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Transcript of Rothko Nothingness
7/25/2019 Rothko Nothingness
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Mark Rothko.
Untitled,
1952. Oil on
canvas.
95
x
81 n.
(243.2
x 208
cm).
Private
collection.©
2005 Kate
Rothko
Prizel
and
Christopher RothkolArtists
Rights
Society
(ARS)
NewYork.
Photograph:
Bob Kolbrener.
The word
nothingness
frequently
appears in
writings
about
twentieth-century
art.Yet
how
can
we perceive
nothingness
or
know
what
it is?
Everywhere
we
look
we can
see, feel,
or think
something.
If
we
shut
our
eyes
and
ears,
we can
always
sense
our
heartbeat;
no
matter
how
much
we
try not
to
think
about
any-
thing
at all,
we
will still
be
aware
of
our
own
existence.
It
appears
to us
that
there is
no
such
thing
as nothingness;
hence,
to associate
an
artwork,
which
Natalie
Kosoi
Nothingness
Made
Visible:
The
Case
of
Rothko s
Paintings
I.
James
E. B.
Breslin, Mark
Rothko:
A
Biography
(Chicago:
University
of Chicago
Press,
1993),
7.
2.
Barbara
Novak and
Brian O'Doherty,
Rothko's
Dark
Paintings:
Tragedy and
Void,
inMark
Rothko,
ed.
Jeffery
Weiss,
exh.
cat.
(Washington,
DC: National
Gallery
of Art;
New
Haven:
Yale
University
Press,
1998),
281.
3. Robert
Rosenblum,
Modem Painting
and
the
Northern
Romantic
Tradition:
Ffiedrich
to
Rothko
(London:
Thames
and
Hudson,
1975),
10 .
4.
Jean-Paul
Sartre,
Being
andNothingness
trans.
H. E. Barnes
(New
York. Washington
Square
Press,
1992),
42.
is
always
something,
with
nothingness
seems
absurd.
In the
following,
I
will
show
that
such
a
relation
is possible and
not
absurd.
By
considering
two
philosophers
who
pondered
the notion
of nothingness,
Jean-Paul
Sartre
and Martin
Heidegger,
I
will first
address
the
problem
of how
we can
understand
nothingness
and
then
show
how
the works
of
Mark
Rothko
represent
it.
Respectively,
Sartre's
and
Heidegger's
concepts
of noth-
ingness
exemplify
two major
and
conflicting
approaches.
For Sartre,
nothingness
is
a nonbeing,
a negation
of all
the entities
in the world,
which
comes into
existence
through
human
consciousness.
Heidegger,
how-
ever,
assumes
the
existence
of nothingness
from
the outset,
arguing
that although
we cannot
grasp
or
know
nothingness,
we
nonetheless,
when
anxious,
have
an
experience
of
it.
He
argues
that because
any
being
is
finite,
nothingness
forms
beings
and
as such is
a prerequisite
of
everything
that is.
Many
commentators
on
Rothko
invoke
the word
nothing
in describing
his
paintings.
James
E.
B.Breslin,
in his
biography
of
Rothko,
writes,
Rothko's
artistic
enterprise
was after
all, a
something
that
was
dangerously
close
to
nothing. '
Barbara
Novak
and
Brian
O'Doherty,
in
their
essay
Rothko's
Dark
Paintings:
Tragedy
and Void,
also
assert
that
Rothko's
work
is
very close
to
nothing
and
that
nothing
is
indeed
its
very content.
Robert
Rosenblum
described
Rothko's
paintings
as
images
of
something
near
to
nothingness.
3
These are only
a
few examples
among
many.
The
common
characteristic
of these
writings,
although
not
always
explicitly
stated, is
that
Rothko's
paintings-because
of his
reduction
of
painterly
means
(figure,
line,
space,
and
eventually
even
color),
which
resulted
in
almost
mono-
chrome
paintings-are
on
the verge
of nothing.
As
such,
they
reflect
the way
in
which
we are
accustomed
to
think
about nothingness,
as
the negation
and
absence
of
entities,
and
thus
correspond
much
more
closely
to Sartre's
notion
of
nothing-
ness
than to
Heidegger's.
In
the
following,
examining
the works
of
the 195ps,
I
will
argue that
Rothko's
paintings
are not
only
on
the
verge
of being
nothing
but
that they
also
represent
nothingness,
which
corresponds
to
Heidegger's
concept.
Jeffery
Weiss,
in
his essay
Rothko's
Unknown
Space,
particularly
associates
Rothko's
paintings
with
Sartre's
thinking,
using
the
story
of
Pierre
from
Being and
Nothingness
to
interpret
Rothko's
paintings.
4
In
this story
Sartre
arrives
at a
caf6
to
meet
Pierre,
but
the
latter is not
there. The
caf6
with
all its
people
and activity
is
fullness
of
being,
but while
Sartre is
looking
for
Pierre
it
becomes
the
ground.
Each
figure
or thing
in
it gains
a
moment
of Sartre's
attention
(is this
Pierre?),
isolated
and standing
out
against
the
background,
and shortly
after
sinks
again
into
the background
(it
is
not
Pierre).
Sartre
calls
the successive
disappearance
of
these
objects
into
the
background
original
nihilation.
On
the surface
of
this original
nihilation
another
nihilation
occurs.
Since
Pierre
is
nowhere
to be
21 rt
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5.
Jeffery
Weiss,
Rothko's Unknown
Space, in
Mark
Rothko
(National Gallery
of Art), 323 refers
to Sartre's
Being
and
Nothingness
42.
6. Weiss, 323.
found,
his absence haunts the caf. Thus, Pierre
presents himself as nothingness
on the
ground of
the
nihilation of
the
caf6
the
nothingness which slips as a
nothing to the surface of the ground. s
Sartre
calls
Pierre's
perpetual absence
from
the
caf6 double nihilation.
Weiss
writes:
Certainly
Rothko's almost ineffably subtle manipulations of figure
and
ground (or
the
center
and the
edge)
can
be
characterized in
Sartrean
terms
as
a
double
nihilation
whereby the
absent figure
is
experienced as pres-
ence, or the apprehension
of
nothingness,
and plenitude
is
experienced
as
ground.
6
Although
Sartre argues that nothingness
is
the origin of negation and
not
the result
of it it
is
nonetheless a nonbeing, a negation
of being, and depends
on being,
an entity,
in order
to
negate it.
This
is precisely what the story of Pierre
illustrates: that
a
negative
judgment, X
is
not, stems
from nothingness as a
nonbeing, and
not
vice
versa,
and
that
nonbeing
(that
of
Pierre)
depends
on
(Pierre's) being.That is,
a
nonbeing
cannot exist apart from
being, as it
depends on
our expectation of
finding
something or
someone
in particular
(Pierre) that is
not there, and thus on our consciousness of the existence
ofa
thing or
a
person.
Certainly, if nothingness is represented
in Rothko's painting,
the comparison
to
Sartre's story
is not without
foundation, for
nothingness
is also
absence and
nonbeing. However,
Sartre
thinks
of nothingness as a nonbeing that comes to
be through
human
consciousness
and our expectations
of
finding
something
particular.The application of
Sartre's
theory of
nothingness
to Rothko's
paintings
therefore
seems
to me
problematic, as
it poses the question: what in
particular do
we expect
to
find
in Rothko's paintings, or
any
other
painting?
This
question
remains
unanswered
inWeiss's
text.
I believe
that
a perception of nothingness
as that
which constitutes beings, one closer to Heidegger's
than Sartre's,
corre-
sponds
to
nothingness
as
represented
in
Rothko's
paintings and
might
indeed
relate
to
how
he
himself thought of
it.
Sartre
and H eidegger
both
agree that nothingness is the origin
of negation,
but
they
disagree
as to its
nature: for
Sartre
it
is merely a nonbeing,
which
stems
from human consciousness,
while for
Heidegger,
nothingness is also
an affirma-
tion
of beings as it is
the
limit imposed on all beings.
Heidegger
maintains
that
everything in this
world,
including ourselves,
is
finite, and hence nothingness
constitutes
the
being of all
that
exists, and as such
forms
everything in the wa y
that
it is.Without
it,
entities could not
be.Yet it is even more
acute in the
case
of
human beings, since humans die,
while according
to
Heidegger other beings,
such as animals,
plants,
and objects,
simply dissipate into
nothingness
and
per-
ish.
He
maintains
that death,
our
own
impending nothingness,
is not
simply
something
that
happens
at
the end
of life.
Our
awareness that we
might
die
at
any moment pervades and shapes our
life.
Thus, because
death-the
possible
impossibility of being-is
what constitutes our being in
this world
and
also
what negates it, our being in its essence is anxious
being.We
repress
our funda-
mental anxiety
by
engaging ourselves in the
world and its affairs.
In
rare
moments
during
our existence, however,
anxiety
floats
to the surface and
reveals
to
us
what we in our
everyday life are
trying to repress,
namely,
that it
is
nothingness
that
constitutes
our being.
SUMM R
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7.
Martin Heidegger,
What
IsMetaphysics?
in
Bask
Writings
ed. D.
Farrel
Krell
(London:
Routledge,
1996),
102.
8. Martin
Heidegger,
Being
andTime
trans.
J.Macquarrie
and
E.Robinson
(London:
Blackwell,
1996),
356.
9.
Mark
Rothko,
Pratt
Lecture
quoted
in
Irving
Sandier.
Mark
Rothko
(InMemory
of
Robert
Goldwater),
inMark
Rothko
Paintings
1948-
1969,
exh.
cat.
(New
York.
Pace
Gallery,
April
1983),
II.
10.
Martin Heidegger,
What Are
Poets
For?
in
oetrey
Language
Thought
trans.
A. Hofstadter
(New
York:
Harper
and
Row,
1971), 125.
II.
Maurice
Blanchot,
The
Space
of
Literature,
trans.
A. Smock
(Lincoln:
University
of
Nebraska
Press,
1955),
94.
12.
Ibid.,
95.
The
difference
between
anxiety
and fear is
that
we
fear
a particular
and
determinable
being,
whereas
anxiety lacks
a determinable
object.
If a
person
is
asked
what
he
or
she is
anxious
about,
the
answer,
according
to Heidegger,
will
be:
nothing.
Nothingness
is revealed
through
anxiety
neither
as a
being
nor
as
an object,
nor
as a
negation
of beings.
Rather,
in
anxiety
nothingness
is
known
with
beings
and in
beings
expressly
as a
slipping
away
of
the whole.
7
By
the
whole
Heidegger
means
all
entities,
whose
meaning
for
us
and
our relation
to
which
compose
our world.
Because we are
anxious about
our
being,
which
is
a being-toward-death,
we flee
from
ourselves
and
from
facing
this fact,
toward
these
entities
that supply
our world
with
meaning
and
thus enable
us
to forget
that
our
being
is
being-toward-death.
In anxiety,
when
all beings
slip
away
from
our
grasp,
we
face
our
own
mortality,
since
the world
and
its
entities
can
no
longer
impart
any
meaning
to
our
existence.
He
writes
that
the 'nothing'
with
which
anxiety
brings
us face
to face,
unveils
the
nullity
by
which
Dasein
in
its
very
basis
is
defined;
and this
basis itself
is as
thrownness
into
death.
8
It
is well
known,
and
often
repeated,
that
Rothko
thought
that
art
should
deal with
the human
drama
or tragedy
and
should
intimate
mortality.
9
Such
intentions
correspond
to the role
that Heidegger-who
thought
of
poetry
as
the
highest
form of
art-assigns
to
poets.
In What
Are Poets
For?
Heidegger
maintains
that
the role
of
the
poet is
to present
the whole
sphere
of
being,
including
death,
the side
of being
that,
like
the
dark side
of
the
moon,
is
hidden
from
us,
invisible
to
us in
our everyday
life.
Heidegger
explains,
This
affirma-
tion,
however,
does
not
mean
to turn
the No
into
aYes; it
means
to
acknowledge
the
positive
as
what is
already
before
us and
present.
What is
present
to us
is
what
we
are
certain
of
and what
is
more
certain
than
death?
10
We
might
ask:
Is it
plausible
to argue
that art can
present
something
we
have
only
a vague
experience
of and
know
nothing
about?
And
if
art is
indeed
able
to
present
our
mortality
to us,
then how
can
we
recognize
it?
Maurice
Blanchot,
in
The Space of
Literature
like
Heidegger maintains
that
writing
has
a
fun-
damental
relation
to death
and
nothingness,
since it
draws
from
it as from
its
origin.
But,
contrary
to
Heidegger,
he believes
that art
attempts
not
to present
death but
rather
to negate
it.
He
argues
that it is
a
generally
accepted
idea
that
art
stems
from
the
desire not
to
die;
as
an example
he
quotes
Andr6
Gide,
who
wrote
in his
journals
(July
27,
1922)
that his
reason
for writing
is
to
shelter
something
from
death.
However,
we
cannot
hold
death
at
a distance,
if death
is not
possible
and Blanchot
contrary
to
Heidegger
maintains
that
death
is
impossible.
Obviously
we
all
know
that we will
die.Yet
we
cannot
know
it
for
certain:
What
makes
me
disappear
from
the
world cannot
find
its guarantee
there;
and
thus in
a
way
having
no
guarantee
it
is not
certain.
This
explains
why
no
one
is
linked
to death
by
real certitude.
No
one is
sure
of dying.
No
one
doubts
death
but
no
one can
think
of certain
death except
doubtfully.
For
to
think
death
is
to introduce
into thought
the
supremely
doubtful
the
brittleness
of
the unsure.
It
is
as if
in order
to think
authentically
upon
the certainty
of
death
we had
to let thought
sink into
doubt
and inauthen-
ticity
or yet
again as if
we
strive
to think
on
death
more
than
our
brain-
the very
substance
and
truth
of thought
itself-were
bound
to crumble.
12
23 art
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Caravaggio.
Death
of
the Virgin 1605-06.
Oil
on canvas.
145SY 96 4
n. 369
x 245 cm).
Mus6e
du Louvre, Paris. Photograph:
Erich
Lessing/Art
Resource,
NY .
In other words, we
cannot
think or
understand death.
Nonetheless,
writing,
at
least
writing that is
worth reading,
according to
Blanchot, must
endeavor
to
make
death
possible. By this
he means
that writing
must
attempt
to grasp
death
in
its incomprehensibility
and,
therefore,
it hovers
between
death
as
the possi-
bility
of understanding and
death as
the horror
of
impossibility. '3
The writer,
he
argues,
is like
Orpheus
descending
into
death
to
bring
his Eurydice
into the light
of day. And like
Orpheus the
writer
neces-
sarily
fails
in
his
or
her
task
as
he
or
she
succeeds
in
capturing not the certainty
of
death
but
the
eternal torments of Dying.
4
Visual
Representation
of
Nothingness
Although
both
Heidegger and
Blanchot
find a fundamental
relation between
death
and writing, they
disagree
as to
its ability to
render death and
nothingness.
Both
discuss
mainly literature
and
poetry,
but the ques-
tion
of whether
art can
present
mortality
to
us can
also
be
extended to the
visual arts.
Indeed,
references
to
death can be found
in
abundance in the
tradition
of
Western
painting.
Does
it succeed
in presenting the
other side
or does
it merely
render
the
eternal
torments
of
Dying ?
In
the
follow-
ing
examination of
two possible
ways
of
representing
death
visually,
I bear
in mind
that
there
is
a
fundamental
difference
between visual
and
conceptual
experience:
we can know
what
we
see
but
not
necessar-
ily understand
it,
while
conceptual
experi-
ence
must first
be
understood
in order to
be
known.
The
most
obvious way
to render
death
in
a
painting, and
the
one
that
has
been
most commonly
employed,
is
by the
repre-
sentation
of
a
corpse.
In The Death
of
theVirgin
for
example,
Caravaggio based
his represen-
tation
of
the body
of
Mary
on
an actual
corpse-that
of
a woman drowned
in the
Tiber. Jean-Luc
Nancy in
his book
The Muses
observes that
this
painting situates
us
on
the
threshold
before
death. He
finds
three such
thresholds.
We, the dying
creatures,
are the
first
one. The
second is
represented
by
the
virgin's
corpse-dead,
but
still existing as
a thing-and the
last
by
the
group of
people depicted
as disappearing
into the darkness
of
the
background.
Discussing
the
representation
of
the
Virgin
in this
painting, Nancy,
recalling
Blanchot's
argument
about
the impossibility
of death,
asks, And
what
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13.
Ibid.,
244.
14.
Ibid., 119.
I5.Jean-Luc
Nancy, The
Muses
trans.
P. Kamuf
(Stanford:
Stanford
University Press, 1996),
59.
16. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting
trans.
Geoff Bennington and
an
McLeod
(Chicago:
University of
Chicago Press, 1987), 19
if
that
were the subject of this painting:
there is
never death
'itself
but only
a
threshold before
death.'I
It
might
be
argued that this painting in
fact
represents
death only as
it
was
perceived
by a religious
society, that is, as
a
threshold
between
worldly
and
oth-
erworldly
life.
Because
a
corpse
is always
something,
no
matter
how
realistically
it is
represented
in a
painting, it
does
not
present
death
as
absolute
nothingness
in the
way
that
it is
commonly
perceived
today. Indeed, Heidegger argues,
when
someone dies we experience loss,
but loss
is
a
feeling
on the part
of those who
remain.
Nevertheless,
even in this painting the anxiety
that there
might
be
noth-
ing
beyond resonates. The group
of
the
disciples
situated behind
the V irgin's
bed
seems
to
be
disappearing
into
the darkness of the
background. This
disappearing,
the slipping away
of the figures
from
the grasp of our perception, as I will
show,
will become the
subject matter of Rothko's
paintings.
A similar
yet subtly different
attempt
to
represent
death may be found
in Gerard Titus-Carmel's
work
The
Size Tlingit Coffin
which
is discussed
in
Jacques Derrida's
book The Truth in Painting.
The
most
salient feature
of
this
minia-
ture coffin
is
the
mirror
placed
at
its
bottom, so
when
one looks inside
the bo x
one
sees
one's own
reflection
in it
and thus
sees
oneself
lying
in
the coffim.The
way this
work
renders death resembles the traditional
way of representing
it-
that is, it
shows
us someone in a
coffin who may
be
interpreted as a corpse.
The
difference
lies in the
fact
that in this
case we see ourselves in
the coffin and
not
someone
else.
Seeing
ourselves
lying in a coffin, though,
is
still far from
experiencing our own
death as
nothingness, because, as
was
mentioned
earlier,
a
corpse is something
and
not
nothing. In addition,
as Derrida observes, the sight
is
intended
to
induce
a
feeling
of
calming
one's own
terror, of dealing
with
alterity,
of thus
wearing
down
alterity,
a feeling
that
is
enhanced by
the
small
size
of
the
coffin.'
6
Hence,
instead of making us
face our
mortality,
it
negates
it.
Rothko s
Representation of Nothingness
The
apprehension
of death
and
nothingness
must
be distinguished
from the sub-
lime, as Rothko's
paintings, in particular,
were often associated
with
the
tradition
of the sublime
painting. Both nothingness
and
the
sublime relate to finitude and
both evoke a similar
feeling. Nothingness evokes
anxiety and the
sublime horror
mixed
with pleasure. However, there
is a fundamental difference between the
two.
The sublime,
whether
it is
a quality of an object (in
Edmund
Burke's sense
of the word) or a
feeling in Immanuel
Kant's sense), is contingent on
nothing-
ness, as
it is
the
apprehension of our finitude
and fragility, of
the fact
that there
are forces
in
nature that
can
destroy
us. At the same time, the
sublime is
also a
withdrawal
from
such
a
realization,
because
we know
that
there
is no real or
immediate threat
to our
existence, according
to Burke, or because
we
discover
our superiority
over our finite nature,
according
to
Kant. The encounter
with
nothingness
offers
us
no such redemption. On the contrary, it
points to
the
impossibility
of any
salvation,
as our impending
nothingness is
also
what con-
stitutes
us.
In
their
book Arts of Impoverishment
Leo Bersani
and
Ulysse
Dutoit argue that
Rothko
began to subvert the readability
of forms depicted
in his
painting
already
in
the
i95os, and
this
tendency reached its peak
in the fourteen
Rothko
Chapel
5
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17.
Leo Bersani
and Ulysse Dutoit, Arts
Impoverishment
Beckett,
Rothko, Resnais
(Cambridge,
MA:
Harvard University
Press,
1993).
142.
18.
Ibid.,
121.
19.
Jean-Franqois
Lyotard, The
Sublime and the
Avant-Garde,
inThe Inhuman:
Reflection
on Time,
trans.
Geoff Bennington
and R.Bowlby
(Stanford:
Stanford
University
Press, 1991 .
20. Rosenblum,
Modem
Painting,199;
Weiss,
Rothko's
Unknown Space,
305; Robert
Goldwater,
Reflections on
the
Rothko
Exhibition,
and Peter Selz,
Mark Rothko,
in
Mark
Rothko,
exh.
cat. (Basel: Kunsthalle
Basel,
1982), n.p.
21. Mark Rothko,
quoted
inJohn
Fischer.
Mark
Rothko: Portrait
of
the
Artist
as
an
Angry
Man,
Harper s
Magazine,July 1970,
16, quoted in
Weiss,
Rothko's Unknown
Space,
32
paintings
at
St.
Thomas University,
Houston, in which
the differences between
forms,
background,
and
even
the paintings
themselves are
almost completely
obliterated. They
argue
that
the sameness of
the paintings in
the
Rothko
Chapel
has a twofold
effect.
First,
it renders visibility
unnecessary,
as
there
is
nothing
to
see,
and
therefore it
induces a
kind of
blindness.
Second, by obliterating
the
forms in
the chapel
paintings,
Rothko creates
an
example of what
Friedrich
Nietzsche called
Dionysian
art,
in
which
one's
individuality
is lost
as
the
borders
that
constitute
the
individual
by
differentiating
it from
its
environment
collapse.
They
maintain
that
the
chapel
encourages
the viewers
to remember
and
repeat
the experience
of primary
narcissism,
which
they
define as
the experience
of
a
pleasurable shattered
consciousness
having become
aware
of itself
as the
object
of
its
desire. '
7
We
can
experience
again
such
a
shattering
of
the self's coherence
only in death
and, to a
lesser degree,
in sex.
Yet all
of this can
be said
about almost any
monochrome
painting.Yves
Klein's
blue
monochromes
and
Ad Reinhardt's
black
paintings
offer just two
examples. Furthermore,
the
moment
of blindness is much
more prominent
in
Robert
Ryman's white
paintings.
In these,
the brushstrokes
create
forms,
bu t
their
white
color makes
it
difficult
to discern
the
paintings
from
the
wall.
Their
uncertain
visibility induces
a blindness
that
shatters
the
self
much more
power-
fully than any
other monochrome
painting.
About Rothko's
paintings of the
195os
Bersani
and Dutoit write:
Rothko's
work
is
retrogressive: it returns us
to the moment
of
looking we
have
always
skipped,
to
an
effort to establish boundaries
that a certain
econ-
omy in human evolution
may
have
succeeded
in sparing
us. What
we have
been spared,
however, is
the
very
work of
being,
the
renewed
possibility
that
presence
might
not
take
place.'
8
Thinking
of
Rothko's
paintings
in this way
associates
them with
the notion
of
the sublime rather than
with
nothingness.
In his
essay
The Sublime
and
the
Avant-Garde,
Jean-Franýois
Lyotard
relates
the sublime
to the
horror
that
noth-
ing
will happen
and
the
relief
that it
is
happening.'
9
If
this
interpretation
is
cor-
rect,
viewing Rothko's
paintings should
produce
a feeling of
delight,
since
this
is a feeling related
to the sublime.
However,
I believe
that any
observer cannot
fail
to notice
that these paintings
induce anxiety
rather
than delight.
Indeed,
many
critics
have
mentioned,
although
not
always
expressly
using
the
word,
that
Rothko's
paintings
have this effect.
Robert Rosenblum,
for
example,
describes Rothko's
paintings
as awe-inspiring ;
Jeffery Weiss
describes
them
as objects of
emotional
or
spiritual
awe ; while Robert
Goldwater
writes,
It
is
significant
that at
the
entrance
to this room
one pauses, hesitating
to
enter.
Its
space
seems
both
occupied
and
empty ;
and Peter
Selz writes,
The
spectator
contemplates
an
atmosphere of
alarm
. 2There is
evidence
to suggest
that
Rothko himself
wanted his
paintings to
evoke anxiety. Rothko
said
to
a
reporter
that in
the
Houston
chapel
he
wanted
to achieve
the same atmosphere
that
Michelangelo generated
in his Laurentian
Library
in
S.
Lorenzo,
Florence, which,
according
to Rothko, makes
the
viewer
feel
that they are trapped
in
a room
where
all the doors and
windows
are
bricked
up, so that all
they can do is
to
butt
their heads forever
against
the
wall.
2
In what
follows
I
will
demonstrate
how
Rothko's way of
intimating mortality
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in his works-namely,
by undermining our ability to
read
the colors
of
the
forms depicted
in his paintings as well as
the
space in which they are situated-
is
reminiscent of Heidegger's description of
the
encounter
with nothingness:
the
slipping away of
the
whole. When things slip
away from
us, they do no t
disappear and, contrary to what
Bersani
and Dutoit argue, the difference between
us and
the
world
is
not
obliterated
and we
do
not become one with it.
Instead,
the world and its entities, to
which
we
escape
in order to
avoid facing
up to ou r
being,
remain, while
our connection
to
them
is
severed, leaving
us
with only
ourselves and our being, which is being-toward-death. It
is
not a state
in which
we are absorbed
in the world,
nor is it one of either
self-forgetfulness
or a shut-
tered consciousness, as
suggested by Bersani
and Dutoit. It is rather
a state
in
which we touch the deepest
core of
ourselves, the finitude that constitutes
us.
Space
From about 195o
Rothko
concentrated on producing rectangular forms floating
on a surface. The floating sensation was created as Rothko eliminated from his
paintings depth and
space
in
the conventional sense, features
regarded
as
neces-
sary for rendering
things as existing.
There
are several
conventional
ways
to
devise
an illusory three-dimensional
space.
One
is by means of a
perspectival
representation where figures become
gradually smaller according to their
distance
from the observer. A
second, an
aerial
perspective,
involves
a
blurring of the
forms as
they recede
into the back-
ground, thus causing them
to appear
further away from
the observer. Another
way
is
partial
concealment:
when one form
partially
conceals another, it is per-
ceived as nearer
to the
observer than
the concealed
one. Afourth method is
the
gradual modification of light and shadow, which reproduces the look of a three-
dimensional form. Another is a juxtaposition of colors: some
colors
have
the
quality
of
appearing to
approach
the -viewer
(such
as
red) or
to recede (blue).
Thus,
if
a
blue
form
is
depicted next
to
a red one,
the
red
is
perceived
as nearer
to
the
observer than
the blue.
Rothko
used none of these methods in his paintings-or, more precisely,
by
manipulating some of them he
subverted
our reading of space.
Untitled
from
19S2,
for example, is made
up of a
large, red,
rectangular
form
on
top, separated
by a dark
green,
almost black
stripe from
a
somewhat smaller, green, rectangular
form below it, all painted on a background
whose color changes from orange-
brown on top
to
light green in
the
middle
and grayish-green
at
the
bottom. The
red rectangle is prominent and its edges
are clearly
distinguished
from
the back-
ground.
The emphasis on the edges produces
a
sensation of a floating
form over
the background, which
is also emphasized
by the dark
green stripe underneath
it,which
could be perceived as
a
shadow
cast by
the red
form. This
floating
sensation is
amplified by the
gradation
of
the background color, which changes
from orange-brown at the top to light green in the middle, giving the impres-
sion
that the
upper part of
the
red form is closer
to the
background than its
lower part.
But
a daub of dark green color on top of the lower edge of the red
form
makes
it
look
as
if
the
dark green stripe is
in front
of the
red. As the
green
form's edges
are blurred
and
dissolve into
the background, the
form withdraws
from
the viewer.
However, a narrow stripe of green covering a small area of
the
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dark green stripe
above
the green
form
makes it look as if the green
form
is
nearer to the viewer
than the
dark
green. The
red form
looks
as
if
it
advances
toward
the viewer and
the
green as
if it withdraws.
Simultaneously,
since the
green
is
also
in front of
the dark green
stripe and the red behind it, it cannot
be
decided what is
in front
and
what
is
behind.
The moment
one thinks
oneself
oriented
in the
pictorial
space, one
perceives at
the
same
time the contradictions
in
what
is near
and
what is far.
This renders the pictorial
space ambiguous,
unperceivable, fluctuating,
neither
deep
nor
flat.
The conventional reading
of pictorial space is
deliberately
confused in
this
and
many
others of
Rothko s
paintings.
The ability
to measure distances
between
forms in
the
pictorial
space,
to distinguish between
what
is
distant
and
what
is
near,
between depth and flatness, all
these are rendered dubious.
Rothko,
then,
was
not
interested
in representing spatial illusion
in his paintings.
On the con-
trary, it
is evident in many
of his paintings
that
he strove
to
undermine
any
attempt at a
conventional reading of space
and to
eliminate any
coherent spatial
sensation from
his paintings.
Color
As
he subverted our reading of
space
Rothko
also
undermined our
ability to
read
colors.
His paintings blur the
differences between
the colors and
their
boundaries,
a difference
that disappears
almost completely in his dark
and
almost
monochrome
paintings.
In
No. 27 Light
Band)
from
1954,
Rothko
depicts
three
main rectangular
forms
over a
mainly
blue background. Each
of
these
forms
contains
more
rectangles, as if echoing
the
main
form, which are distinguished
from it by
gray, sometimes almost
black, contours. As
the color of
the contour
is not
uniformly
applied, being sometimes
thicker or thinner, sometimes
wider
or
narrower,
even
disappearing,
the edges
of
these forms are blurred,
making
it
impossible
to be sure
how many rectangular forms
each
of
the
main
forms
con-
tains. In addition
to
the blurred boundaries
of the contained forms, the
edges
of
the
main
forms are blurred
as well, making them
seem as if
they
are
dissolving
into
the
background.
This sensation is
enhanced by
the
similarity
of
the
form s
color
to that
of
the
background,
dark blue
at the top,
turning
lighter and gradu-
ally becoming darker,
somewhat
purple, toward the
bottom. The rectangular
form
nearest
to the
top is
mainly blue daubed with
gray. It turns
darker
at
the
edges,
nmaking it
almost blend into
the background in
particular on
the
right
side). The
same is
true
of
the central
and
lower
rectangles. The
color of the middle
form is
mainly
white with
daubs of
yellow. It
is
lighter in the
center, turning
blue and
darker
toward the edges,
and the one at
the
bottom is gray-lighter
in the
center
and darker,
almost
black, mixed with
the
purple
color of the background
edge.
In
this
case,
as in many other
Rothko paintings,
the readability of the colors
is
deliberately
confused.The
first problem the observer
encounters when stand-
ing before
Rothko s paintings is
the
impossibility
of
locating
the
precise contours
of the
form,
making
it
difficult, if not impossible,
to
discern
where precisely
it
begins
and the background
ends. This problem
entails another: the
number
of
forms actually
depicted in the
paintings is uncertain.
Thus,
the forms
depicted on
the
canvas
evade the grasp
of our perception
and
create
the impression
that they
are slipping
away from us.
8
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Mark
Rothko. No. 27 Light Band , 1954.
Oil
on
canvas. 81 x
86
n. (205.7 x 220 cm .
Private
collection.©2005
Kate Rothko
Prizel
and Christopher
Rothko/Artists
Right
Society
(ARS) NewYork.
Photograph: Michael
Bodycomb.
29 art journal
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22. Heidegger, What Is Metaphysics?
102.
23. Werner Haftmann, quoted
in
Anna
C.
Chave,
Mark Rothko: Subjects in
Abstraction
(New Haven:
Yale
University Press,
1989),
193.
24.
Many
critics, as well as
Rothko
himself,
noted
the
paintings gave the sensation
of being and
presence.
Inhis
Pratt lecture, when describing
the
difference
between
himself
and Ad Reinhardt,
Rothko
said,
The
difference
between
me
and
Reinhardt is
hat
he's
a
mystic. By
that
I
mean
that
his paintings
are immaterial. Mine are here.
Materially. The surfaces,
the
work
of
the
brush
and
so
on.
His
are
untouchable ; quoted inDore
Ashton, About
Rothko (New York.
Oxford
University Press, 1983),
179.
25
Heidegger,
What
Is Metaphysics?
103.
There is no evidence
to suggest that Rothko had read Heidegger. Neverthe-
less,
Heidegger's
account
of the encounter with nothingness and in particular
his
notion of
the
slipping
away of
the
whole perfectly describes Rothko's
paint-
ings. As
already noted, for Heidegger, anxiety reveals nothingness, which is
expe-
rienced
with
beings
and
in
beings
expressly
as a
slipping
away
of
the
whole,
22
meaning that in anxiety
the
entities
in the
world
recede from us and
we
cannot
get hold
of them, leaving us
with
only our
own being,
which is
being-toward-
death. Rothko's way
of
representing the
human
drama,
which
for
him
was
con-
stituted by the
fact that we are born
to
die,
resembles Heidegger's thinking
of
nothingness.
He
intimated mortality by rendering
the things represented on
his
canvas
as escaping
the
grasp ofour gaze.
The
forms are there, but
we
cannot
really perceive or
be certain that
we accurately
perceive
what exactly
is there. In
other
words, by
blurring
the readability of space and colors,
Rothko reenacted
and represented in his paintings what according
to Heidegger we
experience
when
we encounter nothingness.
Some
reservations must
be
added
regarding the
existence ofnothingness:
since
it
is
not a thing
among
things,
so
that
we
can
say that it
is
this or that, its
existence cannot
be
scientifically proved
but only
assumed.
Ifwe, however,
assume that there
is
something that
we
call nothingness, and
that
we
encounter
it
when
anxious,
we
can
also
assume
that
nothingness
is
what Rothko's paintings
show us. Although
it might be that it is
not
experienced by all,
such an
experi-
ence nonetheless
is
shared
by many. In
any case,
the
fact
that Rothko wanted
to
intimate mortality and the way he
chose to do it by
depicting
forms on a back-
ground
that do
not entirely
submit
to
our grasp-as
well as his
paintings'
invo-
cation
of anxiety point
to
a congruence
in Rothko's and Heidegger's thinking, at
least insofar as it concerns nothingness.
Covering Nothingness
Rothko
not
only
wanted his paintings
to intimate mortality, our impending
nothingness, but as
he told
Werner
Haftmann, he also wished his
paintings to
cover
up
something
similar
to
this
'nothingness. '
2
3 Indeed,
Rothko
covered
his
canvases
with
colors. He
put layers
of
color one on top
of
another,
concealing
and
revealing
the
colors underneath, making
the process of covering transparent.
With no
other content represented in his paintings,
the
covering
becomes the
sole
content
of his
art.
Rothko's paintings cover nothingness
in another sense as
well,
one
that
is
close
to Heidegger's
notion
of nothingness.
By
eliminating
most of the com-
ponents
that
used
to constitute painting, except
the framed
surface
and
color,
Rothko,
as
many
other
abstract artists, and
as
many
critics
have
commented,
pointed to
nothingness
as
a
negation
and absence. This
negation, though,
emphasizes
the
presence of
the
paintings,
2 4
as
it
draws our
attention to the
fact
that
they
simply
are, that
they are something rather
than nothing, and in
this
sense they conceal nothingness. Paradoxically,
this concealing
is
also a revealing,
first,
because for Heidegger, nothingness
is
what
makes
it
possible for us to be
aware
that
something
is n the
first
place, and second, because
it
draws our
atten-
tion to the
fact
that there
could be
nothingness instead.
Nothingness, H eidegger
argues, discloses these beings
in
their full bu t
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26.
Heidegger,
The Origin
of
the Work
of
Art,
inBasic
Writings 19
27. Derrida,
in the last
part of The
Truth in Painting
(378),
similarly argues
that for Heidegger
to say
about
something
that it
is,we
first
must
have the
experience
of
nothingness: That
which
is, s the
being
of the existent,
is not
(the existent). A
cer-
tain thinking,
a certain experience
of
nothingness
(of
the
nonexistent)
is
required
for
access
to this
question of the
being
of the existent,
likewise
to
the difference
between being
and the existent.
Therefore,
it could be
said
that any painting,
because
it
is,by its very
existence points
to noth-
ingness.
However,
this does
not
indicate
how
nothingness
can be (re)presented
ina painting.
28.
Novak
and O'Doherty,
Rothko's
Dark
Paintings,
274.
29. For
one
of the
possible
effects that facing
our
mortality
and accepting
it might have
on
us,
see
William
Haver's most
enlightening
essay Really
Bad Infinities: Queer's
Honour and the
Pornographic
life, Parallax
,
no.
4 (1999).
heretofore concealed strangeness as
what
is radically other-with
respect to
the
nothing. That is,
nothingness
reveals
beings
because
they are
beings
and
not
nothing,
2 5
and
the
more
we
are aware
of the
presence of a
thing,
the
more
we
are
made
aware
of its radical
other:
nothingness.
Among
all
the things
in
the
world
it
is
the presence of
an artwork
that we are
most aware
of.
Because
a work
of art, no
matter
what
kind, is,simply
by reason of its
presence and
continuing
endurance,
even
when
we
no
longer are,
it stands
against nothingness
as its
radi-
cal
other.
And this,
for Heidegger,
is the difference
between
artworks
and other
human
products,
which
disappear
in use,
sinking
into the
nothingness
from
which they
came,
while
the work
of art
is
preserved.
The
less
that is depicted
in
a work
of
art, the
less our
attention is
distracted
from its bare presence,
the
stronger our
realization that
this
work is,and
the greater
our
realization that
there
could be nothing
instead.
Heidegger
writes:
The more
solitary
the
work,
fixed in
the figure, stands
on
its own
and the
more cleanly
it
seems
to
cut
all ties
to human
beings,
the more
simply does
the thrust
come into
the open
that
such
a
work is....
the more simply
does
it
transport us
into this
openness
and thus at
the
same
time
transport
us out
of
the
realm
of
the
ordinary.
To
submit
to this
displacement means
to trans-
form
our
accustomed ties
to world
and earth
and henceforth
to restrain
all
usual doing
and
prizing, knowing
and
looking,
in
order to stay within
the
truth
that
is
happening
in
the
work.1
6
The
word nothingness
is not
mentioned
here,
but
the citation
nonetheless
manifests
the relation
of
the artwork
to
nothingness.
Because
for
Heidegger it
is
the encounter with
nothingness
in
anxiety
that severs our
ties
to
all beings
and
our
world,
it
is
also nothingness
that
gives
us
access to
beings and
makes us
aware
of their
presence,
that each thing
is,
27
and
again,
it is the
encounter
with
nothingness
that
transports
us out
of our
ordinary everyday
life
and
makes us
reevaluate
our
situation in
the
world,
facing the fact that we are
going
to die and
that
we
might
die
at
any
moment. This
nothingness,
which
the existence
of
the
work
points
to, is not
an absence
but
something
perceived
as
the
origin
of
every-
thing,
but whose
existence
cannot
be
logically proven.
In his
essay
What Is
Metaphysics?
Heidegger points
out
that we can
only surmise
that there is
such nothingness.
Novak
and O'Doherty
write,
Rothko's method
in these
works could
also
be
seen
as
masking
and
unmasking...
.What is behind
the
mask?
Another
mask, a
fallible
human
presence-or
nothing? 2
Rothko's
paintings are
masks indeed,
but
masks that
show what
they hide:
that it is
nothingness
that
lies behind
them.
This nothingness,
which Rothko's
paintings conjure
up is
not
only
a
negation
and
an absence
but also what
designates
the limit
of human
existence,
and as
such, it is also
what
defines
and constitutes it.
In
other
words, Rothko's
paintings
simulate what
we experience
when encountering
nothingness
and thus
make us
face what
we normally
try
to
repress:
that it
is
the certainty of
death that makes
us
the way we are.
29
Natalie
Kosoi
teaches aesthetics
at the Shenkar School
of
Design and
Art History
in the Open University
in
Israel.
Her PhD dissertation
is
tided
'Nothingness
inArt Mark
Rothko,
Robert Ryman,
Anish Kapoor,
and
Eva
Hesse.
31
artjournal
7/25/2019 Rothko Nothingness
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
TITLE: Nothingness Made Visible: The Case of Rothko’s
Paintings
SOURCE: Art J 64 no2 Summ 2005
WN: 0519704400002
The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it
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Copyright 1982-2005 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.