Mark Rothko
from Skira
Recently breaking the record price for post-war art at a Sotheby’s auction, Rothko’s White Centre (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) is indicative of this artist’s tremendous and enduring legacy as a master of color. This beautifully produced, oversized monograph presents roughly 100 works (70 paintings in full-color plates and 28 drawings) from private and public collections, tracking the evolution of his signature style. The monograph begins with Rothko’s early work, focusing specifically on the delicate hues and subtle textures of his relatively small paintings on gesso board. It continues with an exploration of the stratified and chalky color that appear in his surrealist works that signal his increasing pull toward abstractionism and ends with a survey of his mature works, where all of these techniques culminate into the gradated colors in rectangular forms that would become hallmarks of his style. The portion addressing his late works is divided into three sections: a group of paintings from the early 1950s; ten paintings that were shown at the 1958 Venice Biennale; and the nucleus of the former Panza Collection. The Blackform paintings from the 1960s and the ultimate Black on Greys conclude the monograph, providing glimpses of an even more austere art at its inception, and creative horizons the artist would die before realizing. A fine selection of works on paper is also included to outline specific aspects of each period of Rothko’s artistic career.The book also includes a tribute by Michelangelo Antonioni, an interview by Gillo Dorfles, a preface by Christopher Rothko, five essays by international specialists, a chronology, and a complete bibliography.
Mark Rothko: A Biography
by James E. B. Breslin
from University Of Chicago Press
"I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetry." Born Marcus Rothkowitz in a small Russian town, Mark Rothko immigrated to Portland, Oregon, in 1913, when he was 10 years old. "You don't know what it is to be a Jewish kid dressed in a suit that is a Dvinsk, not an American, idea of a suit traveling across America and not able to speak English," he later told fellow abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell. Rothko was a weak child, an abandoned son (his father had gone to America in 1910 and died of cancer just seven months after the family was reunited), a Jew excluded from high school clubs, a Yale freshman on scholarship, and a college dropout determined to become an Artist with a capital A. James Breslin has written an exhaustive biography of the painter. He pulled together all the facts of Rothko's life and carefully examined all the strata of the artist's personality--Rothko's sensitivity, his sense of displacement, his pride and his diffidence, his combativeness, his love for his children, his hatred for Marlborough Gallery director Frank Lloyd, and his difficulties with money. The book is flawed only by Breslin's ticlike use of italics, which give the sense of the author tugging at our sleeve in an unnecessary effort to persuade: "Rothko's last and most severe renunciations were made not to remove obstacles between the observer and the idea but in a gesture of personal withdrawal." But this is a relatively minor trifle that does not unduly detract from this large--and large-spirited--book about a tormented, brilliant Artist. --Peggy Moorman
"In Breslin, Rothko has the ideal biographer—thorough but never tedious, a good storyteller with an ear for the spoken word, fond but not fawning, and possessed of a most rare ability to comment on non-representational art without sounding preposterous."—Robert Kiely, Boston Book Review
"Breslin impressively recreates Mark Rothko's troubled nature, his tormented life, and his disturbing canvases. . . . The artist's paintings become almost tangible within Breslin's pages, and Rothko himself emerges as an alarming physical force."—Robert Warde, Hungry Mind Review
"This remains beyond question the finest biography so far devoted to an artist of the New York School."-Arthur C. Danto, Boston Sunday Globe
"Clearly written, full of intelligent insights, and thorough."—Hayden Herrera, Art in America
"Breslin spent seven years working on this book, and he has definitely done his homework."-Nancy M. Barnes, Boston Phoenix
"He's made the tragedy of his subject's life the more poignant."—Eric Gibson, The New Criterion
"Mr. Breslin's book is, in my opinion, the best life of an American painter that has yet been written . . . a biographical classic. It is painstakingly researched, fluently written and unfailingly intelligent in tracing the tragic course of its subject's tormented character."—Hilton Kramer, New York Times Book Review, front page review
James E. B. Breslin (1936-1996) was professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of From Modern to Contemporary: American Poetry, 1945-1965 and William Carlos Williams: An American Artist.
Writings on Art
by Mark Rothko
from Yale University Press
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.
The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art
by Mark Rothko
from Yale University Press
Mark Rothko, the painter famous for his luminous abstract canvases, spent several years in the late 1930s and early '40s writing a book about the meaning of art. Edited by his son Christopher, Rothko's uncompleted manuscript, The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art, reveals a man struggling to make a case for the highest ideals of Western culture at a time when crass popular taste and American regionalism were conspiring against the values he held dear. During these years, Rothko worked in a melancholy Expressionist style that was just beginning to be influenced by Surrealism. The hovering rectangles of color that would put him on the modern art map were still a decade away. While this book will no doubt be important to Rothko scholars, it is a period piece, relying on a form of rhetoric and a belief system that can be exasperating to modern readers. Windy chapters on such topics as "The Integrity of the Plastic Process," studded with references to Plato and Leonardo, "truth" and "unity," are Rothko's stock in trade. He never mentions his own paintings and refers to a few other living artists only in passing. And yet--as Christopher Rothko points out in his clear-eyed and useful introduction--the process of wrestling ideas onto the page may have helped the artist find a personal means of expressing the "tragic emotionality" that he believed to be the essence of all great art. Rothko longed to discover a new, post-Christian "myth" that could express a unified outlook on life by embodying "the world of ideals." Little did he realize at the time that the resolution of his dilemma would be based on a radically new approach to handling paint and using color. —Cathy Curtis
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.
Mark Rothko, 1903-1970: Pictures as Drama (Taschen Basic Art)
by Jacob Baal-Teshuva
from Taschen
An overview of the life and work of artist Mark Rothko, this volume exhibits his mythological content, simple flat shapes, and imagery inspired by primitive art.
Mark Rothko: Retrospektive
from Hirmer Verlag GmbH
Mark Rothkos meditative Abstraktionen sind längst Synonyme des Abstrakten Expressionismus. Ausserhalb der USA in öffentlichen Sammlungen nur spärlich vertreten, ist eine Retrospektive in Deutschland überfällig.
Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas
by David Anfam
from Yale University Press
This extraordinary book is the first volume of the definitive catalogue raisonn_ of Rothko`s work. It documents his entire output of paintings on canvas and panel, reproducing all the works in color. An introductory text also investigates every essential feature of his art.
Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington
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The Rothko Book: Tate Essential Artists Series
by Bonnie Clearwater
from Tate Publishing
Tate Publishing is proud to announce a new series on important international artists, beautifully designed and with superbly printed reproductions. The Essential Artists series provides, in each volume, everything necessary for the enjoyment and understanding of the worldÂ’s greatest artists:
• Introduction to the artists’ lives and works
• Information on materials and working methods
• Writings by the artists and by contemporary and current critics
• Where to see the art
• More than 100 expertly printed color reproductions
Written by leading experts on the artists Mark Rothko (1903–1970) was one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. His work is intensely charged with meaning and emotion, portraying human feelings rather then color or form. In this lavishly illustrated survey, Bonnie Clearwater traces the development of Rothko’s career, from his arrival in the United States as a child through to the formation of his mature style, and examines his initial influences and interactions with other artists. Drawing on the artist’s own letters and writings, The Rothko Book provides the most comprehensive introduction yet to this complex and fascinating figure.
The Essential Mark Rothko
by Klaus Ottmann
from Harry N. Abrams
Mark Rothko (1903-1970) is generally considered, along with Jackson Pollock, the preeminent artist of the group of painters who, during the 1940s and '50s, re-invented American art and became known as the Abstract Expressionists. Yet despite his success--people cried when they stood in front of his sublimely spiritual canvases--he suffered from intense anxiety and depression, and eventually took his own life.
The Legacy Of Mark Rothko
by Lee Seldes
from Da Capo Press
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