Rothko On My Mind

This morning my power went out. No cable, no internet, however my books still worked. I felt the urge to review Rothko and Gottlieb's manifesto. This impulse springs from my continual wrestling with art's paradoxes. Today's match was between technique and content. How this got me to Rothko I don't know – maybe because his book was in reach or because of his ability to express his ideas. In the beginning of his career not everyone responded positively to his work, especially one critic from the New York Times. The year was 1942, Edward Alden Jewell of the Times wrote a rather sarcastic review of a recent show featuring Rothko and Gottlieb's paintings. The review expressed his complete befuddlement of their work. And he couldn't leave it alone, a week later he follows up with another article mentioning that an artist had offered to help him with his "cluelessness." This provoked Rothko and Gottlieb to respond with a polemic letter to the Times in defense of modern art. Luckily, Jewell publishes it. But, not without twisting the knife by writing that their response was "as obscure as the paintings themselves." I believe their response (manifesto) brilliantly and concisely expresses many important insights into the nature of painting, however I am not on board with all their views. Here's an excerpt of their response, what do you think?

"The point at issue, it seems to us, is not an 'explanation' of the paintings, but whether the intrinsic ideas carried within the frames of these pictures have significance. We feel that our pictures demonstrate our aesthetic belief, some of which we therefore list:

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

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

3. It is our function as artists to make the specter 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 widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. 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..."