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About Rothko
As the Washington Post says, "Dore Ashton brings the reader to the very core of Mark Rothko's art." She draws on her countless interviews with the artist--giving little credence to the false mythology surrounding his work--to take us to the heart of Rothko's painting, showing its derivation from his reading, travel, and thought.
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1983
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About the author
Dore Ashton
178 books13 followersDore Ashton (1928, – January 30, 2017) was a writer, professor and critic of modern and contemporary art. She was the author or editor of more than thirty books on art.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 8, 2025
I became interested in art early on. My mom took me to a Renoir exhibit in Baltimore as a child. I believe I still have the small exhibit book. I took two art history classes in college. My initial passion was for the Impressionists, and still is. But I became a fan of Andy Warhol's work, and then the photorealism movement, and my wife of Jackson Pollock. So we started targeting modern art museums in cities we lived in and visited. For the last 8 or 10 years I've been fascinated with Mark Rothko, and I've seen his work in the 4 museums said to house the largest collections of his work - The Rothko Chapel and the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, the National Gallery, and the Tate Modern in London, as well as one work each at the St. Louis Art Museum and at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
This is the second or third book on Rothko I have. Dore Ashton got to know Rothko pretty well and spent quite a bit of time visiting with him and discussing art. One thing she stresses throughout this book, both based on her personal observations of the man, and on what others said about him, is that he didn't particularly like to talk about HIS art. He'd talk your ear off all day long about art in general, especially artists of the past that deeply affected him, and philosophical discussions of art in general and particularly of current art and the artist's relationship to things happening in the world. But the last thing he wanted to do was to "explain" his paintings. He felt, as many artists do, that the response to a work of art was a personal thing between the work and the viewer. To paraphrase what I took of his stance here, I imagine that he would say, what is the point of explaining the feelings behind a work, if the work didn't elicit those feelings in the observer ? I can understand this reticence, and it is surely present in many painters who work in abstractions. I still find his extreme silence a bit frustrating. Especially in the 50's, when his paintings were new, there was great misunderstanding of what he was doing, even by art critics, not to mention the public. I understand that the reception of a work is a personal thing, but it seems to me he could have made some general statements that would have smoothed entry into his world without putting himself in a box. Ashton reports that Rothko suffered long bouts of depression partially related to misunderstandings about his work. It's hard to reconcile that disconnect that he had control of and ignored. Ashton did not discuss Rothko's suicide. That's certainly a writer's prerogative, but wouldn't a biography, even one focused on the professional life of someone, be more complete and interesting with a section on that person's final thoughts and actions, however poorly understood ?
Rothko (b. 1903, d. 1970) is best known for his paintings of the late 40's and 50's, the so-called color field paintings. They typically were large format works with 2 or three stacked rectangles of color. What distinguished them was the transitory effect of blurred and shadowy edges that the blocks of color had, and the way that feathering simulated a sense that they were floating both above and in front of other spaces. "The implication of a third dimension is always there", Ashton says. "Depth is assured in various ways ... His depth expresses itself also in the way there is never a straight edge ... (that would) assert frontality and hold to the plane." Rothko wasn't particularly enamored of the term color field, and preferred to refer to them as multiform paintings.
It seems that that most important belief Rothko had about art and artists in general was that he repudiated self-expression as the function of art. He felt that art should be an artist saying something true about the world - not about him or herself.
It is difficult for me to synthesize into coherent paragraphs either the visual effects Rothko created with his multiform paintings or the realities he was expressing with them ! So I'll assemble some comments made by Ashton (if not otherwise attributed) and by other artists that describe them. First, these thoughts summarize the way these paintings work visually:
Scale was one way he sought to achieve transcendence. Rothko said, "To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside (the) experience. However, you paint (a) larger picture, you are in it."
(I suppose he took this train of thought to the Nth degree with his Chapel - a 360 degree "in it" experience.)
In reference to the feathered and indistinct hazy edges the blocks of color have, many observers come away using words like "glimmer" and "radiate" to describe the effect.
Color would be the carrier of mood. Black represents darkness, fertility, earth or night.
Rothko was extremely sensitive to and specific about the spaces his works would be shown in; he certainly knew how much space they needed to work to their greatest effect.
"In each case there would be an underpainting meant to be sensed as a shadow, and an oscillating surface meant to be sensed as light."
Artist Robert Motherwell said, "Rothko's real genius was that out of color he had created a language of feeling."
Moving on to Rothko's purpose with these works:
He referred to the "transcendence" of his paintings.
Their power was "on (a) spiritual or emotional level".
Ashton spends quite a bit of time relating how deeply Rothko was affected by the philosophy of Nietzsche and his "address to the darker regions of emotions". However, whether she stated this in her book or not, I believe that Rothko's works also spoke to positive, even rapturous emotions as well.
"Rothko ... was moving ... toward a distancing from the 'everyday world".
"The meaning of life was the real subject matter of an artist."
"Rothko use(s) images that are directly communicable to all who accept art as the language of the spirit."
"... the symbols of man's primitive fears and motivations."
Rothko saw painting as "ideals that embrace all of human drama".
His work represented "anecdotes of the spirit" and the "language of the inner kingdom" and "the states of the soul".
He was after a transcendental experience, a "passing beyond".
Painteer Hubert Crehan wrote that "this rational attempt to destroy the line is undoubtedly based on Rothko's intuitions of the essential oneness of things - a kind of visual metaphor of the unity and integrity of life, consciousness and the universe."
Ashton describes Rothko's overall temperament as one of "the longing for a universal experience of unity"
Finally, and I believe this is probably the most important thing I came away with from the book, "In a group letter outlining their principles, 'There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. ... only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.'" Rothko was adamant that his "abstract" art was very much about our world and our experience of it.
This is the second or third book on Rothko I have. Dore Ashton got to know Rothko pretty well and spent quite a bit of time visiting with him and discussing art. One thing she stresses throughout this book, both based on her personal observations of the man, and on what others said about him, is that he didn't particularly like to talk about HIS art. He'd talk your ear off all day long about art in general, especially artists of the past that deeply affected him, and philosophical discussions of art in general and particularly of current art and the artist's relationship to things happening in the world. But the last thing he wanted to do was to "explain" his paintings. He felt, as many artists do, that the response to a work of art was a personal thing between the work and the viewer. To paraphrase what I took of his stance here, I imagine that he would say, what is the point of explaining the feelings behind a work, if the work didn't elicit those feelings in the observer ? I can understand this reticence, and it is surely present in many painters who work in abstractions. I still find his extreme silence a bit frustrating. Especially in the 50's, when his paintings were new, there was great misunderstanding of what he was doing, even by art critics, not to mention the public. I understand that the reception of a work is a personal thing, but it seems to me he could have made some general statements that would have smoothed entry into his world without putting himself in a box. Ashton reports that Rothko suffered long bouts of depression partially related to misunderstandings about his work. It's hard to reconcile that disconnect that he had control of and ignored. Ashton did not discuss Rothko's suicide. That's certainly a writer's prerogative, but wouldn't a biography, even one focused on the professional life of someone, be more complete and interesting with a section on that person's final thoughts and actions, however poorly understood ?
Rothko (b. 1903, d. 1970) is best known for his paintings of the late 40's and 50's, the so-called color field paintings. They typically were large format works with 2 or three stacked rectangles of color. What distinguished them was the transitory effect of blurred and shadowy edges that the blocks of color had, and the way that feathering simulated a sense that they were floating both above and in front of other spaces. "The implication of a third dimension is always there", Ashton says. "Depth is assured in various ways ... His depth expresses itself also in the way there is never a straight edge ... (that would) assert frontality and hold to the plane." Rothko wasn't particularly enamored of the term color field, and preferred to refer to them as multiform paintings.
It seems that that most important belief Rothko had about art and artists in general was that he repudiated self-expression as the function of art. He felt that art should be an artist saying something true about the world - not about him or herself.
It is difficult for me to synthesize into coherent paragraphs either the visual effects Rothko created with his multiform paintings or the realities he was expressing with them ! So I'll assemble some comments made by Ashton (if not otherwise attributed) and by other artists that describe them. First, these thoughts summarize the way these paintings work visually:
Scale was one way he sought to achieve transcendence. Rothko said, "To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside (the) experience. However, you paint (a) larger picture, you are in it."
(I suppose he took this train of thought to the Nth degree with his Chapel - a 360 degree "in it" experience.)
In reference to the feathered and indistinct hazy edges the blocks of color have, many observers come away using words like "glimmer" and "radiate" to describe the effect.
Color would be the carrier of mood. Black represents darkness, fertility, earth or night.
Rothko was extremely sensitive to and specific about the spaces his works would be shown in; he certainly knew how much space they needed to work to their greatest effect.
"In each case there would be an underpainting meant to be sensed as a shadow, and an oscillating surface meant to be sensed as light."
Artist Robert Motherwell said, "Rothko's real genius was that out of color he had created a language of feeling."
Moving on to Rothko's purpose with these works:
He referred to the "transcendence" of his paintings.
Their power was "on (a) spiritual or emotional level".
Ashton spends quite a bit of time relating how deeply Rothko was affected by the philosophy of Nietzsche and his "address to the darker regions of emotions". However, whether she stated this in her book or not, I believe that Rothko's works also spoke to positive, even rapturous emotions as well.
"Rothko ... was moving ... toward a distancing from the 'everyday world".
"The meaning of life was the real subject matter of an artist."
"Rothko use(s) images that are directly communicable to all who accept art as the language of the spirit."
"... the symbols of man's primitive fears and motivations."
Rothko saw painting as "ideals that embrace all of human drama".
His work represented "anecdotes of the spirit" and the "language of the inner kingdom" and "the states of the soul".
He was after a transcendental experience, a "passing beyond".
Painteer Hubert Crehan wrote that "this rational attempt to destroy the line is undoubtedly based on Rothko's intuitions of the essential oneness of things - a kind of visual metaphor of the unity and integrity of life, consciousness and the universe."
Ashton describes Rothko's overall temperament as one of "the longing for a universal experience of unity"
Finally, and I believe this is probably the most important thing I came away with from the book, "In a group letter outlining their principles, 'There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. ... only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.'" Rothko was adamant that his "abstract" art was very much about our world and our experience of it.
June 28, 2011
I was first interested in Rothko based on his images. My interest increased when I discovered he committed suicide. These two things led me to want to read about him. This book was quite interesting to me. Living through the great depression and WWII and exploring/creating art during the height of Existentialism was all fascinating. His political activity and the art organizations he formed and his focus on values were all elements that made for a very interesting character. This was a good read.
February 24, 2018
When producing & listening to modern abstract music - electronic, tape, or computer produced, I often compared the experience to abstract painting - a nondidactic experience that required an open & creative interpretative mind on the part of the audience. But how then does an abstract painter explain his/her own work, when audience expectations may center around a more tangible reality than music presents. It seems that the painter requires even more "lawyering" to convince a skeptical audience. Sometimes the discussion of thematic intent, aesthetics, philosophy etc range so far afield, so far beyond what appears on the canvas, that it seems like only so much mental chewing gum for over-clocked brains in a desperate search for meaning and self-justification. The most astute observation in the book, and one to which I can much relate - "few modern painters can sustain the feeling that hey have truly possessed their work or experience." Certainly Marcus Rothkowitz was preoccupied with Greek mythology, modernist psychology & Early Christian thinking as he examined the human experience, but fortunately the relative simplicity & emotive accessibility of the paintings belie the tortured overintellectualization, self doubt & melancholy that no doubt were contributing factors to his suicide.
December 9, 2018
Read about 80-85% (skimmed some of the factual biography at the beginning). Lots of good reporting/research on Rothko's life and inspirations with good quotes from him and a variety of contemporaries. The book explains the philosophical basis and goals of his art in fascinating and even moving ways, though I don't feel well versed enough in Rothko criticism or the various philosophers referenced (primarily Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger) to evaluate the arguments. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading them, and had a moment of real profundity/spirituality when I allowed myself to "buy-in." (Made me think a lot about how with art of all forms that's the key - let yourself buy in when you can even if the reasons/premises aren't logically airtight - life is more fun that way.)
September 1, 2024
This is a good account of the evolution of Rothko's work.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews