A Sheer Mastery of Color

By Harriet Zinnes

 

 

 

What is it about Mark Rothko’s brushstrokes that stop the eye of the observer, make that eye glisten as if it belonged to the artist himself, who has lightened up the canvas to make marks of color defined and undefined? Of course behind them are Seurat, Cezanne, van Gogh, Picasso, and especially Bonnard and Matisse. It is finally in the special year of l949 where color in the paintings is a demonstration and a manifestation of all that is Mark Rothko – yes, color, light, and shadow — that brings it all to a special focus and was rightfully exhibited at PaceWildenstein under the title "Rothko: A Painter’s Progress THE YEAR 1949."

Structure is as significant in a Rothko as is color. The structure, interestingly, is usually triadic. There is certainly a mystery in the number three, as we know from ancient and Christian myths. However, when the three is embodied in form and is completely visual, it becomes more than arithmetic, more than myth, a thing in itself, a force that has an organic presence. In a sense, therefore, in the paintings of l949 at PaceWildenstein, where figuration is absent and presence manifested only in the partitioning of the canvas into three vibrant blocks of horizontals the mystery of paint itself, its deification of color has both an allure and a mystery that captures the presence of the eye and the hand whose brushstrokes construct tantalizing and provocative images