Mark Rothko, No. 3/No. 13, 1949

Mark Rothko, No. 3/No. 13, 1949, oil on canvas (MoMA)

Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

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.