Untitled 1969

Mark Rothko made this large abstract painting on paper sometime in the mid twentieth century. The hazy rectangles float in a sea of orange, pushing and pulling against each other. You can almost feel Rothko layering thin washes of paint, staining the paper, letting the colors bleed and breathe. Look closely at the edges of those maroon shapes; they're not hard lines but soft, dissolving boundaries. It's like Rothko built this thing up slowly, intuitively. See how he’s left traces of the brushstrokes? A subtle choreography frozen in time. The orange bar in the middle seems to glow, a kind of horizon line in a sea of feeling. Rothko, like his contemporary Barnett Newman, understood the power of scale and color to evoke profound emotions. These weren't just paintings; they were portals, or maybe a kind of stage for the viewer's own thoughts and feelings. And that’s something Agnes Martin, who came later, also understood implicitly.