“They was a presence, just pure abstraction. When I think about Rothko, it is colour first then exuberance. The luminosity and radiance of colour that is so striking.”
Ellsworth Kelly
Rothko has a uniqueness to his practice, his work has become iconic in its own right. But there is a mystery surrounding the artist himself and what drove him to create these empowering ethereal paintings. Rothko’s art flourished in an awkward conjunction in art history, trapped between the end of famed abstract expressionist that preceded him and the pop artists that caught much of the attention of the art world. Still his work has managed to pierce through these styles and movements that often conceal art work. Rothko’s practice is one of a kind, the endeavours that ultimately lead to his suicide were a constant deliberation in his life and work. Rothko had a strive to create work that expressed unrivalled emotions on a transcendent level and build these into his paintings.
Transcendence became this underlying driving factor that attached itself to Rothko’s work so ingenuously. Undoubtably the work of Rothko has a powerful physicality, the large scale on which he works, the lack of representation within the frame that draws us closer and closer in. Rothko had this quest to embed qualities beyond the materially of paint or the physicality of the painting to heighten his art. You cant help feeling an overwhelming visceral connection on encountering the paintings. The audience is graced with a contemplative exquisite painting. The impression that Rothko leaves is fundamental, it draws the energy from its audiences and only allows them to marvel in enchantment. Rothko’s work has managed to move beyond art and has become an encounter.
“When I visited the Tate in London see the large collection there. I came with great expectations but the experiences was a bit strange, like visiting a church. It was more an experience about mystery than about painting.”
Gerhard Richter
Richter explains how the presence of the paintings transforms the act of view the art. There is something chapel like when entering the room that hold these paintings. The paintings he mentions are the Seagrams Mural’s, the same paintings that I had been collecting images of. Richter would have encountered these paintings at the Tate Britain instead of where they are housed now in a room in the Tate Modern and there are many arguments to which museum housed the work better. There is this calming quality to the room that I've encountered at the Tate Modern, patrons enter the room at a whisper and experience the calm meditativeness of the work on the wall. The darkened lighting relaxes the view and this rich colour seeps from the paint in to our eye. The Guardian lists this room in the Tate as one of the top 10 places for self reflection in the world. The paintings themselves are doing more than just being appreciated in terms of aesthetics. For certain people these paintings to reach that level of transcendental beauty that Rothko tried so desperately to achieve.
“The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”
Mark Rothko
