Mark Rothko in his artist quotes on abstract painting - free resource, American art history

Mark Rothko in his quotes - the American artist on abstract painting and artistic life in the U.S. - free resource for students, pupils, art-lovers and teachers in American art history

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In his artist-quotes Mark Rothko presents his ideas on the ‘Sublime’ in painting art and on his use of color. He also describes his relations with similar artists in the so-called New York School in the U.S. like Barnett Newman.

Rothko was a Russian-born American artist who developed himself as an painter-artist from Surrealist figurative painting into a purified abstract art. He used an intense color concentration and simple forms in his paintings. Often his art is called Color Field painting.
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Some selected quotes of artist Mark Rothko - as a short introduction of his extended quotes in the PDF:

• ’I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing, and stretching one’s arms again transcendental experiences became possible.’ Rothko’s quote, from: ‘The Romantics were prompted’, essay by Mark Rothko, 1947/48; as cited in ‘Possibilities’, vol 1, no. 1, winter 1947-48

• ’The aesthetic is the sine qua none for art: if a work is not aesthetic, it is not art by definition… .We feel through the senses… …it is the creation of an object for sensing that is the artist’s task’. - his quote, in: ’ ‘Beyond the Aesthetics’, ed. Robert Motherwell, in ‘Design 47’, no 8, New York, April 1946, p. 38

• ’I am not an abstractionist… .I am not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else… .I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on’. - Rothko’s quote, in: ‘Conversations with Artists’, Selden Rodman, New York Devin-Adair 1957. p. 93
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  links for free art-resources on American artist Mark Rothko:

  • biographical notes on Mark Rothko, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko
  • artist-quotes of ànd about Rothko, Wikiquote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko
  • images of the painting art of Mark Rothko, Wikiart: https://www.wikiart.org/en/mark-rothko
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    editor: Fons Heijnsbroek / Matrozenhof (FotoDutch on Wikiquote):<br>[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/User:FotoDutch]