Art, Poetry & Essays • But not necessarily in that order.
Unlike Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art or Ben Shahn’s The Shape of Content, Mark Rothko’s own writing The Artist’s Reality wasn’t published during his lifetime. The book had remained merely a rumor among his friends and family until it was discovered by accident. Christopher Rothko has done a great service to the art […]
Rothko: The Color Field Paintings comes as close as one can to providing a quiet place to regularly meditate with Mark Rothko’s work. Unlike many art books, Christopher Rothko, Mark Rothko’s son, has wisely chosen to let the art speak for itself without volumes and volumes of text. The two introductory essays, one by Christopher […]
This book is for people who want to be a student of Mark Rothko’s life and work. If you’re not committed to immersing yourself in his letters, random notes, and the editor’s attempts to make sense of Rothko’s scribbles, then you will be disappointed with this book. If you’re interested in hearing Rothko in his […]
In the 1950s, Mark Rothko painted with striking color. Eye catching, heart throbbing, delicious colors. Then in the 1960s, his paintings shifted toward grays, blacks, whites, and earth tones. I have been told, and you may have heard, that the shift from bright colors to somber tones came from a descent into depression and eventual […]
Over the years, I’ve seen a number of Mark Rothko paintings. I’ve visited them in museums in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. And as I tried to stand quietly before the paintings, I have often become conscious of the artificial environment—a Rothko hanging next to a Pollock like a guest at a cocktail party—and I […]