Page 28 - Studio International - April 1972

canvas into two reduces the field of interaction I See, for example, Dore Ashton in Arts and
between the two areas to the single horizontal Architecture, August 1957, Peter Selz in the
introduction to the catalogue of the Museum of "Reported by Elaine de Kooning, Art News Annual
line. Implicit in Rothko's idea that his paintings Modern Art's Rothko exhibition, 1961, and Brian 1958.
12
possess `the principle and passion of organisms' O'Doherty in Art International, October 197o. I do In 'After Abstract Expressionism,' Art
is the continuity of movement and development not mean to imply that these authors have presented International, October 1962. Greenberg described
Rothko solely in such terms. the murals as 'disastrous'.
across the surface of the picture. In the last 2 Rothko and Gottlieb in a letter to the New York ork
pictures the potential areas for this activity are Times, 13 June, 1943.
vastly reduced. It is not only the reduction of 3The risk was pointed out by Robert Goldwater,
writing about Rothko in Arts, May 1961.
colour edges where the exchanges between 4 The phrase 'ground colour' is used to denote the
colours make these movements most potent; colour that extends to the edges of the pictures, and
now the colour itself is negative, and the blacks is not intended to identify any particular spatial
relationship between the different colours.
and greys contain little detailed variation. Also, 5A well-known exception is No. 8, 1952 in the Burton
the placing of a single dark area over a single Tremaine collection.
lighter one introduces a duality into the painting, 6A rare exception is Orange, Deep Wine, Brown on
Maroon of 1961, no. 52 in the Hayward exhibition.
an opposition that seems insoluble because The ground colour is maroon, but down the left edge
activity within the picture is so limited. In a is a strip of crimson like a crack in the maroon, giving
sense the principle of contrast, which Rothko a positive spatial implication of being behind the
maroon, as in a Clyfford Still painting.
had eliminated in the 196os, is reintroduced. But Letter to the New York Times.
it is not the active, positive contrast of colour and 8 The phrase 'hedges of colour' is borrowed from
colour usage in White, Red on Yellow of 1958. Richard Smith, who used it of his own early
paintings. (See 'Richard Smith talking to Bryan
Because of the internal division of the last
Robertson' in the catalogue of Smith's exhibition at
paintings into two, it is both negative and the Whitechapel Gallery, 1966.) Smith was perhaps
implacable. The darkness of Rothko's pictures in the English painter who learnt most from Rothko in
the late 195os. He is quoted as saying: 'I was bowled
the 196os up to 1968 is exciting and expectant of
off my foot by that yellowy Rothko in the Museum of
further development. But it leads in the final Modern Art when it was shown in London in 1956'.
paintings only to an equilibrium that is cold and (Reported by Lucy Lippard in 'Richard Smith.
Conversations with the artist,' Art International,
despairing. q
November 1964.)