Catharsis

Incommunicability

Franco Anselmi

Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley #5, 1953

Oil on canvas, 134.6 x 134.6 cm Private collection © 2014 The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

In addition, while the NGA scans (the LVuitton group too) are all gorgeous in printed form, digitally some look better than others. This is all highly subjective, of course. The old scan is still floating around but , you ask, why did you replace it?

Basically this scan is brighter and has more detail (though it’s not huge in size). really getting these white highlights gives the painting so much energy and movement it didn’t have before. It just seems more alive this way. The old one looks like lower light and I liked the saturation of it, but this one sparkles more.

𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗞𝗢

At his exhibition in the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1949 by Aaron Siskind

(this is a good scan, you should blow it up and see the detail)

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."

Helen Frankenthaler