A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience. Mark Rothko More Quotes by Mark Rothko More Quotes From Mark Rothko To me art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk. Mark Rothko courage adventure art There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red. Mark Rothko red black one-day The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point. Mark Rothko color religious people The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees Mark Rothko painting interesting thinking I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. Mark Rothko creativity photography art There is more power in telling little than in telling all. Mark Rothko littles You think my paintings are calm, like windows in some cathedral? You should look again. I'm the most violent of all the American painters. Behind those colours there hides the final cataclysm. Mark Rothko finals looks thinking When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know, that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them. Mark Rothko lonely men art If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom. Mark Rothko color tragedy missing The artist invites the spectator to take a journey within the realm of the canvas... Without taking the journey, the spectator has really missed the essential experience of the picture. Mark Rothko essentials artist journey Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit. Mark Rothko anecdotes spirit art I don't express myself in my paintings. I express my not-self. Mark Rothko painting expression self The people that weep before my paintings are having the same religious experience that I had when I painted it. Mark Rothko emotion religious people The reason for my painting large canvases is that I want to be intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command. Mark Rothko glasses views looks I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures! Mark Rothko pretty-picture make-you-think thinking Silence is so accurate. Mark Rothko serenity favourite silence My art is not abstract, it lives and breathes Mark Rothko breathe abstract art There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. Mark Rothko painting artist The picture must be... a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need. Mark Rothko revelations unexpected needs I use colors that have already been experienced through the light of day and through the state of mind of the total man. In other words, my colors are not colors that are laboratory tools which are isolated from all accidentals or impurities so that they have a specified identity or purity. Mark Rothko color light men
