Mark RothkoAmerican, 1903–1970Untitled (Painting)
May one see it?
Not receiving at present
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
Known for an impassioned form of painting predicated on the poetics of color, Mark Rothko was one of the leading proponents of color-field painting, a type of nongestural Abstract Expressionism that entailed large canvases distinguished by monumental expanses of form and tone. The canvas of Untitled (Painting) burns with subtle variations of orange and yellow hues. The painting follows the characteristic format of Rothko’s mature work, according to which stacked rectangles of color appear to float within the boundaries of the canvas. By directly staining the fabric of the canvas with many thin washes of pigment and by paying particular attention to the edges where the fields interact, he achieved the effect of light radiating from the image itself.
Read on
This technique suited his metaphysical aims: to offer painting as a doorway into purely spiritual realms, making it as immaterial and evocative as music, and to communicate directly the most essential, rawest forms of human emotion. Rothko described his art as the “elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, between the idea and the observer.” In place of overt symbolism, he used color, overwhelming scale, and surface luminosity to elicit an emotive, profound response from the viewer.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1954.1308
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
Meanwhile, in the life of Mark Rothko
The whole life1929–1952
Teaching children at the Brooklyn Jewish Center
From 1929 Rothko taught drawing, painting and clay sculpture part-time to schoolchildren at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he remained until 1952.
1949–1956
Large vertical canvases: being “inside” the picture
For seven years Rothko painted in oil only on large vertical canvases so that the viewer would feel “enveloped within” the painting. Critics saw this as compensating for a lack of substance; he replied that he painted large because he wanted to be intimate, and advised viewers to stand as close as eighteen inches away.
1950s
The poet Stanley Kunitz
The critic Dore Ashton saw Rothko’s acquaintance with the poet Stanley Kunitz as a significant bond of these years, their conversations feeding Rothko’s enterprise; Kunitz saw him as a primitive and a shaman who finds the magic formula.
1952
“Fifteen Americans” and a quarrel with Newman
Dorothy Canning Miller’s Fifteen Americans at MoMA formally heralded the abstract artists, but it also set Rothko against Barnett Newman, who accused him of trying to exclude him from the show.
1954
A Chicago show and a meeting with Sidney Janis
At a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1954 Rothko met the dealer Sidney Janis, who represented Pollock and Franz Kline; the relationship proved mutually beneficial.
1955
Branded a “sell-out”: the quarrel with Newman and Still
When Fortune magazine named a Rothko painting a good investment in 1955, Newman and Clyfford Still branded him a sell-out with bourgeois aspirations. Still asked for the paintings he had given Rothko over the years to be returned, and Rothko was deeply depressed by his former friends’ jealousy.
