Abstract Composition in Red, Brown, Black, Blue, and White 

Curator: Here we have "Abstract Composition in Red, Brown, Black, Blue, and White". We believe it is by Mark Rothko, and the mediums used seem to be watercolor and paint on paper. Editor: The title is certainly apt! My first impression is of controlled chaos, a playful wrestling of form and color. It's contained but feels like it wants to spill out, you know? Curator: Contained is a good word. It's abstract, yes, but almost architectural with the boxy shapes and the bold outlines. The blue feels so unexpected amidst the earthy tones, like a rebellious streak. Blue has, traditionally, represented many things - faith, tranquility... perhaps Rothko is rebelling against such expectations. Editor: Or, more intriguingly, engaging with them. That saturated blue patch… it has a watery, flowing quality that counters the hard edges elsewhere. Blue is the realm of the spiritual but water is movement, it is flow, it can be chaos or change. I think the piece offers a conversation between stillness and dynamism. Look at the shapes near the "base" - they remind me of ancient scripts, somehow, or some kind of ritual marking... but defaced, or erased. Curator: An interesting point! He’s playing with modernist ideas of non-objective art, but it has this definite…ancient, elemental feel to it, perhaps intentionally evoking primordial imagery. Is that why I'm so drawn in? I feel a longing, a kind of visual homesickness I can't quite name. It is somehow soothing. Editor: Perhaps he understood something fundamental about human perception. We seek order, we impose narratives, we yearn for meaning, even in the face of pure abstraction. Rothko's offering us the raw ingredients, the elemental colors, basic geometric structures… It's up to us to decide what we wish to make of it. I'd be interested to discover more of Rothko's sketches! Curator: Absolutely. And it is an engaging invitation indeed to question all that we see and all that we think. To explore freely, question, and ultimately find that point where color and form, like people, belong together.