Quote

Small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way.

Mark Rothko

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Mark Rothko
Age: 66 †
Born: 1903
Born: September 25
Died: 1970
Died: February 25
Artist
Drawer
Painter
University Teacher
Dvinsk
Marcus Rothkowitz
Way
Novels
Like
Pictures
Drama
Large
Direct
Participates
Novel
Dramas
Small
Renaissance
Since
Participation

More quotes by Mark Rothko

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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
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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
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A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.
Mark Rothko
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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
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Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit.
Mark Rothko
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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
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The abstract artist has given material existence to many unseen worlds and tempi.
Mark Rothko
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The myth holds us, therefore, not through its romantic flavor, not the remembrance of beauty of some bygone age, not through the possibilities of fantasy, but because it expresses to us something real and existing in ourselves, as it was to those who first stumbled upon the symbols to give them life.
Mark Rothko
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We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.
Mark Rothko
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The picture must be... a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need.
Mark Rothko
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A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.
Mark Rothko
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Many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow.
Mark Rothko
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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
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There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red.
Mark Rothko
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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
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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
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There is more power in telling little than in telling all.
Mark Rothko
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My art is not abstract, it lives and breathes
Mark Rothko
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I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures!
Mark Rothko
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(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