Mark Rothko

This recently discovered manuscript by the celebrated artist Mark Rothko offers a landmark discussion of his views on topics ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary art, criticism, and the role of art and artists in society.

Philosophies of Art

The Artist's Reality

Jacob Baal-Teshuva

Presents an overview of the works of the Russian-born Ameican painter.

Rothko

Whitney Museum of American Art

National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Jeffrey S. Weiss

Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris

John Gage

Overzicht van het werk van de Amerikaanse schilder (1903-1970)

The first collection of Mark Rothko's writings, which range the entire span of his career While the collected writings of many major 20th-century artists, including Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and Ad Reinhardt, have been published, Mark Rothko's writings have only recently come to light, beginning with the critically acclaimed The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art. Rothko's other written works have yet to be brought together into a major publication. Writings on Art fills this significant void; it includes some 90 documents--including short essays, letters, statements, and lectures--written by Rothko over the course of his career. The texts are fully annotated, and a chronology of the artist's life and work is also included. This provocative compilation of both published and unpublished writings from 1934--69 reveals a number of things about Rothko: the importance of writing for an artist who many believed had renounced the written word; the meaning of transmission and transition that he experienced as an art teacher at the Brooklyn Jewish Center Academy; his deep concern for meditation and spirituality; and his private relationships with contemporary artists (including Newman, Motherwell, and Clyfford Still) as well as journalists and curators. As was revealed in Rothko's The Artist's Reality, what emerges from this collection is a more detailed picture of a sophisticated, deeply knowledgeable, and philosophical artist who was also a passionate and articulate writer.

Writings on Art

Mark Rothko (1903-1970), es uno de los grandes artistas del siglo XX: figura indiscutible del expresionismo neoyorquino, encabezó junto a Barnett Newman la corriente plástica Colour Fields. Erudito y filósofo, Rohtko fue además un escritor sofisticado y apasionante. Escritos sobre arte reúne por primera vez en un libro los textos del artista. Incluye ensayos breves, cartas, declaraciones y conferencias de Rothko a lo largo de su carrera. Esta ambiciosa antología de textos, tanto publicados como inéditos, que abarca desde 1934 hasta 1969, nos revela aspectos poco conocidos de Rothko: el papel que tuvo la escritura para un artista que, según muchos, había renunciado a la palabra; su profundo interés por la meditación y la espiritualidad; y su relación privada con artistas contemporáneos como Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell y Clyfiford Still.

Escritos sobre arte 1934-1969/ Writings on Art

Diane Waldman

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The exhibition catalogue for this posthumous show features essays by Diane Waldman and Bernard Malamud, over two hundred images in color and black and white, a comprehensive chronology illustrated with photographs from the artist's life, a list of previous exhibitions, and a comprehensive bibliography. This memorial catalogue celebrates the life and work of the visionary painter eight years after his tragic suicide in 1970. The artist's legacy is preserved in archival photographs, Malamud's recollections, and Waldman's comprehensive biographical essay.

A Retrospective

Mark Rothko, 1903-1970

Mark Rothko’s classic book on artistic practice, ideals, and philosophy, now with an expanded introduction and an afterword by Makoto Fujimura Stored in a New York City warehouse for many years after the artist’s death, this extraordinary manuscript by Mark Rothko (1903–1970) was published to great acclaim in 2004. Probably written in 1940 or 1941, it contains Rothko’s ideas on the modern art world, art history, myth, beauty, the challenges of being an artist in society, the true nature of “American art,” and much more. In his introduction, illustrated with examples of Rothko’s work and pages from the manuscript, the artist’s son, Christopher Rothko, describes the discovery of the manuscript and the fascinating process of its initial publication. This edition includes discussion of Rothko’s “Scribble Book” (1932), his notes on teaching art to children, which has received renewed scholarly attention in recent years and provides clues to the genesis of Rothko’s thinking on pedagogy. In an afterword written for this edition, artist and author Makoto Fujimura reflects on how Rothko’s writings offer a “lifeboat” for “art world refugees” and a model for upholding artistic ideals. He considers the transcendent capacity of Rothko’s paintings to express pure ideas and the significance of the decade-long gap between The Artist’s Reality and Rothko’s mature paintings, during which the horrors of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb were unleashed upon the world.

Justin Spring

Christopher Rothko

Milton Avery

Gottlieb, Adolph

Ann Freedman

Philip Cavanaugh

Sean Avery Cavanaugh

Madeleine Sentner

Tony Vevers

Edye Weissler

William Scharf

Avery Gottlieb Rothko--Provincetown Summers 1957-1961

Coming to Light

September 5, 1957-October 6, 1957

Annette Dixon

Three Michigan Architects explores the domestic work of three seminal Modern architects who practiced in Ann Arbor from 1930 to the 1980s: George Brigham, Robert Metcalf, and David Osler. Featuring archival plans, drawings, and photographs from the Bentley Historical Library, this catalog is the culmination of the 2014 exhibition series and symposium of the same name. Three Michigan Architects examines each practitioner's interpretation of the Modern vocabulary. George Brigham was one of the earliest architects to bring the International Style to the Midwest. Robert Metcalf favored straightforward designs for functional, minimalist living spaces. David Osler designed streamlined and poetic houses that physically and visually embraced their natural settings. The catalog situates their regional body of work in the larger context of Modern architecture in the U.S. that developed on the East and West Coasts.

Paintings 1933-1946

Mark Rothko and the Lure of the Figure

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was among the greatest painters of his generation. His closest friends and colleagues were New Yorkers, and New York was the city in which he lived and worked. It is fitting, then, that the city's five largest art museums - the Brooklyn Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art - should together hold one of the richest and most varied collections of this extraordinary painter's work. This volume illustrates every work by Rothko in these great museums in glowing full-color reproductions and, in the process, surveys his entire career. Although Rothko is most famous for his luminous Color-field canvases, he also created early figurative oils and delicate surrealist fantasies in watercolor and oil.

Mark Rothko in New York

Tate Gallery

David Anfam

Bradford R. Collins

"The first publication dedicated exclusively to Mark Rothko's art during the critical formative period of the 1940s. Examining the development and artistic exploration of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, this unprecedented volume presents the works of American artist Mark Rothko from the 1940s, a time when his most essential development as a painter occurred, dramatically and in a very compact space of time. During this period, Rothko moved from expressive figurative and surrealist canvases to more abstract multiform subjects and finally to his signature abstractions--luminous rectangles of color suspended in space. Richly illustrated with works by Rothko and his contemporaries, and with essays by prominent Rothko scholars, this important new book deepens our understanding of Rothko's art during this vital period, and that of the mature works that emerged from it."--Publisher's website.

The Decisive Decade, 1940-1950

Christoph Grunenberg

A handsome introduction to Rothko's rarely seen jewel-like paintings on paper of the late '60s This volume brings together key paintings from Rothko's (1903-70) renowned body of work made in the late 1960s--a significant and prolific period in the artist's life. In the wake of a particularly difficult bout of ill health and a tumultuous time in his personal life, Rothko was forced to reduce the scale of his practice from his signature monumental canvas to more intimately sized paper. Despite physical limitations, Rothko worked feverishly with a renewed enthusiasm for color, delighted by the effect of acrylic paint, which he had newly discovered. In an intimate introduction, Christopher Rothko writes of the artist's shift in scale and the parallel between the viewer's experience with the paintings and his father's own creation of them. Eleanor Nairne explores Rothko's trajectory, tracing his early works and experience painting through the Seagram paintings and chapel commission to these works on paper. The book is produced on the occasion of the inaugural exhibition of Pace Gallery's new gallery space in London.

Mark Rothko: 1968 Clearing Away

The Last Paintings

Paintings

One of the most important artists of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko (1903–1970) created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting over the course of his career. Rothko also wrote a number of essays and critical reviews during his lifetime, adding his thoughtful, intelligent, and opinionated voice to the debates of the contemporary art world. Although the artist never published a book of his varied and complex views, his heirs indicate that he occasionally spoke of the existence of such a manuscript to friends and colleagues. Stored in a New York City warehouse since the artist’s death more than thirty years ago, this extraordinary manuscript, titled The Artist’s Reality, is now being published for the first time.Probably written around 1940–41, this revelatory book discusses Rothko’s ideas on the modern art world, art history, myth, beauty, the challenges of being an artist in society, the true nature of “American art,” and much more. The Artist’s Reality also includes an introduction by Christopher Rothko, the artist’s son, who describes the discovery of the manuscript and the complicated and fascinating process of bringing the manuscript to publication. The introduction is illustrated with a small selection of relevant examples of the artist’s own work as well as with reproductions of pages from the actual manuscript.The Artist’s Reality will be a classic text for years to come, offering insight into both the work and the artistic philosophies of this great painter.

Palazzo delle esposizioni (Rome, Italy)

Briony Fer

Mark Rothko (1903-70), a leading figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement, is widely seen as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century. His paintings are famed for the intense, emotional responses they elicit from viewers. This book intends to look beyond the myths surrounding Rothko and calls for a reassessment of his later works.

Mark Rothko

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