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 http://www.knowla.org/entry/1355/

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