Entries (RSS) The Rothko Book
Mark Rothko (1903 –70) was one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century. His mature works, often featuring large, rectangular expanses of colour that appear to hover or float over the canvas,are charged with symbolic meaning and human emotion. Few artists of any era have created works that elicit such an intense response. ‘The people who weep before my paintings’, he told an interviewer, ‘are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.’ Rothko himself was particularly suspicious of the interpretation of critics and even ceased writing about his own work in the early 1950s, not wanting to come between the viewer and their direct experience of his paintings. He was interested, he maintained, not in colour or form, but solely in portraying human emotions. In this lavishly illustrated survey, Bonnie Clearwater traces the development of Rothko’s career from his arrival in the United States as a child through to the formation of his mature style. She examines his initial influences and interaction with other artists and draws on his own letters and writings to provide the most comprehensive introduction yet to this complex and fascinating figure. |
