NO. 1 (UNTITLED)
MARK ROTHKO, 1948
The same year Rothko made this, he opened a school. Thirty-five East Eighth Street. Him and a handful of other painters. John Cage even gave a lecture. So, put that aside for a second. Look at what Rothko is painting. A few years earlier, his pictures were packed. People. Plants. Little mythological guys everywhere. Here? Everybody got fired. No figures. No story. Pretty much nothing you can point at and name. Just thin washes soaking into the canvas. Green under blue. Orange coming through tan. Soft shapes hanging around. Which makes it look like Rothko is getting rid of the subject. He would absolutely disagree. Five years earlier, he and Adolph Gottlieb wrote this in the New York Times: "There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing." And then: "The subject is crucial." Okay. So where is it? That's the interesting part. Rothko isn't getting rid of the subject. He's getting rid of the stuff that does the explaining. No face telling you how somebody feels. No story telling you what happened. Whatever the subject is now, you're going to have to meet it some other way. And now, back to that school. It had a name. Subjects of the Artist. Of course it did. The school lasted less than a year. Rothko kept working on the subject for another twenty. In 1969, the year before he died, he gave this painting to MoMA. Himself.