Mark Rothko

I’ve visited a handful of art galleries and museums over the years and I’ve found art that I really like, art that disagreed with me, and art that confounded me. The experience I’ve had with a select few have carried with me throughout my life. I once visited an exhibition of a Mark Rothko career retrospective. Large canvases splashed with colored blocks, some with subtler grays and blacks carried a weight of feeling I had never before experienced with a painting. Whatever the artist was doing was definitely working on me. There is a feeling of supreme love or spiritual ecstasy working in the most powerful paintings by Rothko. It doesn’t take long to have one of these profound experiences while viewing the paintings. As in my experience, it might be better to view the work multiple times. I visited the Rothko exhibit several times. Once, on my own. Then, I brought a friend. Later I returned to see some of the works that had performed so strongly on me. The evocations were undimmed.

original posting May 20, 2025