The picture must be... a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need. Mark Rothko More Quotes by Mark Rothko More Quotes From Mark Rothko This world of the imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense. Mark Rothko common-senseimaginationworld 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 companionshipeyeworld Small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels; large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way. Mark Rothko renaissancedramaway (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 anecdotesmythspirit The abstract artist has given material existence to many unseen worlds and tempi. Mark Rothko unseenartistworld 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 doctorsjudgingart 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 pocketssilenceroots It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again. Mark Rothko breathingsolitudesilence 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 caseslowsway Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. Mark Rothko instantintimacycreation 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 artistmeanreality 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 associationidentityorder 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 selfmenworld 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 remembrancerealgiving A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer Mark Rothko companionshipsensitiveeye 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 breathingsilencebelieve 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 realideasfall 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 impactsimpleexpression 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 artistessencelong 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 exoticrealizingstrange
