Lot 51 : MARK ROTHKO

Mark Rothko - 1903-1970

Auction Location: United States of America - 2006
Please sign in or subscribe to Artfact Premium or Artfact Fine Art to see auction date and house information.

Please sign in or subscribe to Artfact Premium or Artfact Fine Art to view enlarged images.

Description:

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT MIDWEST COLLECTION

1903-1970
UNTITLED

33 1/2 x 25 1/2 in. 85.1 x 64.8 cm.

oil on paper mounted on board

Executed in 1968.

PROVENANCE

Estate of the artist (estate no. 1196.68)
Pace Gallery, New York
Theo Waddington Fine Art Ltd., London
Sotheby's, New York, May 20, 1983, lot 414
Marisa del Re Gallery, Inc., New York
Mr. Leslie H. Wexner, Ohio
Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago
Acquired by the present owner from the above circa 1991

EXHIBITED

New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Mark Rothko, 1903-1970: a retrospective, October 1978 - January 1979, cat. no. 197B
New York, Marisa del Re Gallery, Nine contemporary American masters, September - October 1983, illustrated in color

NOTE

Mark Rothko's dark paintings of the late 1960s remain an enduring mystery of the last years of the abstract expressionist era. Brooding tones of deep maroon, crimson red, sultry brown and veils of black reveal an undiscovered side of the artist and make these works a special category of interest within his oeuvre. Beginning in the late 1950s, Rothko's palette started moving toward a darker chromatic range, employing more meditative and somber tones of brown, black and plum.

It is speculated that only twenty-five of Rothko's dark works are left in existence-- seven with the Rothko Foundation, seven with the Estate and the rest believed to be in private collections around the globe. Some scholars believe that the works executed in Rothko's final years may have been produced as a premonition of his own death, while others suggest they are 'lunar landscapes' as if he suddenly abandoned spiritual for secular transcendence. While the critic Robert Goldwater deemed these dark works as "the forgotten ghosts of landscape painting", many celebrate this series as the most moving, dramatic and pensive of Rothko's career.

What is certain is that Rothko's dark works are mystifying, intriguing and rare. In December 1969, Rothko hosted one of his most extraordinary studio parties of the decade, inviting an elite collection of educated eyes to view his dark works lining the walls. That same year he and Norman Reid, the director of the Tate Gallery, London selected some of Rothko's dark murals (originally commissioned for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, New York) to be given to the Tate. Both the Rothko Room at the Tate and the Rothko Chapel in Houston (1971) seek to create a non-denominational environment, with a series of his dark works evoking an intangible atmosphere of spirituality that encourages meditation.

Rothko objected to any simplistic view of the emotive power of colors, particularly the bright hues such as yellow and red. While an initial response is one of life and joy, Rothko sought to create a more subtle range of visceral responses, and his juxtapositions of dissonant tones and chromatic contrasts can produce disquieting as well as ethereal impressions. In Untitled 1968, three surprisingly rich black forms inhabit almost the entire picture plane. Their brushy surfaces and alternating thickness of tone lend a stronger sense of movement to the surface than might be expected from the color black. Yet it is the thin wash of reddish brown background that serves as an atmospheric presence in this composition, enveloping the carefully structured forms and adding a dimension of weightlessness to our experience of this work. Again, Rothko painted against the facile interpretation of these darker colors as solemn or mournful by using his brushwork to invest this work with a lighter harmony and warmly expressive spiritual energy.

Even more remarkable is how Rothko incorporates the consistency of paper into this work. Carefully executed on paper, the work shows Rothko experimenting with the paper's absorption of blacks, browns and reds and the variety of hues he is able to achieve. There is a tension between the lightness of the medium and the heaviness of the palette. Rothko's late works establish his authority over color-- no matter what scheme he is presented with, he has the gift of mastering it. Above all, and most telling through his final dark works, Rothko was in search of something immaterial or metaphysical, "for making art was never Rothko's reason for making art". (Brian O'Doherty, Rothko: The Dark Paintings 1969-1970, New York, 1985, p. 10)