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
Assert
Valid
Timeless
Crucial
Tragic
Subject
Subjects
Matter

More quotes by Mark Rothko

Image
The progression of a painter’s work…will be toward clarity toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer…to achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be understood.
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
Image
The reason for my painting large canvases is that I want to be intimate and human.
Mark Rothko
Image
I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures!
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
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
There is more power in telling little than in telling all.
Mark Rothko
Image
A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.
Mark Rothko
Image
Without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama.
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
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
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
Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit.
Mark Rothko
Image
My art is not abstract, it lives and breathes
Mark Rothko
Image
(I am) dealing not with the particular anecdote, but rather with the Spirit of Myth, which is generic to all myths at all times.
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
Small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way.
Mark Rothko
Image
The abstract artist has given material existence to many unseen worlds and tempi.
Mark Rothko
Image
I will say without reservations that from my point of view there can be no abstractions. Any shape or area that has not the pulsating concreteness of real flesh and bones, its vulnerability to pleasure or pain is nothing at all. Any picture that does not provide the environment in which the breath of life can be drawn does not interest me.
Mark Rothko
Image
Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.
Mark Rothko