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Steven: We're in the museum of modern art

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and we're on the 4th floor in the rooms devoted to abstract expressionism

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and we're standing in front of Mark Rothko's No. 3/No. 13

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which dates to 1949

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Beth: Those abstract expressionists love to <i>not</i> name their paintings

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in fact, it's sort of a modernist problem

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Steven: It is, it is

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Beth: Composition number...blah

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Steven: Well, they didn't want to close down meaning, right?

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Beth: I understand, that ambiguity is incredibly important

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for artists in the 20th century.

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Steven: It is. But I think the weird No. 3/No. 13 part

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I wonder if that has to do with the curators trying to figure out really what this thing was called

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and not being sure about it

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Beth: Yeah, that could be it.

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Steven: I have no idea, actually.

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Beth: You know, it's interesting cause Rothko is an artist that

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even at a time when I a little bit put off by abstract painting

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I always loved the Rothko's

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They have a kind of brooding heaviness about them

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Steven: A gorgeous melancholy

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Beth: Yeah!

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And I don't think I even knew why it made me feel that way

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Steven: I think Rothko would have been really, really happy to hear you say that

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I think Rothko really wanted people, in fact, I seem to remember a quote where he said

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if people understood his paintings, they would be in tears before them

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Beth: Yeah, I think it did that to me

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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

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Yeah, there's something incredibly, sort of, awesome about it.

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Beth: And so, what is it that evokes those feelings, really

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You know, it's a lot of things

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It's the "horizontality"

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it's the way that the forms are, sort of, behind and in front and have no edges and kind of hover

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Steven: Until you said, "no edges" and "hover", it sounded like you were talking about a Mondrian

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Beth: Yeah, but, also there's that kind of way you can kind of see underneath the paint

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and you know sometimes it comes in front

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It's a kind of incompleteness, and...

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Steven: A kind of finding, it's a process, right?

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You can feel almost Rothko's efforts to find his way through this

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and you know there's...

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Beth: Now you sound like we're talking about a "Cezanne"

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Steven: Oh that's interesting.

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But I think there are elements of "Cezanne" and "Mondrian" here

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which is not what you would think of at first

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Beth: No

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Steven: I think that these are paintings that

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as you were saying that, you were moving your hands back and forth

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and I think that this is exactly right.

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It took me a while to figure this out about Rothko

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but I think that these are paintings about space

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rather than color

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I mean, color is important, obviously

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and color is gorgeous

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These are forms, these almost clouds of forms

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that exist in some sort of space of their own construction

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Beth: That makes sense.

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Steven: And it's interesting when you said the "horizontality"

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because they are horizontal paintings,

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even though...

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Beth: In that, it's a vertical image

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Steven: The canvas is vertical

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Beth: Yeah

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Steven: But they create an occupy space in a very important way

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and the heaviness of that black form,

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that sort of cloud of black rectangle

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soft at its edges

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Beth: So ominous

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Steven: And because it's high

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it's center of gravity is ever more powerful, do you see what I mean?

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Beth: Well, I feel like almost it pulls me into it.

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Steven: It does, right.

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Beth: Is that what you mean by the?

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Steven: Yeah, well I think so, but it also presses down vertically on the cream white below,

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the line of dark blackness below that and the green below that, absolutely

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Beth: It's oppressive.

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Steven: This is kind of incredible luminosity that exists here

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but actually according to some conservators, Rothko's colors have lost a lot of their edge

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and I wonder what they would have looked like, even been more luminous

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Beth: They're very vivid.

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Steven: So, this notion that one's not after a sort of finished product

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but that these are process-oriented paintings

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you know the famous term that Rosenberg used was "Action Painting"

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we don't usually think about that term in relationship to Rothko

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because there's a kind of centrality and a kind of balance that's...

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Beth: Well, and when you think of action you think about Pallega, you know, leaning over the...

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Steven: But I think there is a kind of "provisional-ness" and a process of finding,

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I think you're absolutely right, which is very much tied to the artist and his experience in the making of this canvas

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and I think that the "authentic-ness" of the canvas can really be embedded in that notion

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Beth: Of finding, of the artist exploring

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Steven: Finding and feeling, yeah

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I think that's exactly right, you know it's interesting, because...

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Beth: So, there's a kind of turn toward the psyche of the artist

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Steven: Exactly right, this is an expression of the interior

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but, sort of funny, is that in the next generation

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some artists will begin to disavow that

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Beth: Complete rejection of that

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Steven: Right, because this is seen as a kind of psycho-analytic heroism

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growing out of the European surrealism, etc.

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Growing out of Jung, out of Freud

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but in a kind of purely American idiom, native american kind of scale

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this sort of grandeur and space

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Beth: Right, so use Worhol as a kind of reaction to the soup cans

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Steven: Absolutely, or Rauschenberger, even Jasper

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Beth: That sort of statement that art is about, is <i>not</i> about some kind of inner psychic state, right

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Steven: But, this is in some ways a very beautiful and expressive kind of romanticism in that way, isn't it?

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Beth: I think so.