Lot 66 : Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

Mark Rothko - 1903-1970

Auction Location: United States of America - 2006
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Artist or Maker:

Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

Title:

Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

Description:

Untitled
signed and dated 'MARK ROTHKO/1948' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
55 1/2 x 43 3/8 in. (141 x 111 cm.)
Painted in 1948.

Provenance:

Marlborough Gallery Inc., New York
Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited:

Munich, Galerie Daniel Blau, Mark Rothko: Multiforms, November 1993-February 1994, p. 43.

Published:

D. Anfam, Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas, New Haven and London, 1998, p. 286, no. 372 (illustrated in color).

Notes:

"The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and idea, and between the idea and the observer." - Mark Rothko, 1943

Untitled dates from 1948, an important year for Mark Rothko. After an extensive exploration of art history, Rothko was finally able to realize his unique voice, creating richly painted dramas of delicately floating forms. Untitled, 1948 is an extraordinary example from that crucial year when Rothko's "idea" came into sharp focus. Rothko's mature paintings explore lofty ideas, including the existential crisis, the human condition and the beauty and awesome nature of life. In an age of science, reason and doubt, Rothko's paintings return us to spirituality and the uncertainties that accompany it. Robert Rosenblum writes, "Ultimately, the basic configuration of Rothko's abstract paintings finds its source in the great Romantics: in Turner, who similarly achieved the dissolution of all matter into a silent, mystical luminosity; in Friedrich, who also placed the spectator before an abyss that provoked ultimate questions whose answers, without traditional religious faith and imagery, remained as uncertain as the questions themselves" (R. Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, New York, 1975, p. 215).

Untitled, 1948 is comprised of luscious clouds of orange, reds and soft whites that subtly morph from one to another. It is a study of humanity in light. Rothko wrote, "I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else. I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions--tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on--and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate with those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!" (quoted in S. Rodman, Conversations with Artists, New York, 1957, pp. 93-94). The effect of Untitled, 1948 demonstrates this perfectly. The colors and composition are transient, one giving way to another with the formal relationships constantly shifting. It is an exuberant and elusive painting whose multiple forms and colors provoke our emotions through its organic composition which undermines its own structural fixedness and veracity.

Mark Stevens describes the Multiforms, as, "works marvelously in flux, all the elements in place, the string still not pulled taut" (M. Stevens, "Mark Rothko," Mark Rothko Multiforms, exh. cat., The Pace Gallery, New York, 1990, p. 4). Untitled, 1948 and other paintings from 1948-49 have not yet coalesced into the floating rectangles that define Rothko's later work. It is the sense of discovery, of an artist testing the limit of his aesthetic powers coming up each time with provocative and unique solutions, that gives the Multiforms their power. They are a true realization of Rothko's "idea." Untitled, 1948's sense of improvisation perfectly conveys the lofty but abstract ideals that Rothko espoused.

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