"When I was very young, art was lonely for me. It doesn't matter what galleries, what collectors, there's no so-called art criticism, and certainly not money involved. But that was my golden age, because we had nothing to lose and nothing to expect. ”
—Mark Rothko
Seemingly irreverent, mark Rothko's life is more like a drama of contradictions. "Reject color", "Refuse exhibition". Moral concerns, concerns. But after he ended his life, he triggered the most sensational art scandal of the 20th century.
Embarked on a lonely art path, no art gallery, no collector, no money, works are exhibited everywhere, but a year can not even earn 1300 yuan. Seems to be a foil for contemporaries. And after he ended his life, he won a huge reputation and wealth. In sharp contrast to the hardships, anxieties and struggles of their lifetime, like Van Gogh, the period of struggle during their lives was actually only "freedom to starve to death".
To this day, there are still many people who question the value of that mass of color, the commercial value, the artistic value.
Indefinite (yellow and blue)
Oil on canvas
242.9x186.7cm
Untitled
172.7x137.2cm
236.5x203.5 cm
No. 22, 1949
Human beings
Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Abstract Expressionist painter, Born Russian Jew, immigrated to the United States in 1910. In his youth, he earned part-time work to study, and worked as an actor, a field reporter, a painter, a waiter, and a starving person. In 1929 he became an adjunct teacher of the Jewish Church and a founding member of the Expressionist Ten. In the end, Mark Rothko could not bear the torture and committed suicide by cutting off his veins.
On May 8, 2012, at Christie's auction, Abstract Expressionist artist Mark Rothko's painting Orange, Red, Yellow sold for $86.88 million (about 547 million yuan). On November 11, 2014, abstract painter Mark Rothko's "No.21" was sold at Sotheby's in New York for $45 million. On May 13, 2015, Mark Rothko's 1958 "No.10" sold for $81.925 million, or about 508 million yuan, at Christie's. The auction price of Rothko's paintings continues to rise, and it is easy for people he is not familiar with to see his paintings: these clumps of color, where they look good, are going to be so high.
"When I was young, art was a lonely road, no galleries, no collectors, no critics, and no money. But it was a golden age, because we all had nothing, but we could pursue our ideals more recklessly. Today the situation is different, it is a cumbersome, stupid, consumer era, as to which situation is better for the world, I am afraid I am not qualified to comment. But I know that many people live this kind of life involuntarily, desperately needing a quiet space for us to take root and grow. We have to live with the hope that we can find it. In his studio, the artist Rothko confides in the visitors indignantly, "I can exhibit my paintings in a hundred places." But I can't make any money. I can speak. But they don't pay for the presentation. Someone wrote about me, and my works were exhibited everywhere, and I couldn't even earn 1300 yuan a year. "
Rothko poses with his family, and the teenager holding the dog in the lower left is Roscoe
On September 25, 1903, Mark M. Born into a Jewish family in Devonsk, Vitebsk Province, Russia, Rosko was the youngest of four children and spent his childhood in a strong Jewish cultural and religious environment. In 1913, the family moved to Oregon, USA. Soon, his father, who first started a business in the United States, died, and Mark had to sell newspapers to earn money to subsidize tuition. At the age of 21, he received a scholarship to attend Yale University. Due to anti-Semitic sentiment, his scholarship was cancelled 6 months later. To this end, he had to study while working in a restaurant owned by his cousin. In his third year of college, he dropped out of school to work as a tailor in a garment factory in New York. The following year he entered the New York University of Fine Arts Student Association to study fine arts, while working as a supporting actor, painting stage backgrounds, and working as a lighting engineer in a Broadway theater.
In 1929, he became a part-time teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Brooklyn, New York, and began a 30-year teaching career. In the same year, he exhibited his paintings for the first time in the "Opportunity" gallery. Married in the early 1930s, his wife Edise designed handmade ornaments, which were quite successful commercially, but she despised his painter friends and roughly criticized their works. Thus also sowed the seeds of Rothko's contempt for popular culture and applied fine arts.
Rothko's early works
In 1933, he held several solo exhibitions, received funding from the U.S. government's federal arts program, and was named at 23. The $5 salary is employed by the government. During this period, he became acquainted with Assier Gorky, De Koonin and Jackson Pollock, who later became famous Abstract Expressionist painters. In 1935 he became one of the founders of the "Ten" expressionist painters group. Rothko's 1930s works, such as "Landscape", "The Sitting Man", "Street Scene", "The Woman Sitting on The Legs", etc., are subtle in color, simple in composition, with deliberate deformation and exaggeration, and the urban scene is dreamlike, with surrealist style characteristics.
subway，1936
Metro View, 1938
In 1938, Roscoe and Gottlieb turned to classical mythology in search of themes in the grand and universal sublime order. Rothko explored not only Greek tragedies, but also the writings of Nietzsche and Jung, as well as unconscious automaticism.
This is Rothko's first mythological painting, Antigone, with an overall gray tone, like the roughness of an ancient stone. In the West, Antigone's indictment of city-state law is known as the "Antigone Grudge," but this tragic resentment has become one of the sources of constitutionalism, democracy, and the rule of law. Rothko references architectural decorations on New York architecture in this and other mythological paintings, and he also puts in images of crucifixion. Thus the martyrdom of Christ represents for Rothko, as it did for Newman, the eternal tragedy of the human condition, rather than a particularly Christian theme. Such a combination of pictorial elements expands Rothko's thematic base into a universal tragedy.
Antigone, 1941
During World War II, Roscoe divorced Edise and soon married Mary Alice (Mel), a 23-year-old book illustrator. In 1945, he held his first major solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum of Art, which was well received by critics. Rothko's style of painting was constantly changing, and by 1947, a mature style of pure abstraction began to emerge. From 1949 onwards, he gave up his existing modeling habits and painted some large rectangular works, with simple pictures, overlapping colors and blurred edges.
Although Rothko's fame grew rapidly, he remained very poor. In order to support his family, he went to Brooklyn College in 1950 to work as a full-time art teacher. Due to discord with his colleagues, he resigned in 1954. He is stubborn by nature and has a paranoid and rigid attitude toward the world. When the Whitney Museum wanted to buy two of his paintings in 1952, he not only refused to sell them, but also called this important art museum a "scrap shop." In the same year, at the invitation of the Museum of Modern Art, he participated in the "15 American Painters" exhibition, and when he was about to exhibit, the paintings sent were completely different from the pre-agreed works, which greatly ignited the artistic director of the museum. At the same time, his relationship with Pollock and Newman is very tense, and he once claimed that he taught Newman "how to paint", thus damaging their friendship.
In the 1950s, Rothko's popularity steadily increased and the economic situation improved considerably. In 1958, he was selected as the American delegate at the Venice International Exposition and owned a studio in the town of Province, a massachusetts artists' colony. At this time, his depression burst out and he became more and more nervous and depressed. He needed to concentrate on painting huge works that seemed smooth and quiet. For him, the painting process resembles a religious ritual. He kept the painting process a secret and never showed it until the work was completed.
After the rise of pop art, which challenged Abstract Expressionism, coupled with the gradual tension of the marriage relationship, Rothko deteriorated emotionally and began to drink heavily, seriously damaging his nerves and health. On New Year's Day 1969, Rothko left home and moved to the studio, spending a full year painting the last of his works. The cynical and unruly Rothko had few relatives and friends, and he was surrounded by his friends and his wife Mel, who had experienced twenty years of artistic career with him, and the friends died one by one. Gorky committed suicide in 1948. In May 1953, at the age of 54, Tomlin went to a party at Pollock's home on Long Island, returned home and was admitted to the hospital the next day and died of a heart attack. In August 1956, at the age of 42, Pollock died in a car accident. In 1962, at the age of 34, Klein died of a heart attack in Paris. In 1963, At the age of 51, Baziotes died. In 1965, David Smith died in a car accident.
On February 25, 1970, he killed himself by cutting the blood vessels and nerves in his wrist with a razor. But when the artist committed suicide in his Manhattan studio while in pain and despair, it sparked one of the most sensational art scandals of the 20th century. His agent Lloyd earned mark for three months at a much lower than market price. More than 800 paintings from Rothko's estate. The agent later became a defendant and began the longest and most costly legal battle in art history, after 4 years of litigation and 8 months of criminal trial. The defendants eventually paid a fine of $9.2 million, plus a penalty of 200 hours of social service. The estate was redistributed, with about half of it going to Rothko's two children. This event fully exposes the shady scene in the field of elegant and decent art trading.
Representations made
"White and Green in Blue" is Rothko's masterpiece. On the screen, green and white rectangles are arranged on a blue base. The edges of the rectangle are not clearly defined, and the colors penetrate and merge with each other, which makes the block surface seem to emerge faintly from the background, and constantly hover and float. They produce a certain rhythm on the picture, warm, soothing and deep, directly touching people's hearts. The dim colors give the picture a mysterious, tragic feeling, and the white areas exude confidence and potential. Rothko's later works are darker in tone, as if drowning in deepening pain. He even made the picture completely black to express his sense of tragedy. His frescoes from the 1960s bear a sense of religious sublimeness and sacredness.
White and green in blue
He often stayed up all night, working from 5 p.m. to 10 a.m. the next morning. He painted under the intense light of the theater stage, but when exhibiting, he arranged the lights to be dimmed, so that his strong large color blocks protruded from the environment, as if suspended in the air, causing a strong shock. In 1961, Rothko held a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which reached the peak of his artistic career. Collectors, brokers, critics flocked to the scene, and even President Kennedy came to cheer him up and pay homage to him.
Untitled, 1970
His paintings are often composed of 2-3 rectangular patches of color, the pigment is diluted, translucent, the edges are blurred, blending with each other. He was often "misunderstood" and "misunderstood" before he died, and eventually ended his life by cutting his wrist. After his death, he is only considered a foil role for contemporaries, and only a very small number of painters engaged in abstract art have enshrined him as a master. He was particularly disgusted by being regarded as an abstract expressionist artist, and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy was his eternal source of thought. In his art world, spiritual symbolism is far more important than the effect of painting; he never sees painting as a kind of self-expression, but as a kind of communication with the world.
"I became a painter because I wanted to be able to give my paintings a musical and poetic pain."