Untitled 1969

This untitled painting was made by Mark Rothko on a large sheet of paper, almost square, about 50 by 42 inches. I look at it and can almost feel him in the studio, mixing those warm shades of orange and red and layering them with the deliberate softness that’s so typical of his work. I imagine Rothko stepping back, squinting, maybe tilting his head to get that perfect balance between the blocks of color. That thin yellow line...it’s like a whisper, a subtle division that somehow holds the whole thing together. It’s this kind of touch that makes you realize he wasn’t just slapping paint on a canvas. He was building an entire emotional world with color. And that’s the thing about painting – it’s never really done, is it? It just keeps talking to us, long after the artist has put down their brush.