Mark Rothko : from the inside out

Mark Rothko From the inside out

Christopher Rothko

Book - 2015

"Mark Rothko (1903-1970), world-renowned icon of Abstract Expressionism, is rediscovered in this wholly original examination of his art and life written by his son. Synthesizing rigorous critique with personal anecdotes, Christopher, the younger of the artist's two children, offers a unique perspective on this modern master. Christopher Rothko draws on an intimate knowledge of the artworks to present eighteen essays that look closely at the paintings and explore the ways in which they foster a profound connection between viewer and artist through form, color, and scale. The prominent commissions for the Rothko Chapel in Houston and the Seagram Building murals in New York receive extended treatment, as do many of the lesser-known a...nd underappreciated aspects of Rothko's oeuvre, including reassessments of his late dark canvases and his formidable body of works on paper. The author also discusses the artist's writings of the 1930s and 1940s, the significance of music to the artist, and our enduring struggles with visual abstraction in the contemporary era. Finally, Christopher Rothko writes movingly about his role as the artist's son, his commonalities with his father, and the terms of the relationship they forged during the writer's childhood." -- Publisher's description.

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Subjects
Rothko, Mark, > 1903-1970 > Criticism and interpretation.
Painters > Biography.
Published
New Haven : Yale University Press [2015].
Language
English
Main Author
Christopher Rothko (-)
Physical Description
ix, 302 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780300204728
  • Mark Rothko and the inner world
  • Ceci n'est pas un frigo
  • The quiet dominance of form
  • The tyranny of size
  • The artists' reality: Mark Rothko's crystal ball
  • Stacked [text struck through]
  • The Rothko Chapel: our voices in the silence
  • The Seagram Murals: the epic and the myth
  • Untitled
  • Mark Rothko and music
  • Rothko's humor
  • The mastery of the '60s
  • Black and grey
  • Works on paper: outside the box
  • Van Gogh's ear
  • Return to Dvinsk via Daugavpils
  • Mell-Ecstatic
  • MR & CHR.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A son examines his father's enigmatic art. Psychologist Rothko, son of Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and chair of the board of directors of the Rothko Chapel, Houston, illuminates the artist's often misunderstood works in this unusually personal and insightful melding of memoir and art criticism. His father, writes the author, aimed "to speak as directly as possible to our inner selvesto communicate with our most core human elements," and "to connect with the human spirit." While the author acknowledges that this goal is both romantic and nave, he argues that only by being open to the emotion and the drama in the works can a viewer fully appreciate their effects. "What is occurring in Rothko's work is a type of chemistry between artist and viewera primal, preverbal communicationmediated by the painting," the author writes. Each viewer, therefore, will experience the work differently. Rothko thoughtfully analyzes the artist's early figurative paintings, transition to surrealism, "sensuous and extroverted works of the 1950s," massive murals for the iconic Seagram Building, and the designing of the Rothko Chapel in the 1960s. By 1949, Rothko abandoned figurative work, aiming to create an experience "freed from the residue of the everyday" and disassociated from "the figure, from myth, from story and anecdote." His son cautions against seeking biographical explanations for his father's art. Although Rothko was born in Latvia, for example, his son does not believe that Latvian landscape or memories served as "the wellspring of his pictorial imagination." Instead, he draws upon The Artist's Reality, his father's unfinished manuscript, to probe the philosophical underpinnings and cultural zeitgeist that informed his work. Included in that zeitgeist was the scientific search for nature's most basic elements. Like a scientist, Rothko was engaged in a project of stripping away to discover the essential. The author's intimacy with his subject affords him a privileged, and fascinating, angle of vision. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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