Episode 039: No.14

In which we discuss the Sunday New York Times, fuzziness, and once-in-a-generation events

“Hey cuz, did you see the New York Times piece on Mark Rothko this morning? Inspiration for a future Polyester City piece, maybe?”

This is the text I got a couple of Sunday mornings ago from my dear writer/English teacher/all-things-artistic-loving cousin…as I was sitting on my couch reading the article!

Fate. Had to do it.

Truth be told, I've been wanting to do an episode on Rothko for quite a while—he's certainly one of my favorite artists. But so many paintings to choose from…

Finally broke down and picked the massive, 9.5 feet-tall No. 14, one of the pieces headlining an enormous retrospective of his work running through February 2024 at the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

No. 14, Mark Rothko, 1960

I am always fascinated when an artist suddenly figures out their thing. And sometimes so abruptly. This happened with Rothko, in the extreme.

In 1947 he stopped giving traditional titles to his paintings. After that, he either numbered them or named them after the colors he used. Rothko seemingly felt that any names or titles would influence one’s view of his work.

"Silence is so accurate," Rothko said.

Then just three years later, he finalized the basic layout that would constitute virtually every one of his works until his death in 1970:

“By 1950 Rothko had reduced the number of floating rectangles to two, three, or four and aligned them vertically against a colored ground, arriving at his signature style. From that time on he would work almost invariably within this format…”

 And that's it. Suddenly he was Mark Rothko. Amazing.

I’ll admit, this painting kind of already looks like one of my reductions [I’m sorry: my reductions look like this painting]. Not a great deal of work for me to do on that front. Though trying to get the colors just right took longer than expected!

No. 14 - Reduction

The major decision here: how fuzzy to make this beat?

Rothko’s work is famous for being fuzzy and blurry and diffuse. But Rothko himself didn’t think his work was so mellow when in 1959 he said “...behind the color lies the cataclysm…”

Yikes! I think I’ll stick with fuzzy.

So no big drums. Tricky, that. I like the big drums. Alas, softer, fainter edges it must be.

At the end of the old-timey radio intro, the beat kind of just blooms…no big abrupt changes. And the same thing on the drop after the breakdown…things just float back into the beat. 

Soft stuff here.

Finally, love the little bluesy line that appears in the last go-round. It doesn’t really belong there I suppose, but you can’t take the blues licks out of a kid raised on Deep Purple and Hendrix.

And a last thing from that New York Times piece. The current Paris retrospective is truly a once-in-a-generation thing. 

The last major show dedicated to Rothko was more than 25 years ago in Washington DC! Between the outrageous prices of his work [one piece has been on sale during this show for $40 million] and the tremendous size and fragile condition of the pieces, it’s easy to see why no one wants to loan them out for a show. 

I know a number of my readers are in Europe, and I believe a few are in France. If anybody is in Paris and is reading this before February 2024, please go to the show. There are 115 Rothkos on display!

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