Sacrifice of iphigenia 1942

Mark Rothko made 'Sacrifice of Iphigenia' with oil on canvas. Imagine him, brush in hand, building up these ochre, red, and black forms. You know, Rothko started out with figures before dissolving them into fields of color. Looking at this, I think about sacrifice, but also the struggle to make something new. What was he wrestling with when he put down that jagged red line, or floated that ghostly hand? Maybe he was thinking about earlier artists, like the Surrealists, trying to conjure something from the unconscious. The painting's surface isn't smooth; it's got texture, like he was digging into it, searching. That black shape looms, heavy and striped, while the rest feels tentative, searching. Painting is about that back and forth, between intention and accident, between what you know and what you discover. Artists are constantly in dialogue across time, riffing off each other, pushing painting forward. It's not about answers, but about keeping the conversation going, one brushstroke at a time.