Mark Rothko Tribute

I just updated the tribute page I created for Mark Rothko in honor of his birthday, with a biography from Wikipedia and a slideshow I put together. A couple of months ago I watched a documentary about his work. The images he created, the life he led, and the way he expressed himself and communicated with the world completely blew me away. I ended up spending an entire weekend in my apartment, scanning the internet for quality images of his paintings... and reading up on him further. Finding the larger images of his paintings took a lot of digging around. The end result of that experience, perhaps as many as 50 hours worth of investment, is this page:

myspace.com/mark_rothko

Enjoy, and celebrate the life of a great master...

I posted a larger version of this slideshow at the bottom of his page. I urge you to view it there.

"I am not an abstract painter. I am not interested in the relationship between form and color. The only thing I care about is the expression of man's basic emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, destiny."
--Mark Rothko (September 25, 1903 - February 25, 1970)

---

* In the June 13, 1943 edition of the New York Times, Rothko, together with Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman, published the following brief manifesto:

"1. To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.

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

"3. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way.

"4. 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.

"5. It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted." [Rothko said "this is the essence of academicism".]

"There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing.

"We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art."