Untitled Mural for End Wall 1959

This untitled mural for an end wall was made by Mark Rothko, though it’s impossible to say when. Look at how the colours hover, but they’re also kind of blunt, you know? Like Rothko wasn’t trying to trick us into thinking anything other than, hey, this is paint on canvas. The fuzzy orange rectangle is so physical; you can almost feel the drag of the brush, maybe even imagine the sound it made. That drag exposes the layers beneath, like the painting is breathing. It’s so cool how Rothko embraces that tension between flatness and depth, between the material and the ethereal. This piece makes me think of Agnes Martin, with her subtle grids and her insistence on the spiritual in the everyday. Rothko and Martin—they remind us that art isn’t about answers, it’s about questions, about keeping the conversation going.