LCV Winter 2013-14 - (Page 91)
reflected upon Rothko's internal dilemmas as an artist
at the time of his death, including the validity of his
lifetime of work:
"His late paintings in black and white and grey had
horizontal lines right down the center. He was breaking
his rules, discarding color.
"He [originally] wanted to be a stage or theatre
person. ... 'To be or not to be' is a frightening question
when you put it in context. He wanted to be the best, ...
to make a painting that would make you want to cry.
Color deserted him, I think ... Sally Scharf [wife of
painter William Scharf, Rothko's assistant] said that
perhaps he realized those last paintings had failed to do
what he wanted to do, to say what he wanted to say. I
think his ambitions were more powerful than he could
confront. ...
"His discovery of color that we all appreciated so
much, [to him] perhaps wasn't as great as Shakespeare.
... I think that he changed painting from something
Rothko wrote, "I have one ambition for all my pictures,
that their intensity be felt unequivocally and immediately."
As in the final stanza of Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover
Beach," describing a "darkling plain/Swept with confused
alarms of struggle and flight,/Where ignorant armies clash
by night," Rothko's own dark planes dominating his last
decade allude to the conflicts of the soul and speak to his
search for truthful expression.
In his correspondence with the Guggenheim Museum
as its staff prepared for a 1977 retrospective, Trivigno
typed his memory that Rothko referred to his New Orleans
paintings as "breakthrough" canvases (Trivigno to
Zamoiski, Aug. 25, 1977, Guggenheim Museum Archives).
Since then scholarly consensus categorizes Red, White and
Brown as the advent of a powerful and final decade of
paintings, characterized by a progressively shadowed
palette. Rothko's private and unrestrained dialogue with
Trivigno informs us that White and Greens in Blue and Red,
White and Brown may have been inspired by Mell and
I wish that
Rothko would
have lived.
Obviously, he was
searching. I would
like to have seen
what he would
have found.
For more information on
Kendall Shaw, visit
- Kendall Shaw
passive, something good to look at,
to something that would stimulate your emotion. ...
One of the things that Mark taught me is that the
painting is a great animal on the wall. ... It is not
[simply] pleasant to have on the wall-it is a live
animal, and the color is its blood. He pulled color out of
it [at the end]. I think that there was a dilemma there.
The late paintings changed totally. Picasso could have
done little cubist paintings for the rest of his life and
made lots of money from the New York dealers. He
went back to figuration and jumped all around, trying
to find what is real to him. Artists should be trying to
find reality-which changes.
"I wish that Rothko would have lived. Obviously, he
was searching. I would like to have seen what he would
have found."
Rothko expressly wished his paintings to be
intensely experienced by viewers. In an unpublished
essay about Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy,
Helen Trivigno,
soulful visions of
those to whom he
was near. Of and
from things that
inspired him, Rothko endeavored to produce ideal forms,
in the Platonic sense, and their ongoing recognition
confirms his transcendent achievement. Evoking centuries
of art, philosophy and religion, his paintings, like all
masterpieces, defy expectation and explanation still.
Kendall Shaw paints in his in his Columbia
University studio in 1962. Just as Rothko bought
house paint in New Orleans for his canvases, Shaw
explains that he and other abstract expressionists
bought used house painters' brushes.
--------------------------------
Cybèle Gontar is a Ph.D. candidate in American art at The Graduate Center, City
University of New York. She is currently completing her dissertation on Paris-trained New
Orleans portraitist Jacques Guillaume-Lucien Amans (1801-1888).
The recollections of New Orleans artists recorded by this author took place on Dec. 4, 1996
(at Kohlmeyer's studio), Dec . 27, 2002 (at Trivigno's studio), and April 6, 2003, and August
15, 2013 (at Shaw's home in Brooklyn, New York).
Winter 2013-14 * LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 91
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