Page 27 - Studio International - April 1972

recognizes the principle and passion of rejected his traditional format for the murals, 4 Mural, Section 4 1959
Oil on canvas 105 x 94 in.
organisms.'10° One certainly does recognize this opening, as it were, the central rectangles so that
principle in them, and it is precisely the either one or two separate areas of the ground
organisms' independence of the artist's colour appear in the centre of the painting. A
intelligence and will that mars their impact. significant effect of this development was, as
Recalling in these terms the magnificent Clement Greenberg pointed out,12 to increase
No 20, 1950 (the earliest painting with a 'typical' greatly the effect of drawing within the picture.
format in the exhibition), one can see how The murals seem closer to figuration than
Rothko resolved the threat of possible anarchy. anything else Rothko made after the late 194os,
It is still an organic painting, involving as if they contained images of doors, gates or
movement and development in detail, though in thresholds of some kind. This may partly be
a more controlled form than previously. There because of the large amount of drawn edge,
is also an authoritarian framework of rectangles drawing being the basis of representational art
against ground colour of the kind already in the western tradition. It may also be
described. The painting's dimension (116x 102 connected with the pattern of the colouring, the
inches, roughly twice the size of the earlier plum ground colour alternating across the
pictures) gives it a natural authority, as does its picture with the orange-red of the 'doors'. The
simplicity. The layout is easily understood, effect is to make one read the surface of the
particularly as the strongest colour, a band of picture as a sequence, instead of, as usually with
crimson, divides the height of the canvas in the Rothko, taking the whole picture in at once; this
proportion of the golden section, and the basic adduces a literary interpretation. Seen as gates
colour design is straightforward : pink is or doors, the shapes favour the tragic, Orphic,
introduced with increasing intensity into the explanation that Rothko's paintings in general
blocks of white in the upper half of the picture are often given. One could imagine, in particular,
as they descend towards the crimson, and below that the fiery red of the gates signifies the artist's
a rectangle of lime green rests on the overall daring in passing through, and the mute light-
yellow ground. Change of tone and colour, absorbent plum colour was an equivalent for textured surface. Differences of colour are
which in the earlier pictures had been sudden Hades. But though Rothko was fascinated by minimal and yet quite unmistakeable. In
and unpredictable, here becomes gradual, so tragedy, there is no evidence that at this time his narrowing his field of activity so much Rothko
that emphasis is switched from novelty within mind worked through the figurative images of rejects the blunt contrasts of pictures like the
the picture to continuity. The new control of ancient myth. At best one can be reasonably 1958 White, Red on Yellow which must have
gradation reduces a shout to a whisper, and certain that, in reading the pictures figuratively, seemed to him by the 196os to be too direct,
when Rothko remarked that 'silence is so one is identifying correctly their implications, noisy and approximate, compared with the
accurate'," he pinpointed the new exactness even if in doing so one is reverting to the use of accuracy of the later paintings. His silence is a
that his painting acquired by the elimination of images after the artist had commanded them to kind of stealth by which he takes and holds one's
sudden contrasts and oppositions. be pulverized. The issue is not entirely confined attention with a minimum of gesture, and
The colours of No 20, 1950 give it a steady, to the Seagram murals because, though Rothko carries one gently into the excitement of his
luminous quality. Not all the 195os paintings stopped using their format, he continued with darkness. The authority of the format combined
in the Hayward had a comparably silent their colours. with the soft spread of colour across the surface
character. In White, Red on Yellow of 1958, The importance of red for Rothko in the calls us to participate in the steady process of his
another yellow-ground painting, Rothko chose a 196os may have been connected with its activity. The restricted colour does not
much harder and denser yellow, and arranged on flexibility, its ability to appear thrusting and prejudice the sense of change and development
it two blocks of colour, smaller than customary fiery or sombre and melancholy. This contrast that existed in the earlier paintings, but it does
in proportion to the ground colour, and even is felt in the Seagram murals, and though sombre resolve that struggle of opposites that existed in
more than usually symmetrical in their placing. colouring tends to dominate in the later the pictures based on obvious contrasts. De
The lower, red, block is uncharacteristically paintings, one picture at the Hayward, Reds and Chirico, whom Rothko admired, was excited by
dense and flat, but the lack of activity within the Violet over Red of 1959, was almost entirely the process of darkening, and described it
colour is partly compensated for by the liberty warm and expansive in character. Reds played a figuratively in terms of dusk and lengthening
with which the red brushmarks are allowed to major role in all but one of the paintings in the shadows. Like Rothko, he felt that a kind of
spread over the yellow. By contrast, the higher, Hayward between 1959 and 1968. To judge by silence was the prerequisite of creativity. With
white, block is laid on very thinly over a the exhibition, his late paintings were much less neither painter does one feel that the process of
brownish ground with brushmarks very much varied in their colouring, and, in particular, the darkening is so much something final as part of
in evidence; but, unlike the red, the white is not yellows which were common in the 195os a cycle of continuous change.
allowed to spill over into the yellow. The disappeared. Rothko liked to deny that he was a In his final black and grey paintings Rothko
painting is built out of contrasts, both of actual colourist, and the significance of the later significantly altered his format. The canvases are
colour, and of the way the colours are handled. pictures may be as much in the closeness of their divided horizontally close to, or rather above,
In a sense this kind of treatment refers back to colours and tones as in what the colours actually the centre, to form two negatively coloured
the sort of contrasts set up in the 1948 paintings, were. It is attractive, and perhaps partly true, blocks, dark brown or black above and grey or
even if here they are carried out with much to think of the earlier light-exuding pictures like buff below. The edges of the canvas are primed
greater sureness. In the following ten years, to No. 20,1950 as optimistic, and the dark 196os white and taped during painting to make
1968, Rothko narrowed his field of activity, so paintings as pessimistic, but the problem is narrow hard-edged white frames round the
that smaller nuances of colour and tone are certainly more complicated, as a dark red can be finished picture. This distinctive treatment of the
loaded with greater meaning. Contrast is largely just as stimulating as a luminous yellow. edge gives the pictures a new rigidity and
replaced as a principle by gradation. In Black on Deep Purple of 1964 an fixedness. For the first time since 195o the edge
A landmark in the change was the Seagram impenetrable black central section is surrounded is more than something that is inevitably there;
murals commission which Rothko received in by a dark purple ground area of thin paint its hard immutable whiteness defines positively
1958, and which occupied him till 196o. He soaked into the canvas and leaving a more the internal area of activity. The division of each
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