04 August 2006

Orange and Yellow

Mark Rothko
Orange and Yellow (1956)
Oil on Canvas


"I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. 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." ~Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

3 comments:

Joanna said...

Very Nice. Wow, I love Rothco. I actually like to think of his paintings as landcape more than abstract (no big surprise, I know). They are creating this beautiful space that you can almost enter and sink into. There is the ground and the sky and a faint smudgy treeline to seperate them. Wow, I wish I could paint like that.

Reminds me of the song you put on my Backdrop Mix cd.

I had a dream I stood beneath an orange sky, with my brother and my sister standing by.

Anonymous said...

Rothko’s paintings are viewed by many to be quasi-religious although they represent no object or symbol of faith. They are viewed as spiritual, timeless, personal, transcendent and emotional.

Rothco had a "religious experience".

I had a personal encounter with Jesus. I would not trade it for all the paintings in the world.

troy. said...

Nor would I.

But the cool thing about visual art is its ability to allow us to re-enter that personal encounter, time and time again, regardless of what the artist had in mind when creating the piece.

Same thing with music.

Same thing with poetry.

Same thing with a good narrative.

Sorta reminds me of the contents of this one book authored by the Creator of the Universe -- a god of wonder!