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Mark Rothko Biography

Mark Rothko (/ˈrɒθkoʊ/), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (Russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, Latvian: Markuss Rotkovičs; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was an American painter of Russian Jewish descent. Although Rothko himself refused to adhere to any art movement, he is generally identified as an abstract expressionist.

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Mark Rothko Quotes

And last, it may be worthwhile trying to hang something beyond the partial wall because some of the pictures do very well in a confined space.

Confined, Pictures, Space, Trying, Wall

I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.

Art, Basic, Creativity, Human, Interested, Photography

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

Direct, Drama, Dramas, Novels, Renaissance, Way

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.

Accepted, Artist, Essence, Long, Widely

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

Companionship, Expanding, Eye, Eyes, Observer, Sensitive

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.

Expression, Favor, Impact, Reassert, Shape, Simple

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.

Basic, Express, Fall, Ideas, Real

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.

Complex, Consciousness, Men, Self, World

Without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama.

Art, Drama, Gods, Monsters

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.

Companionship, Cruelty, Expanding, Eye, Token, World

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

Human, Intimacy, Intimate, Large, Painting, Want

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.

Way, Lows, Cases, High, Pictures, Low

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.

Dollars, Fifty, Hundred, Looks, Love

There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.

Artist, Good, Nothing, Painting, Thing

I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures!

Thinking, Make You Think, Pretty Picture, Think, Pretty, Make

A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.

Experience, Painting, Picture

The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions. . the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.

Color, Confronted, Having, Human, People, Religious

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

Common, Common Sense, Imagination, Opposed, Sense, World

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit.

Art, Anecdotes, Spirit, Anecdote

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.

Believe, Breathing, Representational, Silence, Solitude

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