Rothko Research Articles

Color as field: American painting, 1950-1975

Colour field painting, which emerged in the United States in the 1950s, is based on radiant, uninflected hues. Exemplified by the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons and Frank Stella, among others, these stunningly beautiful and impressively scaled paintings constitute one of the crowning achievements of postwar American abstract art. Color as Field offers a long-overdue reevaluation of this important aspect of American abstract painting. The authors examine how colour field painting rejects the gestural, layered and hyper-emotional approach typical of Willem de Kooning and his followers, yet at the same time develops and expands ideas about all-overness and the primacy of colour posited by the work of other members of the abstract expressionist generation, such as Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. From the fresh historical standpoint of the 21st century, this fascinating reassessment ranges across the artists' individual approaches and their shared understandings, concluding with insights into the ongoing legacy of post-1970s colour field painting among present-day artists.

DalÍ’s Homage to Rothko: a Defense against Fusion with the Victim

This paper explores the thematic content of a painting by Salvador Dalí in homage to artist Mark Rothko, completed after the latter’s suicide. The manifest title of the work suggests respect for Rothko, but the latent intent of the painting, the author suggests, is more of a memoriam to Rothko in a complex identification with him. Among other psychological issues, the author elaborates on two factors that may have played a part in Dalí’s artistic reaction to Rothko’s suicide: the death of the artist’s infant brother nine months before his own birth, and his lifelong struggle against fusion with the victim (Orgel 1974a, 1974b).

The Opticality of Pictorial Representation

In Art and Knowledge James Young explores the visual arts of the past hundred years and notes that the most striking development has been the emergence of the avant-garde style, adopted by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, and Andy Warhol.1 All works employing the avant-garde style, Young argues, are discoursedependent representations: they represent what they do via an associated body of discourse, which is usually the theory of art or the ideology of the artist. Young regards such representations as being more akin to language rather than to traditional works of visual art, as all typical instances of the latter are thought to represent in a direct manner: traditional works, according to Young, are illustrative, that is, they just show what they represent. According to Young, the discontinuity between traditional and avant-garde visual art rests on the fact that the latter has ceased to be visual. And it has ceased to be visual in a twofold sense. On

The Politics of Abstraction: The Tenth Inter-American Conference Caracas, Venezuela, 1954

THE POLITICS OF ABSTRACTION: THE TENTH INTER-AMERICAN CONFERENCE CARACAS, VENEZUELA, 1954 Monica Boulton On March 1, 1954, Venezuela’s President General Marcos Pérez Jiménez gave a welcoming speech to the Western hemisphere’s government figures attending the Tenth Inter-American Conference, being hosted in Caracas, Venezuela. Sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS),1 the Conference sought to foster economic, political, and cultural relations among the countries of the hemisphere. Despite local and international criticism of the anti-democratic practices of the repressive military regime of Pérez Jiménez, the organizers of the Conference promoted a climate of freedom and democracy. They emphasized the precepts of the OAS Charter, which stressed the solidarity of the American nations based on democratic principles. The hosting nation offered a variety of cultural events for the purpose of entertaining the delegates. Among these activities were two exhibits in separate venues that showcased artistic developments: La Pintura en Venezuela organized by federally-funded Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas (MBA) and Six American Painters presented by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).2 La Pintura en Venezuela offered a broad range of Venezuelan work that went from Pre-Columbian objects to contemporary abstract paintings, specifically geometric abstraction. The coordinators of this show presented abstraction as the culmination of a progressive development in Venezuela’s visual arts. Six American Painters, the U.S. artistic representation, consisted of one work each by six artists working in the style of Abstract Expressionism: William Baziotes, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.3 The presentation of Six American Painters in Caracas indicated the ascendancy and importance of abstract art in the United States. This interest in abstraction seemed to demonstrate a unified vision among United States and Venezuelan artists, U.S. foreign-policy makers, and the administration of Pérez Jiménez. What made abstraction so appealing to these various groups? I argue that despite the semblance of unity, each faction used abstract art to promote diverse and in some cases conflicting ideas and aims. This paper studies the means by which each group used abstract art to advocate cultural, political, economic, and ideological platforms during the Cold War period. The exhibition catalog of La Pintura en Venezuela culminated with the late 1940s and early 1950s geometric abstraction of Alejandro Otero, 83 SECOLAS Annals, Volume 52, 2008 Pascual Navarro, Oswaldo Vigas, Alirio Oramas, and Mateo Manaure.4 In these works, such as in Otero’s La Serie del Pote Azul (c. 1948), the absence of regional and representational forms as well as allegorical themes signaled the departure from Venezuela’s mainstream artistic tendencies, which focused on local landscape and historical episodes. Although the organizers of La Pintura en Venezuela intended to present abstraction as the new direction for Venezuelan art, only seven of the 132 works featured in the catalogue were non-representational. The small number of works in geometric abstraction indicated that history and landscape paintings were still favored by the cultural elite. In Otero’s La Serie del Pote Azul, a work from his Cafeteras (Coffeepots) series, the blue cooking pot referenced in the title was not discernible.5 It was transformed into planes of color fragmented by strong diagonal lines, and following Picasso’s Cubist grid, there was no distinction between forms and ground. Otero removed the visible form of the real object, as if revealing its inner structure. Otero asserted that in his Cafeteras, “There is a set organization, a structure, a series of forms that will result in a rhythmic idea. . . . But the process has not been a simple stylization. It is a comprehension. . . . It now exists in space. It is another concept. Intuitively, it is another situation.”6 In using abstraction, Otero was attempting to create a new reality that was autonomous and independent of the familiar world of mundane objects such as the blue cooking pot. Otero developed his Cafeteras in Paris after obtaining, in 1945, a travel grant from the Venezuelan Ministry of Education. Here he became a participant in the international art movement that went against tradition by rejecting naturalistic imitations of nature. In this period after the Second...

HAUNTED ABSTRACTION

Most scholars have not attempted to interpret Mark Rothko’s paintings of the very early 1940s in other than general ways. They have either followed the artist’s statements that the paintings engaged generic or universal themes, or have investigated the ideological work performed by abstract expressionism. Yet Rothko repeatedly stressed the notion that his works had subject matter even while he circumscribed the limits of their interpretation. Examining the iconography of some of these early works reveals that they almost certainly did address specific, contemporary subject matter that the artist had an interest in suppressing, particularly at the time. That subject matter was deeply connected to his identity as a Jew. The strategies by which Rothko negotiated that subject matter and its suppression were part of his self‐fashioning as an artist.

American artists, Jewish images

Born over a fifty-year period, the artists in this volume represent several generations of twentieth-century artists. Examining the work of such influential artists as Mark Rothko, Max Weber, and Ruth Weisberg, Baigell directly confronts their Jewish identity - as a religious, cultural, and psychological component of their lives - and explores the way in which this influence is reflected in their art. Drawing upon their common heritage, Baigell reveals the different ways these artists responded to the Great Immigration, the Depression, the Holocaust, the founding of the state of Israel, and the rise of feminism. Each artist's varied Jewish experiences have contributed to the creation of a visual language and subject matter that reflect both Jewish assimilation and Jewish continuity in ways that inform modern Jewish history and changes in present-day America. Offering a fresh examination of well-known artists, as well as long overdue attention to lesser-known artists, Baigell's incisive observations are indispensable to our understanding of the Jewish themes in these artists' work. Written in a lively and spirited prose, this book is compulsory reading for those interested in modern American art and Jewish studies.

Concrete and Abstract Thinking Styles and Art Preferences in a Sample of Serious Art Collectors

59 art collectors (30 men, 29 women) were given the Gregorc Style Delineator to classify them by thinking styles and a questionnaire regarding their art preferences. Their ages ranged from 33 to 99 years (M=59.5 yr.). Abstract art was preferred by 34% of the sample. Representational art, such as Dutch Masters and Impressionism, was preferred by 66% of the sample. Of the collectors who preferred nonobjective abstract paintings, such as works by color field artists like Mark Rothko, and Abstract Expressionist paintings, such as works by Jackson Pollock, 62% had scores on the Gregorc Style Delineator by which they were classified as showing abstract thinking styles. Of the collectors who preferred representational painting, 86% were classified as showing concrete thinking styles.

Mark Rothko: A Cross-Modal Approach

Synesthesia is not only highly instrumental but primary in our figurative thought and expression. The overlapping of sensory modalities can be used to elucidate complex layers of perception through a universal type of metaphor. In regards to abstract expressionism, a visual strategy that is vague and vat, referring to alternative modes of perception to comprehend painting proves extremely useful when exercised with discretion. The research I have conducted includes psychological experiments, studies on color, gravity, physics, acoustics, architecture and art criticism. By analyzing gravity, volume, pitch weight and saturation in music, I have identified them in abstract expressionist Mark Rothko's art. Although these components are mutable in Rothko's career, they are consistently present.

Can Psychiatrists Recognize Mental Illness in Paintings?

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Images in PsychiatryFull AccessCan Psychiatrists Recognize Mental Illness in Paintings?ANJALI RAOMATCHERI S. KESHAVAN M.D.ANJALI RAOSearch for more papers by this authorMATCHERI S. KESHAVAN M.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Apr 2006AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail It is widely believed that mental illness is reflected in paintings of mentally ill artists (1) . Examples include Van Gogh’s “blue” period (depression) and “pink” period (manic phase of bipolar disorder) (2) and Louis Wain’s cat paintings (progressive deterioration to complete incoherence, paralleling schizophrenia) (3) . However, when we asked 12 psychiatrists to evaluate randomly selected paintings created by individuals with 1) schizophrenia, 2) bipolar disorder, and 3) no psychiatric illness (N=10 for each), they were unable to differentiate paintings by artists with and without mental illness. We then randomly selected paintings of four artists with known bipolar disorder (Paul Gauguin, Edward Münch, Vincent van Gogh, Mark Rothko). We asked 12 psychiatrists and 12 laypersons matched for education to determine the period of creation (before or after onset of mental illness), first for individual paintings grouped by artist and then for sets of paintings for each artist. Psychiatrists could reliably identify paintings created before and after onset of mental illness both individually (χ 2 =31.42, df=1, p<0.001) and in sets (χ 2 =17.34, df=1, p<0.01). In contrast, laypersons were able to recognize mental illness only from sets of paintings (χ 2 =4.32, df=1, p<0.05), not from individual paintings. The potential clinical significance of psychiatrists’ ability to recognize mental illness in paintings before and after an episode of psychiatric illness needs further study in individuals other than famous artists.Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Keshavan, UPMC Health System-Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Room 441, 3811 O’Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA 15213; [email protected] (e-mail). Images reproduced by permission of ARS, © 2005 The Munch Museum/The Munch-Ellingsen Group/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Rothko's androgyny

In the opening paragraph of The Birth of Tragedy Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, 'the continuous development of art is bound up with the Apollinian and Dionysian duality — just as procreation depends on the duality of the sexes, involving perpetual strife with only periodically intervening reconciliations. The male principle of the Apollinian offers the illusion oflucidity and order, whereas the Dionysian ‘open[s] to the Mothers of Being,’ the ceaseless flux of nature that lies at the heart of tragedy.2 For Nietzsche the tragic hero is an Apollinian mask that both conceals and permits a glance into the terrors of nature: ‘all the celebrated figures of the Greek stage — Prometheus, Oedipus, etc. — are mere masks of th[e] original hero, Dionysus.’3 Nietzsche's metaphor of tragedy as a gendered duality symbolized by the mask helps to explain Mark Rothko's myth paintings of the early 1930s. Works such as Antigone and Oedipus, which are agreed to be the first of the myth paintings,4 merge male and female clements and employ mask-like visages to convey the ‘idea‘ of tragedy (figures 1,2). While Rothko's visualization of tragedy owes a substantial debt to The Birth of Tradegy, which he read by the late 1930s,5 there arc other textual and visual sources uniting masculine and feminine elements that arc relevant to the myth paintings. These sources point to an underlying theme of androgyny in certain of Rothko's works that has gone unremarked.

A Morning In The Museum

1. A GROUP ON THE TOP FLOOR Rauschenberg. Lichtenstein, Stella, vacuum cleaner. Scaffolding General Electric An inflated tire An Olympic swimmer The concept "A vacuum is cleaner" A balloon, a derangement of nature A primary color Don't forget The polished stone The museum makes The clean floors from How about a smear Of menstrual blood Or a sperm puddle On the formica bench Imagine Licking it A dog tongue Hungry. [End Page 24] 2. CLAES OLDENBURG: THREE SOFT SCULPTURES God bless America where we have this funny Sense of the ridiculous and "art That doesn't sit on its ass in a museum" Alphabet/ good humor (Looks like intestines) Upside down city (Stuffed muslin spray- Painted prison uniform Green, dried blood Red, and charcoal Polka dots: looks like Tortured folks hangin Upside down: or parts of em) Falling shoestring potatoes (Yellow canvas sculpture Drops from Kapok sawtooth Edge paper bag). 3. SEGAL'S DINER The shabby poetry is in the pathos The counter falling apart Is sort of sweet Like a distressed woodchuck A woodchuck sort of morning A coffee please a slice of I'm tired you'd be tired Working my kind of hours The pay I get, some life Plaster dripped over cotton And bandage gauze this guy [End Page 25] The woman behind the counter Is doughnut shape and falling Over about to bump The coffee urn. In that era kids Used to say "bunk" not bump "I bunked into it." "If he don't watch out He's gonna bunk Inta the tree." 4. MARK ROTHKO: THREE PAINTINGS Tragedy, ecstasy, doom, what the man said Painting was for, and here is a sorrow dredged From an oceanfloor, the undulant blues And purples resonant against your breastbone Like tribal drum-tones slipping through a jungle On a normal rainy day, savage and peaceful, Between two villages, or like a ship's engine Booming inaudibly while you observe The phosphorescence, the hard slaps The ocean gives to your vibrating hull, Gulls falling away as you leave the shore To enter the house of the sky. Later you'll turn your blanketed body Over and over again as the vessel travels Forward through lustrous water and moonlight. Be at peace now. The drowned tumble Endlessly in their bags, Wind blows ceaselessly Eastward above the surface, Remote from any earth where buildings stand. [End Page 26] 5. JIM DINE A) The Bathrobe Paintings Behind the dozen Or so great canvases Of the bathrobe, The human volume Afloat and aglow It is my alter ego On the museum wall Someone flits Like an insect, keeps The pot cooking, the voluminous Bathrobe washed And pressed, her thoughts to herself: It is some way To spend a life, She thinks – with her insect mind. B) Four Pastel Drawings of Tools axe like the femur shovel of a tall man shears elegant to the point clippers of pain [End Page 27] 6. LOBBY A) Cheerful Lady to Other Lady We could bring the boys I think they'd like it It's pretty weird. B) Next A boy in jeans and new Orange socks strides purposefully Through the lobby, his large And scuffed portfolio Under his arm, What do they know – What does anybody know– Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

In camera: Francis Bacon: photography, film and the practice of painting

With the aid of over 250 source images and documents, many hitherto unknown, this book reveals how photography, film, mass-media imagery and other sources informed Bacons painting and, in particular, how lens-based images, as he put it, helped to trigger the most significant turning-point in his stylistic development. Key influences, including the masters Velazquez, Poussin and Rodin, the photographer Eadweard Muybridge and the film director Sergei Eisenstein, are discussed. So too are the precedents set by other artists working in the tradition of making use of mechanical reproductions artists including Picasso and Sickert. Bacons work is also viewed in the context of his contemporaries, such as Lucian Freud, Mark Rothko, Graham Sutherland and Patrick Heron. In addition, analysis of elements of Bacons biography and psychology leads to some startling and original insights into the man and the unique iconography of his art. This is a book that addresses important questions about Bacons painting practice and sheds new light on his life and work.

The infinite line: re-making art after modernism

This landmark book offers a radical reinterpretation of the innovative art of the late 1950s and 1960s. Examining the work of major artists of the period--including Mark Rothko, Piero Manzoni, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Blinky Palermo, and Louise Bourgeois--Briony Fer focuses on the overriding tendency toward repetition and seriality that occurred at the moment of modernism's decline, gained ground in its aftermath, and continues to shape much of the art seen today. Although seriality is mainly associated with American artists and with Minimalism, Fer broadens our understanding of it, looking at Minimalist seriality as one crucially important strategy among several. She argues that repetition becomes generative of new modes and habits of making and looking; at stake is how we think about the artwork in relation to both temporality and subjectivity. Paying close attention to specific artworks, this timely critical reassessment offers a fresh perspective on a wide range of familiar and less familiar art.

Nothingness Made Visible: The Case of Rothko's Paintings

The word “nothingness” frequently appears in writings about twentieth-century art. Yet how can we perceive nothingness or know what it is? Everywhere we look we can see, feel, or think something. If we shut our eyes and ears, we can always sense our heartbeat; no matter how much we try not to think about anything at all, we will still be aware of our own existence. It appears to us that there is no such “thing” as nothingness; hence, to associate an artwork, which is always something, with nothingness seems absurd. In the following, I will show that such a relation is possible and not absurd. By considering two philosophers who pondered the notion of nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, I will first address the problem of how we can understand nothingness and then show how the works of Mark Rothko represent it.

Ariane Huml / Monika Rappenecker (Hgg.), Jüdische Intellektuelle im 20. Jahrhundert. Literatur- und kulturgeschichtliche Studien. 2003

Since this collection combines the proceedings of two conferences, one on ‘Fremde und Identität. Deutschsprachige jüdische Autoren und Autorinnen’ and the other on ‘Dichten und Erzählen nach Auschwitz’, it is not surprising that its contents are so heterogeneous. It includes essays on painters (Charlotte Salomon, Mark Rothko, Alberto Burri), music, theology, academics (Selma Stern, Werner Vordtriede), and creative writers (Jenny Rosenbaum-Aloni, Aharon Appelfeld, Hilde Domin, and Jewish women writers from the GDR). None of these categories is coextensive with that of ‘intellectual’, so that the title is misleading. Intellectuals in the conventional sense are represented by studies of Theodor Lessing, Karl Kraus, Jean Améry, Hannah Arendt and Susan Taubes. Such familiar names as Buber, Scholem, Benjamin and Kracauer are absent, or mentioned only in passing.

Jewish artists in New York: the Holocaust years

Calling attention to the local cultural scene as well as to events taking place in Europe, Matthew Baigell considers the art produced by Jewish artists who were inspired to respond to the murders of their fellow Jews during World War II. Although there were only a few instances of visual documentation of events until the war's later stages, responses to news reports and the very few authentic images received of the atrocities of the Holocaust varied from avoidance and denial to scattered attempts to create direct visual representations. Those artists who chose the latter alternative did so with little support from the Jewish intelligentsia of New York City. Art critics such as the influential Clement Greenberg purposely avoided addressing this issue at all. Jewish artists were left to cope with the events of the war in isolation, without a collective visual memory to deal with the traumas presented by news reports. Baigell discusses how the limited access to images, information and support during the war led to a unique artistic response created not only by the conflict itself, but also by the anti-Semitic social climate of the United States. Surveys taken in the US between 1940 and 1946 demonstrate that the general population considered Jews a greater menace to the welfare of the country than the Germans or the Japanese. Artists featured include Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Barnett Newman, Abraham Rattner, Mark Rothko, and Max Weber.

“They Give Reason a Responsibility Which It Simply Can't Bear”: Ethics, Care of the Self, and Caring Knowledge

We explore briefly Foucault's ideas about the care of the self, creating ourselves and what he meant by ethics. We then examine the work of five artists–Mark Rothko, Cindy Sherman, Helena Hietanen, Samuel Beckett, and Betty Goodwin–to help us begin to think very differently about illness and human suffering. Taking our lead from Beckett, we regard reason as being given too much responsibility for the work of a caring knowledge, and that it is through the arts that new ideas about bioethics can emerge.

Monet and modernism

This illustrated volume examines the lines of influence leading from Monet to the great modern exponents of Abstract Expressionism. It emphasizes the innovative aspects of Monet's late works, including his famous waterlily paintings and Rouen Cathedral series. His paintings are juxtaposed with those of 25 modern artists, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Ellsworth Kelly.

Elmer Bischoff: the ethics of paint

Elmer Bischoff (1916-1991) is generally regarded as one of the leaders among the artists in the San Francisco Bay Area who, after contributing to the local emergence of Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s and 50s, shifted the terms of their spectacularly sensuous brushwork to recognizable imagery. Bill Berkson writes that if 'David Park was the classicist of the founding triad of the Bay Area Figurative painters, and Richard Diebenkorn the modernist, Bischoff was the romantic'. Designed to accompany a major retrospective of Bischoff's work, this superb volume is lavishly illustrated with duotones and color plates that faithfully capture the subtle variations in shade that characterize the painter's oeuvre. Berkson and Susan Landauer, both of whom knew Bischoff, provide the definitive view of the life, art, and teaching career of this important artist. Native to the Bay Area, Bischoff studied at the University of California under the 'Berkeley School' modernists Worth Ryder, Erle Loran, and Margaret Peterson. His experience during World War II profoundly affected his view of the world and his place in it. In 1946, Bischoff joined the faculty of the California School of Fine Arts where - with colleagues Edward Corbett, Richard Diebenkorn, Claire Falkenstein, David Park, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Hassel Smith, and Clyfford Still - he found himself at the hub of avant-garde expression in the Bay Area. Throughout his career, Bischoff applied his visual intelligence and unusual personal integrity in creating a uniquely varied body of work that invites our investigation. Having interviewed many of the artist's surviving colleagues and family members, Landauer offers valuable primary documentation on Bischoff, the Bay Area Figurative School, and the cultural history of the Northern California art scene. Her lively text is supported with insightful research into the social and political background of the period. She considers Bischoff's career in relation to the European artists who influenced him, his interactions with his local contemporaries, and his reactions to the New York art scene. A useful chronology of the artist's life, a bibliography, and documentary photographs that Landauer uncovered during her research make this volume an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the artistic vision of Elmer Bischoff.

The object and the dream: Mark Rothko.

An exploration of unconscious determinants provides useful insights in considering Mark Rothko's creativity and behavioral characteristics. A basic focus is the issue of childhood loss and unresolved grief. The studies of Martha Wolfenstein on preadolescent and childhood parent loss are paramount in considering Rothko the man. Rothko, as a result of early losses, was predisposed to recurrent depressions and bouts of anger which created difficulties in his intimate relationships. Rothko evidenced a lifelong mistrust of male authority figures which may also account for his antipathy toward psychoanalysis. His psychological life was complicated by his experiences of institutionalized anti-Semitism which further diminished his trust in others.