interzone

No figures. No stories. No explanations. 🤌

Rothko didn’t paint people. He painted feelings so large they couldn’t fit into words.

In a world that constantly demands explanations, Rothko created rooms where emotion could exist without words. 🤏

But. Why talk about the chapel and then proceed to show zero pictures of it ? Do you not know what it looks like, because that's funny to make a hook for something you are showing and then never mention it.

Rothko didn't "paint emotion" or "blurry rectangles," the only two choices apparently, when you make a Rothko video. There's not some science to it. It can be interesting to point out these kinds of brain effects but it's so intensely overdone with Rothko that it's just more of the coercive language of the art market.

People do get something out of his paintings but I wish bloggers would stop trying to make a case for it like they are selling Matcha. People like art. Different kinds, but they come for the same feelings for Rothko that you get with music or literature. It's not that none of these adjectives apply, it's more that it turns people into this mush of buzzwords about eternity. Selling Rothko with this mantle of spiritualism happened maybe because of the real feelings people had about his paintings, but it's becoming this weird influencer speak to justify high priced euro trips.

Rothko paintings can suggest a feeling of eternity, but if that's what you get from it, I am sure you will find your own words without 100 videos such as this. Rothko wanted you to feel what you felt, the last thing he wanted was for you to be told what to feel.

Mark Rothko, No. 7 (Dark Over Light), 1954

oil on canvas, 90 ⅛ × 58 ⅝ in. (228.8 × 148.8 cm), Nahmad Collection

𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗞𝗢, Untitled, 1968

Acrylic on watercolor paper

40 9/16 x 27 1/16 in. (103 x 68.7 cm)

Verso: Mark Rothko

«The Birthday Party

Backstage at The Venue, Victoria, London, UK

18 May 1981

𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗞𝗢

No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), 1964

signed, partially titled and dated 'MARK ROTHKO 1964 #15' (on the reverse) oil on canvas

93 × 69 in. (236.2 × 175.3 cm.)

📸 thanks to Mark Cashion who takes a lot of good pictures from auction houses and contributes them

© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

This is one of my personal favorites and it's up for auction because Agnes Gund, who bought it directly from Rothko, died and she was one of the good people in that world.

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1968

Acrylic on paper

92 X 77 inches, Oil on canvas.

Collection of Adriana and Robert Mnuchin

© Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/ARS

Mark Rothko Untitled 1969 Acrylic on watercolor paper mounted on hardboard 24 1/8 x 18 3/16 in. (61.3 x 46.2 cm) The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc., 1985B85.0644. © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Elie Posner

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1959, seen at The National Museum of Norway, oil on watercolor paper, 38 X 25 inches.

Today we remember 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗞𝗢, who died on this day in 1970. Rothko's work has left an indelible impression on millions of people. It is work that draws us every day into museums and makes us travel great distances for the sole purpose of communion with it.

The fact that art exists at all is a steady miracle. It lives embattled, censored and manipulated, and still has managed to survive since people first identified the nature of their consciousness. It is the sincerity of art, rather than its fashion, that keeps it hanging on. In our world, it is only natural for honesty to be immutably compelling.

Many viewers have had transformative emotional experiences interacting with Mark Rothko paintings, the same kinds of experiences Rothko claimed to have painting them.

In his 1958 lecture at Pratt, Rothko's last public statement, he said,"Many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them."