“Is Rothko just a retinal image –the disembodied eye –do you just look?” ref Tate video
The Seagram murals commissioned for the Seagram building in New York were never finally given to the building by Rothko.
the murals: see ref:http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/rothko/room-guide/room-3-seagram-The 30 murals are interactions in approximate square shapes between shades of red brown and blacks. The Tate tells us that Rothko experimented with ” a floating frame” and the “use of vibrant and sombre colours”
Born in Russia in 1903 moving to USA in 1913. He committed suicide in 1970 His art moved from surrealist images of fidures and mythology through indeterminate shapes to his famous blocks of colour glazed into each other, the most sombre of which are those done for the Seagram building restaurant.
“Everything Rothko did to these paintings – the column-like forms suggested rather than drawn and the loose stainings – were all meant to make the surface ambiguous, porous, perhaps softly penetrable. A space that might be where we came from or where we will end up” ref: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/powerofart/rothko.shtml
Notes taken from : (sourced on line May 2014:http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/abstraction1.shtm) Rothko wrote that he favoured the simple expression of complex thought….a large shape is unequivocal….flat forms destroy illusion and reveal truth….His images gradually became nonobjective compositions of indeterminate shapes………..
looking at the image: Mark Rothko, Untitled (Seagram Mural sketch), 1959 , National Gallery of Art, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc., 1986.43.156 Ref: http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/late1.shtm
There appears to be overlaying of an orange colour over a deep dark brown which may in itself consist of glazes or an initial dark wash. The edges of the orange shape are irregular and fade in places in an irregular manner into the dark brown which it surrounds and which surrounds it.
playing with creativity 