Young Girl 

Curator: Before us, we have Mark Rothko's pencil sketch entitled "Young Girl." The ethereal quality immediately strikes me. It's like a memory fading at the edges. Editor: I'd agree. There's a delicacy here, almost hesitant lines that build form but don't quite solidify it. The starkness in contrast to Rothko's typical colorful oil paintings makes this all the more surprising. Curator: Precisely. The choice of pencil and the emphasis on line are paramount here. It's figuration stripped back to its essentials, line as its most vulnerable. Think of his turn to more figurative work to explore internal anxieties during World War II era in New York and how artists reflected personal fears more freely in their sketch works. This one is undated so difficult to locate it exactly but it makes a lot of sense it would be somewhere there. Editor: You mentioned anxieties, and I think that registers through the work even on a purely visual level. Consider the composition. The figure occupies only a small portion of the page, almost as if swallowed by negative space. Is she fading away, or merely a small person? The heavy shading on the far arm, for instance. And yet this adds to the piece the strength that it would not have had otherwise, by introducing a mysterious atmosphere. Curator: An astute point! This relationship between form and emptiness echoes some recurring concepts we see through all of Rothko's creative expressions - presence and absence, visibility and invisibility as if the subject were in process of becoming. It's a study in emotional transparency. Editor: Indeed, and that vulnerability, that sense of becoming, allows us to see figuration beyond mere representation. In doing so it becomes less about any real child, but our own emotional landscape - this makes a perfect addition for our audience for us to keep discussing after the visit.