I’m 21 and have always been an art lover, mostly music and cinema, but recently I’ve started gaining a real interest in art history, specifically painting.
I am terrible at painting and drawing (maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated by it), and I’m far from an expert on the techniques used in painting or drawing. Still, I like to appreciate art, form my own humble opinions on the pieces I see, and learn whenever I can.
The latest artist I’ve been "exploring" (only online, I haven't seen any pieces in person yet) is none other than Mark Rothko.
As I’m sure you know, the prices his works fetch have caused some controversy. Many people feel that a canvas filled with three colored rectangles shouldn't be worth tens of millions of dollars.
I don’t like that mindset. I believe art holds different value for everyone. With painting, I feel the value often lies in the history of the piece and the artist, rather than just technical complexity, especially since most viewers (like me) don't have deep technical knowledge anyway.
Regarding Rothko: I actually like quite a few of his works. However, having never stood in front of one, I admit I struggle to understand what makes them so special that people praise them to high heaven or even cry when looking at them.
My honest and humble question is this: For those who have seen a Rothko in person and felt moved by it, do you think you would have felt the same way if you didn't know who Rothko was, or if there wasn't already all this mystique surrounding his name?
Is it the work itself that triggers these feelings, or is it the "aura" and reputation that the name Rothko carries?
Again, I’m asking this with total humility, just trying to educate myself and better understand his work and how art impacts us as humans and this goes for any artist, I'm just using Rothko as an example because his most famous works have that "simple" look that get people feeling like that's something so easy they could make it themselves. Thanks
Full disclosure, I love a Rothko and during my MA I used to go sit in the Rothko room at the Tate Modern to feel all my feelings, because therapy is expensive and Rothko at the Tate Modern is free.
Rothko is one of those artists that I feel often gets done dirty in reproduction, especially if you're looking at images on a computer screen or in a book, where they're either subject to screen resolution, super small, or both. There are a few Rothko monographs with really nice repros, but you'd have to search such things out, and even then it's not much like seeing one in person. Any photograph, even a very good one, is going to flatten the color field tremendously, so you don't really get the "floating" or "vibration" effect you do from physically being in front of one.
That said, people will have different feelings about art based on all sorts of things. It is possible to be deeply moved by a Rothko with no idea about Mark Rothko as a person or about AbEx as a movement, and it's also possible to look at a Rothko and have no feelings about it whatsoever as someone with a PhD in art history.
Check out the images of the Rothko chapel in Houston. The fineness of touch needed to create these whispers of tonal shifts is self-evident. This is a master at work. However, the fact that he committed suicide not long after this was completed does add to the feelings of depth and sadness in contemplating the work. The visual reaction and the mystique that heightens it can both be true.
Goodness, that is the most depressing place in Houston. You can FEEL his impending suicide when you walk in there. I went to a memorial service there for another artist and i couldn’t wait to go outside. Love Rothko, but this is deeper than that.
I would say that yes the context heightened my connection to it. Or some that and some of Vonnegut's Bluebeard. We all bring our own experience to a piece
Rothko's work has to be seen in person to be appreciated. I felt the same way until I finally saw some of his work. But it is true that one can never unbundle the social "mystique" from the art. They are always bound together, especially in modern abstract or expressionist type art. Rothko's work is an enduring fusion of the two. Cy Twombley is my version of your Mark Rothko. I've seen his work live as well. It just plain irritates me. To me, it's just scribbles and smears. Sometimes historical or social significance simply can't overcome a person's innate taste and preferences. I simply do not like his work and will never like it.
I'd say a bit of both.
Their artistry got them the notoriety needed to enhance the work's mystique.
That may not always be the case, but it usually is.
They force you to come to terms with colors. They are like viewing stained glass and glow in a way other paintings do not. (Larger Raphael’s have a similar effect.)
I had a similar experience struggling to “get” the genius of Rothko. Some great advice was to stand in front of the piece, pinpoint your focus onto one spot and ask yourself about “the mood.”
The immense challenge is to liberate yourself from the left side of your brain ascribing meaning and shift into the right side of your brain being present to…nothing in particular.
One might say that “you have to be out of your mind” to appreciate his genius fully.