MARK ROTHKO

Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz on this day in 1903, in Dvinsk. His family left
Russia and settled in Portland, OR, in 1913. It was towards the late 1940s and 1950s, that he
painted the works for which he is best known for: blocks of color in luminous washes that
create large, contemplative forms on canvas. In 1970, Rothko, who suffered from depression,
took his own life

Born in 25 sept 1903 in Russia.

Died in 25 feb 1970 in America (New York)

Age 66

In 1913 (10 years old), he and his family emigrates to USA, Portland.

Nationality: American

Movement: Abstract expressionism

For Rothko, "without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama"

Rothko's use of mythology as a commentary on current history was not novel. Rothko,
Gottlieb, and Newman read and discussed the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. In
particular, they took interest in psychoanalytical theories concerning dreams, and archetypes
of a collective unconscious. They understood mythological symbols as images, operating in a
space of human consciousness, which transcends specific history and culture.[30] Rothko
later said that his artistic approach was "reformed" by his study of the "dramatic themes of
myth". He allegedly stopped painting altogether in 1940, to immerse himself in reading Sir
James Frazer's study of mythology The Golden Bough, and Freud's The Interpretation of
Dreams.

Rothko's viewed myth as a replenishing resource for an era of spiritual void. This belief had
begun decades earlier, through his reading of Carl Jung, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Thomas
Mann, among other authors.[38] Unlike his predecessors, Rothko would, in his later period,
develop his philosophy of the tragic ideal into a realm of pure abstraction.

Mark Rothko sought to make paintings that would bring people to tears. “I’m interested only
in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on,” he declared. “And
the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that
I can communicate those basic human emotions….If you…are moved only by their color
relationships, then you miss the point.”1 Like his fellow New York School painters Barnett
Newman and Clyfford Still, Rothko painted to plumb the depths of himself and the human
condition. For him, art was a profound form of communication, and art making was a moral
act.

Alternately radiant and dark, Rothko's art is distinguished by a rare degree of sustained
concentration on pure pictorial properties such as color, surface, proportion, and scale,
accompanied by the conviction that those elements could disclose the presence of a high
philosophical truth. Visual elements such as luminosity, darkness, broad space, and the
contrast of colors have been linked, by the artist himself as well as other commentators, to
profound themes such as tragedy, ecstasy, and the sublime. Rothko, however, generally
avoided explaining the content of his work, believing that the abstract image could directly
represent the fundamental nature of "human drama."

Rothko attended Yale University in 1921, where he studied English, French, European
history, elementary mathematics, physics, biology, economics, the history of philosophy, and
general psychology. His initial intention was to become an engineer or an attorney. Rothko
gave up his studies in the fall of 1923 and moved to New York City.

In New York, Rothko attended classes at the Art Students League, briefly studying under
Max Weber.

He said, "It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my
purposes. . . . But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it."

He studied the length between mythologie, writing and painting.

Inspired by the surrealist technique of automatic writing—letting the brush meander without
conscious control in an attempt to release the creative forces of the unconscious—Rothko
loosened up his technique and developed a more abstract imagery. In remarkably free
watercolors of the mid-1940s, related to the art of the surrealists Joan Miró, André Masson,
as well as Arshile Gorky, Rothko explored the fluidity of the medium to evoke a vision of
primeval life.

In their manifesto in the New York Times, Rothko and Gottlieb had written: "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." By 1947 Rothko had virtually eliminated all
elements of surrealism or mythic imagery from his works, and nonobjective compositions of
indeterminate shapes emerged.