I also hang the pictures low rather than high, and particularly in the case of the largest ones, often as close to the floor as is feasible, for that is the way they are painted. Mark Rothko More Quotes by Mark Rothko More Quotes From Mark Rothko 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 This world of the imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense. Mark Rothko common-sense imagination world A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent. Mark Rothko companionship eye world Small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels; large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way. Mark Rothko renaissance drama way (I am) dealing not with the particular anecdote, but rather with the Spirit of Myth, which is generic to all myths at all times. Mark Rothko anecdotes myth spirit The abstract artist has given material existence to many unseen worlds and tempi. Mark Rothko unseen artist world While the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done. Mark Rothko doctors judging art Many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. Mark Rothko pockets silence roots It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again. Mark Rothko breathing solitude silence Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. Mark Rothko instant intimacy creation It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them. Mark Rothko artist mean reality With us the disguise must be complete. The familiar identity of things has to be pulverized in order to destroy the finite associations with which our society increasingly enshrouds every aspect of our environment. Mark Rothko association identity order We are concerned with similar states of consciousness and relationship to the world.. ..If previous abstractions paralleled the scientific and objective preoccupations of our times, ours are finding a pictoral equivalent for man's new knowledge and consciousness of his more complex inner self. Mark Rothko self men world The myth holds us, therefore, not through its romantic flavor, not the remembrance of beauty of some bygone age, not through the possibilities of fantasy, but because it expresses to us something real and existing in ourselves, as it was to those who first stumbled upon the symbols to give them life. Mark Rothko remembrance real giving A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer Mark Rothko companionship sensitive eye I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing, and stretching one's arms again transcendental experiences became possible. Mark Rothko breathing silence believe If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.. ...(they) express something real and existing in ourselves. Mark Rothko real ideas fall We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth. Mark Rothko impact simple expression It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. Mark Rothko artist essence long The romantics were prompted to seek exotic subjects and to travel to far off places. They failed to realize that, though the transcendental must involve the strange and unfamiliar, not everything strange or unfamiliar is transcendental. Mark Rothko exotic realizing strange
