3 Answers

  1. How much does a painting have to cost? If you make a price list of paintings based on the nature of the image, how much will a picture with one strip cost? Two? A horse? Are bulls more expensive than cows, or the same? If there are three people in the picture, do you count the cost by their heads, or do you take it as a group? Who is more precious-the Virgin Mary, or Christ, who expels the merchants from the temple?

    If the question is about money, then it is solved simply: the basics of economics tell us that things are worth exactly what people are willing to pay for them. If the question is about pictures… well, let's talk about paintings.

    When Rothko first started painting, the art market in its current form did not exist in principle. These were the early post-war years, the early enthusiasm of the first patrons of art at the turn of the century had already been washed away by the Great Depression, and American artists were left entirely to themselves — in a country that, for their reasons, had no tradition, mythology, or culture of its own. No one knew the artists. Galleries were numbered in units, and the audience for a single NYT art column was perhaps a hundred people. It was not even possible to formulate convincingly what should be written now: the old paradigms have long since departed, giving way to the European avant-garde, but the conservative reaction has also undermined the avant-garde.

    Now-there is the market, critics, theory, and more on the list. Dozens of articles are written about the sale of each painting, and almost nothing is written about the paintings themselves. It's like everyone knows what's on them. It's as if everyone has long figured out why one picture works and the other doesn't. As if the pictures are being evaluated in connection with some price list.

    In fact, if everyone suddenly found out what exactly is depicted in Rothko's paintings… In general, it would be a completely different story. But it's hard to see the picture behind someone else's wallet. Yes?

    In his famous lecture at Pratt University, Rothko said that the paintings are not made of canvas and oil, but of a focus on death and ten percent hope, “to make everything a little more bearable.” These are the ingredients that elevate it above just color — but not publicly, not obviously. And although the paintings still depict color, only color that does not symbolize anything — the experience of pure perception that this color can give is greater than this color.

    So Rothko wasn't painting stripes. He portrayed the possibility of salvation – through silence, silence, death. This is the kind of silence that is almost impossible to find in today's overloaded world of affirmations.

    It can be blue, which makes it look yellow. It can be red at the bottom and top, but it is red in different ways. It can be wide and rusty, so it's hard to see the whole thing. And it can be black, completely black, but somehow glowing inside.

    But it is not enough to look at the picture, you need to make it your only reality for a moment, except for which nothing else exists. In front of a painting, you need to stop, find yourself in a separate moment of inner silence, forget about yourself and your ideas about yourself, about the world, and about art as well, in order, perhaps, to feel or learn something new, to change, to experience, to return with something a little different. You need to disappear before the image.

    You can certainly write off all this on the syndrome of searching for global meaning — for God's sake. They say that art is subjective. That all people are different. I'm not arguing. People are different. Different people need to disappear in front of Rothko in different ways.

    So — where should I put all this stuff on the price list?

  2. There is a good 50-minute film from the BBC- ” The Power of Art. Mark Rothko.” It just helps to get used to the atmosphere of his paintings, which is extremely necessary for their understanding, as the commentators quite correctly pointed out above.

  3. Mark Rothko is one of the most famous representatives of the American school of painting, who painted in the style of abstract expressionism.

    His unusual canvases are often criticized due to a lack of understanding of the basics of painting.

    The fact is that the history of painting has a huge number of styles, trends and other forms of the artist's worldview.

    Rothko's painting is an example of modern non-objective art, the founder of which was Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, who is also not recognized and understood by everyone.

    It is rather difficult, in a small paragraph, to reflect all the features of Rothko's work. In short,this painting is designed not for visual perception,but for sensory and emotional ones.

    My favorite Rothko work is the White Center. I urge you to spend 3 to 5 minutes looking at this canvas,and then tell me.what you feel.

    PS. By the way,Rothko is one of those people who could be our asset((

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