Abstract painting seems an excellent subject on which to apply Susan Sontag’s stricture against looking for hidden meanings in works of art and literature (Against Interpretation). Jason Farago reported late last year on a Mark Rothko retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Farago is far from belittling Rothko’s oeuvre, but he does treat it at arm’s length.

For all that, may I grumble for a moment? I can coolly appreciate the artist’s modulations of color; I’m not a philistine. I have a sly admiration for how he imparted the highest seriousness to a few blurry stains. But there is a repetitiousness to this much Rothko, and a fair bit of pomposity to its metaphysical claims.

“I’m only interested in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on,” Rothko said in 1957, denying any interest in the mechanics of abstraction or color. It was another aggrandizement, but maybe I should stop being such a hardhearted formalist and take him at his word.

Awe, love, fear, faith, emptiness, immanence, infinity, eternity: Are these not the whole reason we bother with form in the first place? On most days I find it faintly ridiculous to try to locate such grand themes in a spume of green or a blood-red fog. On other days, days like now, I find it ridiculous to get through life without them.

(Jason Farago, “Mark Rothko at Full Scale, and in Half Light,” New York Times, 10-25-23)

(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved