Rothko and his multiforms

This past week we've studied Mark Rothko (1903-1970). He painted what he called "multiforms." He would have hated being lumped in with abstract artists like deKooning and Pollack. He wanted to break away from art that needed either figures or symbols, yet he wanted to impact his viewers emotionally and saw tragedy as the most noble subject. He described his new method as "unknown adventures in an unknown space," free from "direct association with any particular, and the passion of organism."

First, here are my students works. these are a about 24x36, tempra on paper:
I feel like Linze, a Senior, totally "gets" how calming and at the same time absorbing Mark Rothko's paintings were meant to be. This photo probably shows her painting too light. In person it is as deep and tranquil as any actual Rothko.

Ryan, a Freshman, also really got the concept of Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko's "multi-form" paintings. I feel like this has the feeling of being a window or a doorway onto a sunset.

Now for a couple of samples from Rothko himself so you can compare:


Here are some potent quotes:
"I am not an abstract painter. I am not interested in the relationship between form and colour. The only thing I care about is the expression of man's basic emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, destiny."

"The role of the artist, of course, has always been that of image-maker. Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint, our obsessive, subterranean and pictographic images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time. "

"Pictures must be miraculous."

"Since my pictures are large, colorful and unframed, and since museum walls are usually immense and formidable, there is the danger that the pictures relate themselves as decorative areas to the walls. This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative."

"The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point."

In the June 7, 1943 edition of the New York Times, Rothko, together with Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman, published the following brief manifesto:

"1. To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.

"2. This world of imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.

"3. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way.

"4. We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.

"5. 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 a good painting about nothing.

"We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.

Tragically, I have a trivial connection to Rothko. I'm not sure if he just believed his own philosophy about tragedy too much or if he suffered from depression or some other kind of mental illness, but he took his own live on the very day that I was born. February 25, 1970.