We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, as-sociation, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have
been the devices of european painting. instead of making cathedrals out of christ, man or “life” we are making them
out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.
—Barnett newman
Did Rothko’s friendship with clyfford still, whom he first met in san Francisco in July 1943, contribute to the disso-lution of his figurative style? Born in 1904 in Grandin, north Dakota, far from any european influence, still was working in san Francisco during the early years of the war. his canvases, characterized by fields and patches of color “in strips,” evinced no national character, but they had something raw and brash about them, two qualities generally associated with american culture. in the summer of 1945, still left san Francisco for new
York and settled in Greenwich Village. The friendship that de-veloped between the two men remained mostly intellectual, born from the encounter of two vigorous minds endlessly ex-changing ideas. “We were complete opposites,” still explained later. “he was a big man. he would sit like a Buddha, chain-smoking. We came from different sides of the world. he was thoroughly immersed in Jewish culture. But we had grown up only a few hundred miles apart. We had read many of the same things. and we could walk through the park together and talk about anything.”1
of course, their face-to-face conversations tended to focus on the conflicts between the new York artists and the city’s ar-tistic institutions as well as the need to create a truly “ameri-can” art. around that time, as Rothko was transitioning from his surrealist to his “Multiform” phase, his paintings started
Mark Rothko in his studio with Tiresias, 1944 (in far room), and Untitled, 1945 (Unknown photographer. copyright © 2013 Kate Rothko Prizel and
christopher Rothko)
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losing all their representational dimensions and no longer de-picted any identifiable elements. in Aquatic Drama, 1946, for instance, a vertical axis of symmetry in the center of the paint-ing suggests the presence of two bodies facpaint-ing each other, each consisting of two light-colored oval forms. it’s a striking con-trast to the vertical mass displayed in Personage Two, another of Rothko’s paintings that year. What exactly is this “personage”
to which the title refers—an animal, a human being, a god? in masses of primary colors with rounded contours, which ran-domly float on the surface of the canvas, some of them swirl-ing and blendswirl-ing into one another, the “Multiforms” appear to break away from the painter’s aesthetic.
The conversations between Rothko—the european émi-gré who had tried his hand at surrealism—and still—the north Dakota native who had recently approached abstraction—
contributed to their ongoing aesthetic search, taking the form of a fascinating intercultural joust. still had begun as a figura-tive artist and gradually evolved toward abstraction, applying thick layers of bright color to immense canvases that recalled the monumental, heroic, transcendental landscapes of the first true american school in the nineteenth century, the hudson River school. More and more, he was considered as an authen-tically american artist, whose individual brushstrokes on the canvas shaped in turn the image of the modern american art-ist in the mind of critics.2 “i continued postponing an invita-tion for [Rothko] to visit me,” still explained. “one evening he came to my studio uninvited. after seeing some of the canvases i had stretched, he became visibly excited and asked permis-sion to tell Peggy Guggenheim about them.”3 carried away by his admiration for still’s daring, Rothko decided to mobilize his considerably broadened professional connections to help still’s career. late in 1945, Rothko managed to persuade Gug-genheim to organize a solo exhibition for his friend, going so far as to offer to write the catalogue himself. ever mistrustful
of the art world, however, still proved reluctant but eventually yielded to Rothko’s arguments. The exhibition opened in early 1946. in its catalogue, Rothko described still’s works as “of the earth, the damned and of the recreated,” while making a heated case for their “unprecedented forms and completely personal methods.”4
“clyff had been a tremendous influence in [Rothko’s]
thinking and in giving him courage,” wrote Katharine Kuh, a curator and close friend of Mark Rothko. still “gave Mark the freedom to be himself or to be something even better than himself.”5 indeed, still’s presence in new York encouraged Rothko to resume his artistic experiments and to free himself from the european surrealists, as well as to further distance himself from official institutions through ironic criticism. it was still, in turn, who negotiated Rothko’s first solo show in a major institution, a critical milestone in his career. opening on august 13, 1946, at the san Francisco Museum of Modern art, the exhibition included nineteen oil paintings on canvas and ten watercolors. “it was without question the best show i have ever seen in the gallery for years,” still wrote to Betty Parsons, “and it commanded the highest respect from those out here who know good work when they see it.”6 as a sign of admi-ration, the museum even bought a painting, Tentacles of Memory, 1945–1946, the first official acquisition of Rothko’s work by an american institution. encouraged by the san Francisco muse-um’s show of confidence in Rothko, the Whitney and the Brook-lyn Museum each acquired a work from the exhibition as well:
Entombment I, 1946, and Vessels of Magic, 1946, respectively.
Rothko’s painting career gained considerable exposure in March 1947, when he started to exhibit his works at Betty Par-sons’s gallery. Born at the turn of the century in new York to a conservative upper-middle-class family, Betty Pierson (who became Parsons in 1919) began her career as an artist, living
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for ten years in europe, where she worked with the sculptor antoine Bourdelle, before returning to new York in 1940. she opened a gallery in 1946, but it was two years later when she made her breakthrough, thanks to Peggy Guggenheim, who, returning to europe, asked her to look after her stable of paint-ers. The Betty Parsons Gallery then “became a meeting place for artists. The big four were newman, Rothko, still and Pol-lock, or, as she called them ‘The Four Men of the apocalypse.’
in the beginning, they were tremendously supportive of each other and would help hang each other’s pictures for shows. as she used to say ‘i give them walls. They do the rest.’”7
Yet some remained skeptical about Rothko’s works. For in-stance, his first exhibition at Parsons’s gallery failed to convince New York Times critic howard Devree, who wrote of the occa-sion: “Mark Rothko, at the Betty Parsons gallery, invokes the spirits of antiquity and even inorganic pre-history. at best, he is individually suggestive, though titles such as Phalanx of the Mind and Orison seem hardly to the point. and when he essays such overblown examples as Rites of Lilith, the size makes for emptiness.”8 The effects of this chilly reception, however, were short-lived. That summer, Rothko started the first of his west-ern tours, as a guest instructor at the california school of Fine arts in san Francisco, together with his friend clyfford still, fellow painter clay spohn, and the school’s director, Douglas Macagy. immersed in the school’s studious work environment and its distinctively warm and sharing atmosphere, Rothko ex-perienced one of the most intense moments in his career. er-nest Briggs, one of his students there, described Rothko’s first appearance in his class, escorted by still:
i first met Rothko—still brought him into the class and in-troduced him. and there was of course a total difference in terms of personalities. Rothko was the epitome of the new York Jewish intellectual artist/painter and exuded an entirely different kind of energy [than still]; urbane, deep intent,
quintessential new Yorker. . . . The big thing with Rothko’s presence there in the program was that he gave a lecture once a week which was in a separate room and people who were not even in the painting class came to listen to the lectures.
Which again, was not a lecture. it was more like a conversa-tional thing, responding to a few questions and then going on. . . . i can remember when he was in the earlier period, the so-called surrealist period, he mentioned that he and his particular group, Gottlieb and Baziotes, were influenced by and very close to classical studies, classical mythology, and he would be quoting herodotus or something at some of these lectures or repeating an antidotal [sic] story of herodotus in answer to some inquiry on the part of a student.9
“What was there about last summer which seems now to have been so magical?” Rothko wrote to spohn, back in new York. “You, clyff, Doug, etc. set up tensions which made us exist, i believe, on a very desirable plane, and i miss it.”10 The magic of those months spent in san Francisco with Mell consid-erably affected the painter’s identity, to the point that he wished for the city to become “the art center of the world”: “The city is unspeakably beautiful & the weather perfect. . . . The weather is now (and i am told always) benignly autumnal, combining a slight briskness with melancholy—nourishing my slavic predi-lections. (We live, in fact, on Russian hill). . . . There is no doubt that . . . this city has earned the right to be the art cen-ter of the world, and that we must do something to bring this about. i suggest that we defame european art and expose ori-ental art—thereby causing the commercial & ideological lanes to shift automatically to the Pacific.”11
The change of scenery, the “hectic life” of his new net-work of friends, the excitement of teaching in an institution of international reputation where, he explained to newman, he had “perhaps conveyed many of our mutual ideas” in this “tir-ing but vivid experience out here”12—it all contributed to this
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magic. however, his work suffered there: “My canvas is dry and my paper stretched. now if only an idea made its way into my head,” he complained at times.13 But it was not until he was back in new York that Rothko started to sense the benefits of his san Francisco interlude, especially as still’s aesthetic—huge dark backgrounds lacerated with bright colors—was beginning to take shape. That summer, Rothko borrowed 1949-9-W, a painting by still he would hang in his new York studio for a few years. “i have already received and stretched the canvases i did in san Francisco. having been unable to judge them there, i have decided that in that respect all was not lost,” he wrote to clay spohn upon his return to new York. “The picture i own of clyff’s also arrived and it looks even better than i remem-bered. i think i am beginning to think of Frisco as the classi-cal golden age with the beautiful court and patio and the clear crisp afternoons and our conversations there.”14
it was really in new York, on september 24, 1947, that Rothko realized the impact of his first stay in california on his aesthetic evolution. “elements occurred there,” he wrote,
“which i shall develop, and which are new in my work and that at least for the moment stimulate me—which gives me the illu-sion—at least—of not spending the coming year regurgitating last year’s feelings.”15 in fact, his first Multiform canvases were painted in san Francisco during the summer of 1947. The fol-lowing autumn, Rothko returned to writing, completing the now unstoppable dynamic that would define his work. When approached by the magazine Tiger’s Eye, he eloquently de-scribed the relationship between the artist, his art, and his fel-low citizens: “a picture lives by companionship and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. it dies by the same token.
it is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world.” This was prophetic of his future career.16
Meanwhile, critics were attempting to understand the new period that was taking shape before them. in october 1947,
clement Greenberg reiterated his resentment toward his country’s relationship with art: “artists are as isolated in the United states as if they were living in Paleolithic europe. . . . The isolation is unconceivable, crushing, unbroken, damning.
. . . What can fifty do against a hundred and forty million?”17 Barely two months later, he started to acknowledge that a
“new indigenous school of symbolism” was dawning, which in-cluded, “among others, Mark Rothko, clifford [sic] still and Barnett Benedict newman [sic],” with Gottlieb as “perhaps the leading exponent.” While disapproving of “the importance this school attributes to the symbolical or ‘metaphysical’ content of its art,” Greenberg conceded that “as long as [it] serves to stimulate ambitious and serious painting, differences of ‘ide-ology’ may be left aside for the time being. The test is in the art, not in the program.”18 in January 1948, in the midst of a transition period that saw the establishment of a new balance of power between europe and the United states, brought on by the announcement of the Marshall Plan six months earlier, Greenberg did not conceal his optimism, despite the dark-ness of the postwar years: “american painting in its most ad-vanced aspects—that is, american abstract painting—has in the last several years shown here and there a capacity for fresh content that does not seem to be matched either in France or Great Britain.”19 it was Greenberg again who identified and defined what he perceived then as a turning point in american art history: “For some reason, 47–48, there was a swing.”20 The painter Philip Pavia admitted for his part that “no other mo-ment contained so many surprises and changes, and so much shifting. . . . 1948 was a key year. . . . Gorky’s suicide came as a blow to the eighth street gang.”21 at that same time, Jack-son Pollock began producing his first drip paintings by danc-ing around the canvas, while Barnett newman was startdanc-ing to conceive his own “zip” paintings.
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in his second exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery (in March 1948), as he had done in the past, Rothko decided to re-veal himself only partially: he would show earlier paintings, dis-connected from his latest work. he exhibited fourteen oils cre-ated between 1944 and 1946, all in a surrealist style. This new exhibition did not keep him from continuing to fume about the most conservative new York galleries and critics. “Fifty seventh street is a stinking mess,” he wrote to clay spohn in california. “There has been what is apparently an organized attack on ‘unintelligible’ art in the n.Y. Times, Telegram, art news, etc. . . . Personally i think that the attack is the greatest signal honor, which we have received here in 10 years. To be intelligible to them is dishonorable and suspect.”22 how could such a rebel tolerate the new York art world now that it, at last, accepted him? Would he, with a career headed for success, suddenly become conciliatory? certainly not, judging from his correspondence with spohn. “i am beginning to hate the life of a painter. one begins by sparring with his insides with one leg still in the normal world. Then you are caught up in a frenzy that brings you to the edge of madness, as far you can go with-out ever coming back. The return is a series of dazed weeks during which you are only half alive. That is a history of my year since i’ve seen you. i am beginning to feel that one must break this cycle somewhere.” san Francisco remained a nur-turing utopia in Rothko’s mind, in stark contrast to new York, where, he complained, “you spend your strength resisting the suction of the shop-keeping mentalities for whom, ostensibly, one goes through this hell. i wish we could relive, in a new day, our last summer, for as often as i think of it, i recall it as a mo-mentous time. Perhaps you can plan a visit to n.Y. in the near future. Please write to us again.”23 san Francisco, new York, san Francisco, new York—the geographical tensions between the West coast and the east coast, between “Frisco as the
classical golden age” and the city of “shop-keeping mentali-ties,” seemed to enrich the work and life of Mark Rothko.
on more than one occasion, he protested against the acquisition policies of the Whitney and the Metropolitan.
and though he echoed critics of MoMa who complained that the museum did not show enough american artists, he was more ambivalent toward that museum itself, maintaining affec-tion for the instituaffec-tion whose permanent collecaffec-tion included the best Modernist european artists. in fact, the last stage of his uncanny aesthetic evolution during those years took place there. Just as in 1940, while writing his book Rothko had im-mersed himself for months in a long, patient, and astonishing study of art history from which he returned transformed, four years later, in MoMa’s galleries, he plunged into a long, pa-tient, and breathtaking study of an artwork produced in Paris in 1911 that had just been acquired by the museum: Matisse’s The Red Studio.
standing before a canvas whose sweeping rust color drowns the forms and erases all breaks between vertical and horizon-tal lines, viewers enter a studio abandoned by the artist to find themselves faced with paintings, sculptures, and objects—
figures frozen in motion. in this space, at once deserted and populated, they interact directly with an incongruous, random assembly of nudes, children, and models that nurtured the art-ist’s imagination. There, seven abandoned works in progress await, in the ponderousness of their incompletion, the creator who will give them life forever. Through this metaphorical scene, the blinding omnipotence of the demiurge-artist tran-spires, as if, without him, those lifeless dolls, poor withered Pinocchios, were to face the dreadful challenge of being ex-tinguished forever or becoming immortal works of art. had Rothko come across MoMa’s press release of april 5, 1949, in-troducing the work to the public? Regardless, after diving into
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the French master’s canvas for weeks, Rothko plunged once and for all into abstraction.
“Matisse was 42 in 1911, the year he painted The Red Studio;
he had been painting for 20 years. Three or four years before he had emerged from fauvism, inconclusive style with contra-dictory influences. . . . The most striking feature of The Red Studio is, of course, the great uniform background of rust red.
This background color is completely arbitrary, for in a simi-lar painting of an adjacent view of the same studio, Matisse
This background color is completely arbitrary, for in a simi-lar painting of an adjacent view of the same studio, Matisse