Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko (IPA: /ˈrɒθkoʊ/), Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was an American abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular regions of color, which he produced from 1949 to 1970. Although Rothko did not personally subscribe to any one school, he is associated with the American abstract expressionism movement of modern art.
"Rothko" redirects here. For other uses, see Rothko (disambiguation).
Mark Rothko
February 25, 1970 (aged 66)
American
Painting
Edith Sachar (1932–1943)
Mary Alice "Mell" Beistle (1944–1970)
Born in Daugavpils, Latvia, then under occupation by the Russian Empire, Rothko and his family emigrated to the United States, arriving at Ellis Island in late 1913 and originally settling in Portland, Oregon. He moved to New York City in 1923 where his youthful period of artistic production dealt primarily with urban scenery. In response to World War II, Rothko's art entered a transitional phase during the 1940s, where he experimented with mythological themes and Surrealism to express tragedy. Toward the end of the decade, Rothko painted canvases with regions of pure color which he further abstracted into rectangular color forms, the idiom he would use for the rest of his life.
In his later career, Rothko executed several canvases for three different mural projects. The Seagram murals were to have decorated the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, but Rothko eventually grew disgusted with the idea that his paintings would be decorative objects for wealthy diners and refunded the lucrative commission, donating the paintings to museums including the Tate Gallery. The Harvard Mural series was donated to a dining room in Harvard's Holyoke Center (now Smith Campus Center); their colors faded badly over time due to Rothko's use of the pigment lithol red together with regular sunlight exposure. The Harvard series has since been restored using a special lighting technique. Rothko contributed 14 canvases to a permanent installation at the Rothko Chapel, a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas.
Although Rothko lived modestly for much of his life, the resale value of his paintings grew tremendously in the decades following his suicide in 1970. His painting No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red) sold in 2014 for $186 million.[2]
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Childhood[edit]
Rothko was born in 1903 in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia), a shtetl (Jewish village) within the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. His father, Jacob (Yakov) Rothkowitz, was a pharmacist and intellectual who initially provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious, upbringing. According to Rothko, his Marxist father was "violently anti-religious".[3] In an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, Rothko's early childhood was plagued by fear.[4][5]
Despite Jacob Rothkowitz's modest income, the family was highly educated ("We were a reading family", Rothko's sister recalled),[6] and Rothko spoke Lithuanian Yiddish (Litvish), Hebrew and Russian.[7] Following his father's return to the Orthodox Judaism of his own youth, Rothko, the youngest of four siblings, was sent to the cheder at age five, where he studied the Talmud, although his elder siblings had been educated in the public school system.[8]
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Legacy[edit]
After being reestablished by the court during the lawsuit proceedings following Rothko's death, the Mark Rothko Foundation donated the entirety of its holdings of Rothko's art to 35 museums and art institutions in the United States and Europe.[140] Separately from the foundation, Kate and Christopher, as the executors of Rothko's estate following the lawsuit, have donated several of their holdings of Rothko's art to museums, and, as of 2021, continued to sell paintings from the estate's collection through Pace Gallery.[142]
Rothko's complete works on canvas, 836 paintings, have been catalogued by art historian David Anfam, in his Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas: Catalogue Raisonné (1998), published by Yale University Press.[143]
A previously unpublished manuscript by Rothko, The Artist's Reality (2004), about his philosophies on art, edited by his son Christopher, was published by Yale University Press.[144]
Red, a play by John Logan based on Rothko's life, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in London, on December 3, 2009. The play, starring Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne, centered on the period of the Seagram Murals. This drama received excellent reviews and usually played to full houses. In 2010 Red opened on Broadway, where it won six Tony Awards, including Best Play. Molina played Rothko in both London and New York. A recording of Red was produced in 2018 for Great Performances with Molina playing Rothko and Alfred Enoch playing his assistant.[145]
In Rothko's birthplace, the Latvian city of Daugavpils, a monument to him, designed by sculptor Romualds Gibovskis, was unveiled on the bank of the Daugava River in 2003.[146] In 2013 the Mark Rothko Art Centre opened in Daugavpils after the Rothko family had donated a small collection of his original works.[147]
A number of Rothko's works are held by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía[148] and by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, both in Madrid.[149] The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, New York includes both Rothko's painting Untitled (1967) and a large mural by Al Held, Rothko's Canvas (1969–70).[150]
Fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy showed fabrics inspired by Rothko in 1971.[151] A number of musical compositions have been inspired by Rothko's work, including Adam Schoenberg's Finding Rothko (2006)[152] and Anna Clyne's Color Field (2020).[153]
Resale market[edit]
Prices for Rothko's work on the secondary market and at auction rose significantly toward the end of his career and after his death, and have consistently remained among the highest for works of art by a modern or contemporary artist.[154] Three years prior to his death, a work by Rothko sold on the secondary market for $22,000;[155] in 2003 a painting by Rothko sold for $7,175,000.[156] Rothko's paintings sold at successively higher prices at auction through the mid-2010s,[157][158][159] reaching $86.8 million in 2012, a record for Rothko and, at the time, a new nominal value record for any postwar painting sold at a public auction.[160][161][162][163]
Works by Rothko have continued to regularly achieve prices at auction ranging as high as $80 million through the 2020s.[164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171]
Waldman, Diane.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1978.
Mark Rothko, 1903–1970: A Retrospective.
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