SLOW SWIRL AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA
MARK ROTHKO, 1944
Look at this thing. Two strange little beings at the edge of the sea. All curls and stems, like they're doing some ceremony nobody remembers anymore. This is a Rothko. Yeah. That Rothko. Before the rectangles, this is what he was up to. Myths. Half-human things. Little creatures washed up from somewhere in his head. And there's a reason. Years later, Rothko said he couldn't use a normal human figure anymore without, his word, "mutilating" it. Which sounds like he wanted less human stuff in the paintings. He didn't. He wanted more. More feeling than some little painted person could carry. So for a while he tried creatures like these. Then even they weren't enough. That's the road to the rectangles. Not less human. Just no human standing there doing the acting for you. Now, 1944. Rothko is forty-one. Recently divorced. Barely known. And he meets Mary Alice Beistle. Mell. His son Christopher later said Rothko painted this for her, just after they met. Those two creatures? Christopher thought they were the two of them. Rothko and Mell, dancing around by the water. Not long after, they're married. And years later Christopher said this was the first painting he could remember. It hung over the couch in their family brownstone. Which is nice. Before all those floating rectangles... the family had floating creatures. Over the couch.