Seated Man in Overcoat and Hat, with Hands Clasped 

Curator: This intriguing pen and ink drawing is titled "Seated Man in Overcoat and Hat, with Hands Clasped," attributed to Mark Rothko. Editor: There's something both humorous and unsettling about it. It feels incomplete, like a caricature glimpsed on a moving train. Curator: Rothko is of course much more recognized for his later color field paintings. So a drawing like this raises a lot of interesting questions around how artists' work shifts, gets categorized, and ultimately receives different forms of institutional recognition. Editor: I’m drawn to the visible process. You can practically see the hand moving, testing, deciding. Look at the tentative lines that form the man's overcoat and the almost frantic hatching creating his scarf. It’s honest about its making. It highlights its status as a mere sketch. Curator: Yes, and the quick, almost impatient strokes give it a certain immediacy, but how does that fit within the larger narrative constructed around Rothko’s career and his contributions to abstract expressionism? I am compelled to think how sketchbooks become artworks in their own right, displayed in exhibitions, and contributing to his mythology as an artist. Editor: To me, that visible effort brings the labor into view. Art materials, especially those cheap sketchbooks, get circulated around and within communities of art making. Curator: And what of the man depicted? Who was he, and what does it tell us about the subjects worthy of depiction in different social and cultural milieus? Or is he even a "real" person at all? The fact that we see more figuration from Rothko early on pushes against common perceptions of art history, and offers a glimpse of his trajectory. Editor: Perhaps the sitter's identity doesn't matter, that is not its intent at all. Instead, it invites you to look more closely at the materials, at the process, and, in a way, the humbleness of the art itself. Curator: Indeed, it gives us much to think about regarding not just Rothko himself, but how artistic value is assigned, distributed, and comes to signify within the larger art historical landscape. Editor: Exactly, I leave contemplating the relationship of materials, labor and class.