a psychotic bitter end

http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/rothkosplash.shtm

• Look at the timeline of Rothkos life and work.• Can you provide a rationale for his paintings?• For him, eschewing representation permitted greater

clarity • "the elimination of all obstacles between the painter

and the idea and between the idea and the observer." • As examples of such obstacles, Rothko gave "memory,

history, or geometry, which are swamps of generalization from which one might pull out parodies of ideas (which are ghosts) but never an idea in itself.

• To achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be understood."

Turner"The fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up" 1838

John Ruskin, The Pass of Faido1845

Mondrian , Gray Tree, 1912

Kandinsky, Composition VII, (1913)

• Clyfford Still• Mark Rothko• Cy Twombly