Au milieu du brouhaha des couvertures impressariales, il y a une autre sorte de point de vue, l’art, le prophète qui voit du noir brillant comme la plus belle nuit du luisant univers, et qui donne au moins une chance á la réalité d’exister par la perception unique, solitaire, autrement dite, autrement vue, réalité du voir, et de l’Autre, la possibilité d’une relation artistique, créatrice et mortelle, en sa conscience même, donc en sa qualité de l’Un . Mark Rothko
Alternately radiant and dark, Rothko’s art is distinguished by a rare degree of sustained concentration on pure pictorial properties such as color, surface, proportion, and scale, accompanied by the conviction that those elements could disclose the presence of a high philosophical truth. Visual elements such as luminosity, darkness, broad space, and the contrast of colors have been linked, by the artist himself as well as other commentators, to profound themes such as tragedy, ecstasy, and the sublime. Rothko, however, generally avoided explaining the content of his work, believing that the abstract image could directly represent the fundamental nature of “human drama.” The Mark Rothko exhibition (May 3 – August 16, 1998) is the first comprehensive American retrospective of the artist’s work in twenty years. With 115 works on canvas and paper encompassing all phases of Rothko’s career, the exhibition reveals the remarkable depth of Rothko’s artistic achievement. This web feature includes a selection of works in the exhibition, as well as a number of paintings and drawings in the Gallery’s permanent collection, some of which are not currently on view. |
One of the preeminent artists of his generation, Mark Rothko is closely identified with the New York School, a circle of painters that emerged during the 1940s as a new collective voice in American art. During a career that spanned five decades, he created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting. Rothko’s work is characterized by rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale; yet, he refused to consider his paintings solely in these terms. He explained: It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.
By 1949 Rothko had introduced a compositional format that he would continue to develop throughout his career. Comprised of several vertically aligned rectangular forms set within a colored field, Rothko’s “image” lent itself to a remarkable diversity of appearances. In these works, large scale, open structure and thin layers of color combine to convey the impression of a shallow pictorial space. Color, for which Rothko’s work is perhaps most celebrated, here attains an unprecedented luminosity. His classic paintings of the 1950s are characterized by expanding dimensions and an increasingly simplified use of form, brilliant hues, and broad, thin washes of color. In his large floating rectangles of color, which seem to engulf the spectator, he explored with a rare mastery of nuance the expressive potential of color contrasts and modulations.
Tate Modern presents an exhibition by one of the world’s most famous and best-loved artists, Mark Rothko. This is the first significant exhibition of his work to be held in the UK for over 20 years.
Tate Modern’s iconic ‘Rothko Room’ works are reunited for the first time with works from Japan. The Seagram Murals were originally commissioned for The Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building New York.
Rothko’s iconic paintings, composed of luminous, soft-edged rectangles saturated with colour, are among the most enduring and mysterious created by an artist in modern times. In the exhibition his paintings glow meditatively from the walls in deep dark reds, oranges, maroons, browns, blacks, and greys.
The exhibition will also focus on other work in series, such as the Black-Form paintings, his large-scale Brown and Grey works on paper, and his last series of Black on Grey paintings, created in the final decade of his life from 1958-1970.
Rothko is the must-see exhibition of the year – book your tickets now to avoid missing out.
”The whole of man’s experience becomes his model and in that sense it can be said that all of art is a portrait of an idea.” Mark Rothko
