Mark Rothko Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels; large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way.

  Mark Rothko

  Drama, Renaissance, Way

  Stephanie Rosenthal, Ad Reinhardt, Haus der Kunst München, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella (2006). “Black paintings”

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• 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

  Simple, Impact, Expression

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.36, Yale University Press

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• 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

  Mean, Reality, Artist

  Mark Rothko, Christopher Rothko (2006). “The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art”, p.21, Yale University Press

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• The people that weep before my paintings are having the same religious experience that I had when I painted it.

  Mark Rothko

  Religious, People, Emotion

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• 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, Fall, Ideas

  Mark Rothko (1997). “Mark Rothko”, Stewart Tabori & Chang

  23 Copy quote

• This world of the imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.

  Mark Rothko

  Common Sense, Imagination, World

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.36, Yale University Press

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• 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

  Eye, World, Companionship

  Susan J. Barnes, John de Menil, Dominique de Menil, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman (1989). “The Rothko Chapel: An Act of Faith”, Menil Foundation

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• 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

  Men, Light, Color

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• Without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama.

  Mark Rothko

  Art, Drama, Monsters

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.59, Yale University Press

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• A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer

  Mark Rothko

  Eye, Companionship, Sensitive

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.57, Yale University Press

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• The abstract artist has given material existence to many unseen worlds and tempi.

  Mark Rothko

  Artist, Unseen, World

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.45, Yale University Press

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• I will say without reservations that from my point of view there can be no abstractions. Any shape or area that has not the pulsating concreteness of real flesh and bones, its vulnerability to pleasure or pain is nothing at all. Any picture that does not provide the environment in which the breath of life can be drawn does not interest me.

  Mark Rothko

  Pain, Real, Views

  "Mark Rothko: A Biography". Book by James E. B. Breslin, p. 170, 1990.

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• 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

  Real, Giving, Remembrance

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• 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, Strange, Realizing

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.58, Yale University Press

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• 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

  Men, Self, World

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.46, Yale University Press

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• 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

  Believe, Breathing, Silence

  Mark Rothko (1997). “Mark Rothko”, Stewart Tabori & Chang

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• 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

  Order, Identity, Association

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.59, Yale University Press

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• Look, it's my misery that I have to paint this kind of painting, it's your misery that you have to love it, and the price of the misery is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars.

  Mark Rothko

  Fifty, Dollars, Looks

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• 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

  Way, Lows, Cases

  Mark Rothko (1997). “Mark Rothko”, Stewart Tabori & Chang

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• (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, Spirit, Myth

  "Abstract Expressionism". Book by David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, p. 81, 1990.

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• I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions.

  Mark Rothko

  People, Down And, Facts

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• 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

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.36, Yale University Press

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• It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again.

  Mark Rothko

  Breathing, Silence, Solitude

  Mark Rothko (1997). “Mark Rothko”, Stewart Tabori & Chang

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• The reason for my painting large canvases is that I want to be intimate and human.

  Mark Rothko

  Want, Painting, Intimacy

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• I'm not an abstractionist... I'm not interested in relationships of colour or form or anything else.

  Mark Rothko

  Form, Not Interested, Colour

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