You know how Mark Rothko could seem—anguished, titanic, etc.—but he was often being melodramatic. In a 1956 interview, when the artist said that his massive Color Field paintings dealt in “basic human emotions,” his examples were “tragedy, ecstasy, doom.” His works’ affect depends on their metaphorical scale as much as their physical size. But emotions don’t become truer just because they’re theatrically large.
After a health scare at the age of 64, Rothko pared his method back. The exhibition “1968: Clearing Away” features twenty-two works on paper, none larger than a square meter and most in acrylics, not oils. It would be easy to imagine them as studies for bigger pieces, but that wasn’t what they became, and the dramas here are far from performative. A multivarious glow is cast by each painting’s offset tones, as shades of red or purple offer context to their counterparts—a theater of color, staged tightly on the picture plane. For example, in Untitled, 1968, two areas of almost-black flank a strip of midnight blue. The latter flares off the paper as if newly electrified.
At the level of the human eye, and at this modest scale, the interplays in this show are more immediate than contemplative. Too often, Rothko’s works get described as preludes to suicide, his palette as representing fifty shades of pain. These paintings are less desperate than such a reading would suggest. Instead, they act like emotional offerings: less mystery than companionship, less tragedy than sharing the blues.
