Quote

We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.

Mark Rothko

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mark Rothko
Age: 66 †
Born: 1903
Born: September 25
Died: 1970
Died: February 25
Artist
Drawer
Painter
University Teacher
Dvinsk
Marcus Rothkowitz
Subjects
Matter
Assert
Valid
Timeless
Crucial
Tragic
Subject

More quotes by Mark Rothko

Image
There is more power in telling little than in telling all.
Mark Rothko
Image
There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.
Mark Rothko
Image
Look, it's my misery that I have to paint this kind of painting, it's your misery that you have to love it, and the price of the misery is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars.
Mark Rothko
Image
And last, it may be worthwhile trying to hang something beyond the partial wall because some of the pictures do very well in a confined space.
Mark Rothko
Image
I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures!
Mark Rothko
Image
If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom.
Mark Rothko
Image
If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.. ...(they) express something real and existing in ourselves.
Mark Rothko
Image
It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.
Mark Rothko
Image
The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.
Mark Rothko
Image
While the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.
Mark Rothko
Image
The reason for my painting large canvases is that I want to be intimate and human.
Mark Rothko
Image
Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit.
Mark Rothko
Image
The abstract artist has given material existence to many unseen worlds and tempi.
Mark Rothko
Image
The reason for my painting large canvases is that I want to be intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command.
Mark Rothko
Image
Without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama.
Mark Rothko
Image
To me art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk.
Mark Rothko
Image
I also hang the pictures low rather than high, and particularly in the case of the largest ones, often as close to the floor as is feasible, for that is the way they are painted.
Mark Rothko
Image
I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions.
Mark Rothko
Image
There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red.
Mark Rothko
Image
With us the disguise must be complete. The familiar identity of things has to be pulverized in order to destroy the finite associations with which our society increasingly enshrouds every aspect of our environment.
Mark Rothko