The Rothko Seagram Murals, Simon Schama's Power of Art

I ain't feelin it lightwizard. Come on buddy, WOW me!

We all know you got the goods........or is this a case of pearls before swine?

Talk to me babe.

The catalog from the old Albers show listed 10 works in the permanent collection , most of those were 20'X 16" or so. However, there were a number of large 3'X5' oils that were centered in one of the side galleries of the west wing of the Nat Gallery.

My point was, and I dont think can be denied, that the similarity of Albers was presaged by Rothko. I mean, cmon, how many things can one do with a square?
Youre making too much of the differentiation of the two,and I, and probably many others see more similarities.(other than the fact that ALbers like his viewers to stare at his paintings and then quickly look at a while wall and view the complementary colors that were "burned in" your retina.
Big Deal.

Rothkos early work had immeduiacy and sometimes terror. His large squares, well, I cant get all wet over.

I wouldn't call any of Rothko "squares," the canvases were more likely to be tall and elongated in his later painting. The Seagram Murals were painted to fit into spaces and I haven't found all of them an line although the Simon Schama -- there were several large horizontal rectangles.

I posted what oils he has painting and could find nothing in the sizes you're quoting. To my knowledge in two full courses in modern art, there are no Albers in those sizes and he kept the basis proportion of the image being slightly higher than wider, leaving a larger space at the bottom or top of the image. The larger painting must have been loaned to the National Gallery bit I have no idea where they came from as I couldn't find anything larger than 48" x 48" in my Albers book nor online which wold be dwarfed by nearly any Rothko.

Well, Amigo, like Pollock, DeKooning and the rest of the abstract expressionists, the scale of the work is a very important aspect of their work. Small reproductions are not as the artists intended. It's almost like a wide screen film being shrunk to an 8" screen. In that case, the wide screen often is pan-and-scan which cuts off parts of the left and right hand side of the film. The impact in small reproductions is virtually lost.

An Albers at Hirshhorn from 1966, after Rothko's death.

http://hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/record.asp?Artist=Albers%20Josef&hasImage=1&ViewMode=&Record=11

Not only would I not call 4' x 4' huge, I wouldn't call a painting 3' x 5' (out of proportion to any Albers I know of) huge -- maybe a good size for over a sofa!

Rothko from 1949 where his rectangular color areas and line began to show their evolution into "color field" painting. Rothko actually was the stepping stone from abstract expressionism to lyrical abstraction.


Mark Rothko
American, 1903 - 1970
No. 7 [or] No. 11, 1949
oil on canvas, 173 x 110.99 cm (68 1/8 x 43 11/16 in.)




Barely in the dimensions I would deem as huge.

If one would want to claim that the later Albers, after Rothko's death, especially in the larger oils that you could identify the painterly quality of brush stroke application on the picture plane appear to be an homage to the late artists, I could buy that. I still would not place either one of the of the precusor of the other as they both embarked on color field imagery at about the same time in 1960, one in Abstract Expressionisms, the other in Op Art (two entirely different genres). Rothko approached some of the principals of Op Art color juxtaposition but there the similarity ends. His jagged and energetic edges of shapes and lines are an entirely different effect when viewed in person. BTW, all of the French Impressionists paintings "resemble" one another. Rothko and Albers at the height of their careers can be easily called contemporary peers. Unfortunately, Rothko committed suicide before he finished his career.

Yes, the scale. I keep forgetting about that.

I was watching an old documentary on Francis Bacon. They interview him the whole time in diferent locations. He gets drunk and says some nasty things about Rothco and Pollock.

I have this one on my wall:



Well, a reproduction, I should add.... And also that I put it there mostly because of colors - i have yellow walls, red and brown and generally earthy colors on bedspread, carpet, etc., and it matched Gustav Klimt's Forest colors on the opposite wall, as well as the three originals of Slovak painter Bohus Kulhavy that I have - all in reds and oranges. I like Rothko well enough, but can't get all head over heels about him.

That sucks

it wouldn't show... here it is again.


what sucks? rothko? or i do? :wink:

(juvenile joke nevermind)

hey. i got it. does that mean i'm juvenile, too? Watch it, sir!

The art world's queen of England did not care for non-objective art, abstract expressionism in particular, even though he was an expressionist and used a lot of the technique of the abstract expressionist. It would be interesting to know how many Pollocks and Rothkos he actually saw in person. An artist should be considered drunk to be so sour grapes in putting down other painter's work. He obviously did not understand it -- maybe he thought it was Obstruct Expressionism.

A fascinating short biography of Bacon:

http://www.glbtq.com/arts/bacon_f_art.html

The cybergods are watching me, Lets get back to the muddy pastel square painting guy.

I think he meant the image link text sucked. I'm really curious why Rothko named it "Self Portrait." It's rather sunny and cheery.

A 1936 Rothko self-portrait:

the link was flawed... i don't have the self portrait on my wall, but the orange and yellow. i like some of his more composite work, beautiful colors that carry emotions very well.

I would guess Rothco was sober and didn't have as traumatic a childhood as Bacon who is kind of nuts.

It is hard for someone like me from a newer generation (and the street) to understand Rothco. My self-taugt education in art lacks an understanding in "time and place" That these artist existed in.

well, there you go. it might be interesting to learn about both at the same time - look at a rothko painting, and then do some googling about what was going on at the time... should be an interesting exercise.

I don't want to be influenced by any other generation. So I stay ignorant as a discipline.

but our generation is so dull. i don't like us.

Actually, Rothko smoked and drank when he painted, unlike Pollock who would go on infamous binges but wouldn't paint when he was drinking. Rothko escalated his drinking after his last wife left him and became a full on alcoholic, culminating in the dementia the disease usually causes, and finally committed suicide. His paintings became really dark and somber culminating in the black paintings in the Rothko Chapel, but we might have seen some even more drastic departures if he had lived.

The chapel looks very cool. I wonder if it was build while Rothko was alive?\