Steven: We're in the museum of modern art
and we're on the 4th floor in the rooms devoted to abstract expressionism
and we're standing in front of Mark Rothko's No. 3/No. 13
which dates to 1949
Beth: Those abstract expressionists love to not name their paintings
in fact, it's sort of a modernist problem
Steven: It is, it is
Beth: Composition number...blah
Steven: Well, they didn't want to close down meaning, right?
Beth: I understand, that ambiguity is incredibly important
for artists in the 20th century.
Steven: It is. But I think the weird No. 3/No. 13 part
I wonder if that has to do with the curators trying to figure out really what this thing was called
and not being sure about it
Beth: Yeah, that could be it.
Steven: I have no idea, actually.
Beth: You know, it's interesting cause Rothko is an artist that
even at a time when I a little bit put off by abstract painting
I always loved the Rothko's
They have a kind of brooding heaviness about them
Steven: A gorgeous melancholy
Beth: Yeah!
And I don't think I even knew why it made me feel that way
Steven: I think Rothko would have been really, really happy to hear you say that
I think Rothko really wanted people, in fact, I seem to remember a quote where he said
if people understood his paintings, they would be in tears before them
Beth: Yeah, I think it did that to me
Steven: There's something wonderful solemn and, almost the kind of feeling you sometimes get when you look at stained glass windows in a Gothic cathedral
Yeah, there's something incredibly, sort of, awesome about it.
Beth: And so, what is it that evokes those feelings, really
You know, it's a lot of things
It's the "horizontality"
it's the way that the forms are, sort of, behind and in front and have no edges and kind of hover
Steven: Until you said, "no edges" and "hover", it sounded like you were talking about a Mondrian
Beth: Yeah, but, also there's that kind of way you can kind of see underneath the paint
and you know sometimes it comes in front
It's a kind of incompleteness, and...
Steven: A kind of finding, it's a process, right?
You can feel almost Rothko's efforts to find his way through this
and you know there's...
Beth: Now you sound like we're talking about a "Cezanne"
Steven: Oh that's interesting.
But I think there are elements of "Cezanne" and "Mondrian" here
which is not what you would think of at first
Beth: No
Steven: I think that these are paintings that
as you were saying that, you were moving your hands back and forth
and I think that this is exactly right.
It took me a while to figure this out about Rothko
but I think that these are paintings about space
rather than color
I mean, color is important, obviously
and color is gorgeous
These are forms, these almost clouds of forms
that exist in some sort of space of their own construction
Beth: That makes sense.
Steven: And it's interesting when you said the "horizontality"
because they are horizontal paintings,
even though...
Beth: In that, it's a vertical image
Steven: The canvas is vertical
Beth: Yeah
Steven: But they create an occupy space in a very important way
and the heaviness of that black form,
that sort of cloud of black rectangle
soft at its edges
Beth: So ominous
Steven: And because it's high
it's center of gravity is ever more powerful, do you see what I mean?
Beth: Well, I feel like almost it pulls me into it.
Steven: It does, right.
Beth: Is that what you mean by the?
Steven: Yeah, well I think so, but it also presses down vertically on the cream white below,
the line of dark blackness below that and the green below that, absolutely
Beth: It's oppressive.
Steven: This is kind of incredible luminosity that exists here
but actually according to some conservators, Rothko's colors have lost a lot of their edge
and I wonder what they would have looked like, even been more luminous
Beth: They're very vivid.
Steven: So, this notion that one's not after a sort of finished product
but that these are process-oriented paintings
you know the famous term that Rosenberg used was "Action Painting"
we don't usually think about that term in relationship to Rothko
because there's a kind of centrality and a kind of balance that's...
Beth: Well, and when you think of action you think about Pallega, you know, leaning over the...
Steven: But I think there is a kind of "provisional-ness" and a process of finding,
I think you're absolutely right, which is very much tied to the artist and his experience in the making of this canvas
and I think that the "authentic-ness" of the canvas can really be embedded in that notion
Beth: Of finding, of the artist exploring
Steven: Finding and feeling, yeah
I think that's exactly right, you know it's interesting, because...
Beth: So, there's a kind of turn toward the psyche of the artist
Steven: Exactly right, this is an expression of the interior
but, sort of funny, is that in the next generation
some artists will begin to disavow that
Beth: Complete rejection of that
Steven: Right, because this is seen as a kind of psycho-analytic heroism
growing out of the European surrealism, etc.
Growing out of Jung, out of Freud
but in a kind of purely American idiom, native american kind of scale
this sort of grandeur and space
Beth: Right, so use Worhol as a kind of reaction to the soup cans
Steven: Absolutely, or Rauschenberger, even Jasper
Beth: That sort of statement that art is about, is not about some kind of inner psychic state, right
Steven: But, this is in some ways a very beautiful and expressive kind of romanticism in that way, isn't it?
Beth: I think so.