through Art. (2016, Dec 20). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/mark-rothko-essay
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