5 comments about Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas.

1. A work of major importance in the history of modernism, David Anfam's catalogue raisonne is brilliant, lively, entertaining, and handsome. Combining vigorous scholarship with creative imagination, it offers the best ever understanding of Rothko and must be considered a prerequisite to any and all encounters with Rothko. Anfam's eloquent text takes the reader through the paintings in a most delightful way while the paintings themselves are a joy to see thanks to what surely were monumental efforts on the part of all those involved with design and production. This book is the best of its kind in every way and a bargain at the price!



2. David Anfam has given students of twentieth-century art the much needed and previously missing in-depth study of Mark Rothko, a key figure in understanding the esoteric art of this century. Lesser studies by lesser minds have failed where Anfam has not -- scholarly attention to detail; carefully informed visual analysis of ALL the works on canvas; subtle conclusions; historical context. Anfam's rasionne is a must read!



3. Anfam's study is a great deal more than a much-needed reference book. Anyone interested in the history of modern art would find this study illuminating and exciting. Not only does it provide the first complete catalogue of Rothko's paintings on canvas (almost all in gorgeous color reproduction), it also includes numerous fresh and original insights concerning Rothko's intellectual and artistic sources. A monumental scholarly achievement, this volume will long remain a model for the field.



4. This is the first publication with his entire collection. Even lost paintings are represented by old black and white photographs. The images are not large, but the quality of this book is wonderful. By far the best buy for any Rothko fan (besides an original...)



5. Opening the package as it arrived from Amazon, easing this massive catalogue from its slipcase triggered a memory: walking to the edge of the Grand Canyon. With similar impact: awe. David Anfam brings the reader with him to encounter, view, & experience Rothko's work. His ten-year dedication paid off with the discovery of "lost" titles, setting the chronology of 836 works on canvas, (he couldn't have been afraid to get his hands dirty) & analyzing the slow struggle, sporadic leaps engendered by the painter in the evolution of the oeuvre. As scholar, teacher, critic, curator, & especially writer, Anfam proves the perfect choice to perform the daunting, almost impossible task of bringing Rothko into focus.

   The author insightfully tracks the early representational beginnings, (his foray into narrative linked with crossing boundaries is totally appropriate for the artist from Dvinsk, Portland, New York) through the mythological (application of Kermode's distinction between "Chronos" & "Kairos" is utterly intriguing), & makes a case for Rembrandt as the source for Rothko's obsessions with tragedy & darkness, Vermeer his source for color's sensuality. Anfam traces in detail, using numerous examples of the brilliant reproductions, how the multiforms foreshadowed the work of the classic period. The architectural contexts for the Chapel are pure genius: Vincent Scully's, "The Earth, the Temple, & the Gods"; Joseph Rykwert's, "The Dancing Column"; & Leo Bersani's, Ulysse Dutoit's, "Arts of Impoverishment."

   Anfam's breadth of vocabulary is English, yet he has benfitted from years in the States with a rapid, laconic language that impels the reader forward, informs succinctly. Purposely parrying time-worn quarrels, he unearths the more "thorny," "shady" aspects of dilemmas presented by such a complex art.

   Two things happened as a result of reading MARK ROTHKO / THE WORKS on CANVAS / CATALOGUE RAISONNE. During a recent visit to C&M Gallery in NY for a show of eight Rothko's, alone in the second room, I heard them. A few nights ago I had a dream of a handwritten note on a table in the front room of an auction house that said, "The Last Painting." Rereading Helene Cixous's essay by that name (subtitled, "Or the Portrait of God"), she writes, "I think of the last Rembrandt. A man? Or a painting?" [in Cixous', "Coming to Writing and other Essays."] Anfam has presented us with the triumphant Rothko.

No comments about Mark Rothko: Retrospektive.

5 comments about The Essential Mark Rothko.

1. A concise, well-written introduction to postwar American art through the work of one of America's greatest painters. Highly educational and a great read. Excellent reproductions. I coulnd't put it down. Makes a great gift, too.



2. This concise but very informational book is a must for anyone interested in the works of Rothko, and for those who want to know about the rise of abstract expressionism. There are full color illustrations provided which add greatly to the narrative!
   The margin notes have a wealth of background material, without being too bogged down in minutia.
   This work has been a wonderful addition to my art library as I am certain it will be to others.



3. This is an excellent reference for anyone wanting to learn about Mark Rothko's work and life. Good format, easy to read great pictures. Great value for the price.



4. when i first received the book i thought i'd made a mistake purchasing it but soon realized i had not! it has proven to be informative and concise and contains background and technique information i haven't seen in other larger more expensive books. really, a worthwhile addition.



5. This is a fine visual primer for many of Rothko's best works. Nice quality and color. Only caution is to note the size of the book before purchasing. It is not coffee table sized, but is rather small.

5 comments about The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art.

1. One of the commercial reviews indicates that this book is a "period piece" and that description probably best describes the book. It was written in a period of time long before Rothko was working his signature style and had achieved any success.
   
   It also didn't help that the Introduction, by the late painter's son, Christopher Rothko, was unnecessarily portentious. The later parts concerning the history of the manuscripts, also written by Christopher Rothko, do tone down the excess language and are quite interesting.
   
   The essays themselves seem incomplete, pedestrian in spots, and extremely dated. As others have noted, Rothko doesn't talk about his own work.
   
   Who is the audience of this book? Completists? Researchers? It can't be that many people.
   
   Something like the publicaton of Kurt Cobain's Journals in book form several years after his suicide had relevance to that artist, even if it was a bit like peeking into somebody's diary. "The Artist's Reality" has almost no relevance to most fans of Mark Rothko and certainly none to those who appreciate his more famous style of painting.



2. In rummaging through Mr. Rothko's diary we admit to a certain thrill of impatience, one not far removed perhaps from the eagerness of a child confronted with a cake crammed full of delicious fruits and nuts. The words of a sensitive and accomplished individual come at us, after all, in The Artist's Reality, with the rapidity and variety characteristic of a fertile mind at play with a vital business. And a delightful morsel it turns out to be, this work which has been recalled to life following a miraculous rescue from an old trunk, as its editor informs us, and bearing witness from its very title to a commendable regard for the real.
   
   While a thorough analysis of this work would take us far, we will confine our remarks requisite to the limitations of space. Let us applaud, to begin, Mr. Rothko's generous consideration of the topic of abstraction, a term which he believes should be applied in a broad sense to any distortion of surface image rather than restricted to works divorced throughly from representation. Such recognition is most productive, we believe, toward an avoidance of the common practice of the assignation of creative works to one camp or the other. The more refined observation of the existence of works of art along a continuum of abstraction contributes to the achievement of an understanding of the universal underpinnings of their production. Even supposedly abstract works of art, insists Mr. Rothko, are rooted in and vitalized by the sap of life arising from the beating heart of reality: "It may be that abstract art does not employ subject matter that is as obvious as either the anecdote or familiar objects, yet it must appeal to our experience in some way." Rather than the conjuring of an artist's unbridled imagination, abstraction is the manifestation of earthen tethering as the creative individual commands the complete truth-- that is, renders reality. Painting, to restate the foregoing in Mr. Rothko's words, is "a corporeal manifestation of the artist's notion of reality."
   
   Second, we direct the thoughtful reader to the chapter on subject and subject matter. Mr. Rothko, to state his interesting analysis in brief, distinguishes between a painting's "subject matter" and its "subject." The former consists of the recognizable elements-- existing in their replication at whatever degree of distortion, as we have already seen. The latter, which the author equates with "design," is "what the artist intends in the picture." And that, to carry the matter to its end, is simply the final result of all creative labors: "The subject of a painting is the painting itself." One need stretch that proposition but a short way to deny the existence of any method save one for the successful restatement of the full content of a painting: that is the redoing of the painting. That the well constructed painting is its subject incarnate is a truism with which we will never quarrel, save to appeal for the application of this verity to the entire array of the arts. Let us recall Leonard Bernstein's statement that "the only way one can really say anything about music is to write music."
   
   Mr. Rothko's work possesses a stylistic charm brought to the surface, we believe, by a persistent ability to marry the subtleties of reflection with an astute manipulation of the linguistic gears. Let us remind ourselves that the words of artists are to be given the greatest reverence as they represent the best image we have of the flame arising from the nexus of anvil and creative hammer. The Artist's Reality, in particular, must be recognized as resident of the very top of that heap of illuminating works which by a peculiar level of insight become Rosetta stones to the secrets of the artistic mechanism.



3. Mark Rothko wanted the viewer of his work to engage in the metaphysical. Yes, his paintings are beautiful colour works, yet the impact on ones pysche is where Rothko wanted to communicate. Colour was his tool. Philosophically he was a profound man and this book has given great insight into how relevant [important] Rothko is to annals of Art History. When an artist expresses the spiritual, emotional, academic, through colour and the scale of the painting, he engages the viewer on so many levels. This book gives insights, and is a worthwhile acquistion to the understanding of the man, Rothko!



4. this is basically a personal journal. The artist's ruminations about art and life - very dry reading. Rothko often contradicts himself. There are several books available (such as those published by Taschen) which are much more readable and are filled with beautiful illustrations of the artist's work.



5. This book has a wonderful introduction written by the Mark Rothko's son Christopher Rothko. He explains the way some years after his father's death the manuscript was discovered, and edited. Mark Rothko never finished the work but rather left it off in draft form, perhaps as his son speculates because he became involved in his principal work, painting, again.
   The book consists of a series of short essays on such subjects as 'The Artist's Dilemna' 'Art as a Natural Biological Function' 'Art as a form of Action' 'The Integrity of the Plastic Process' 'Art Reality and Sensuality' 'Plasticity' 'Space' 'Naturalism''Subject and Subject Matter'
   'Beauty' ' The Attempted Myth today'.
   Rothko considers the artist's ultimate reason for doing what he does. He rejects the idea that the first reason is the desire for immortalization. He rejects the idea that the artist " wishes any charity in regard to his self- assumed sacrifice" He claims instead that the Artist " wants nothing but the understanding and love of what he does."
   Rothko writes profoundly and often movingly.
   A highly recommended work.

4 comments about Mark Rothko: A Biography.

1. If you really want to know Rothko, read Dore Ashton. Breslin tends to simplify things and I don't think that he really loves Rothko or has communicated with the paintings. Only for die-hard Rothkoites like me.



2. No book can do Mark Rothko justice. He painted on large
   canvases. To know him is to confront his original work
   on the wall before you. Find your distance, 10, 15,
   maybe 30 feet back. Yet to make sense of his
   colored rectangles tearing themselves apart in fission,
   as well as his earlier, quite different work, some
   background helps.

   Breslin's book will become the standard reference, but
   not perhaps the starting point. He writes engrossingly,
   but the 558 pages of text, I fear, will discourage the
   casual reader (who might do well to read Robert
   Hughes's paragraphs in American Visions).

   Still, for the motivated reader, James Breslin's bio is
   awesome. The Latvian Jew, charity student at
   antisemitic Yale in the early 20s, uncomfortable and
   smarter than most there, comes alive, as does his love
   for children and their art, as well as his tormented
   first marriage to a wife commercially successful during
   the Great Depression making jewelry that sold. Rothko
   had higher ambitions: fine art spelled with a capital
   "A". As Breslin relates, discomfort never disappeared.
   Success and recognition did not go over well with
   this self-described anarchist who, as a Portland
   teenager, enthusiastically took in lectures by Emma
   Goldman. Overall, Breslin provides a biographical and
   historical foundation with which to understand Mark
   Rothko's painting. I am grateful for that.

   Finally, of the many biographies I've read, James EB
   Breslin's stands out for another reason: in his
   Afterword, he turns from Rothko to himself and
   addresses his own motivations and challenges in writing
   the biography. Biographies are never "objective", so it
   makes sense that a biographer might address his own
   motivations. In the descriptions of the dangers of
   doing research in Rothko's birthplace of Dvinsk, in
   interviewing art historian Clement Greenberg, Rothko
   reappears again, this time indirectly, one step
   removed. That Breslin can bring Rothko alive in these

   different contexts is testament to the enduring value
   of this long, challenging biography.




3. I am a painter, an art professor, and a reader of biographies. I couldnt put this book down. Breslin did a magnificent job of getting inside the psyche of Rothko as a man, and as an artist. The paragraphs that describe the way in which Rothko created one of his paintings is absolutely inspired....I had goose-bumps reading it, because it seemed as if Breslin,unlike many writers who say they have observed artists, actually understood the process of creation and the passion behind it. I have never written a fan letter to a writer, but I began one to Mr.Breslin. Imagine my distress and sorrow when I read the next day in the paper that he had passed away! But this book lives as a testament to his thorough research and love of the subject. Get this book and read it....if you love art, artists, or scholarship,you will not be disappointed.



4. I wasnt that interested in his childhood..its the adult fired from brooklyn college unable to sell many paintings id like to know more about!!!!
   However this is the book to read if you want to know the facts of his life.

No comments about Declaring Space: Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein.

1 comments about Black Paintings: Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella.

1. Black Paintings offers a unique view of the creative process of image making among some of the prominent painters of our time. The book has an unusual format - the font used and layout of the text, almost as though it was done on a typewriter.
   The quality of the reproductions is very good although some of them require taking a hard look to see the nuances of tonal differences within the dark shades of black.
   I highly recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the art of painting.

1 comments about Writings on Art.

1. Mark Rothko created some of the more spiritually radiant paintings of any artist form any ear. That his paintings were abstractions - blocks of color conjoined by a marriage of midline intercourse of pigment - makes this accomplishment something that still befuddles art critics and historians and viewers alike. Here at last, some thirty-six years after his death by suicide, editor Miguel Lopez-Remiro has gathered notes from his addresses to Pratt Institute, letters to artists and friends and curators and writers, proving that Rothko was not the silent warden of explanations about his work: he was an eloquent spokesman and writer who simply felt that words were unnecessary in people's experience of his visual statements.
   
   He wrote, 'I have never thought that painting a picture has anything to so with self-expression. It is a communication about the world to someone else. After the world is convinced about this communication it changes. The world was never the same after Picasso or Miro. Theirs was a view of the world which transformed our vision of things.' Kind accolades from a man once thought to be a recluse. In response to art critics' questions he merely state 'A painting doesn't need anybody to explain what it is about. If it is any good, it speaks for itself.'
   
   Rothko's writings collected in this book demonstrate that he did indeed have the ability to discuss his mysteriously beautiful works: he also makes it clear that the communication between his paintings and the viewer should relay on the spiritual needs and vulnerabilities. These letters and essays are informative, well arranged chronologically by Lopez-Remiro, and graciously allowed to stand alone for their impact, much in the way his paintings must stand alone - usually in context with other Rothko paintings in isolated rooms with special lighting that gives the work the sense in frailty and intransigence. Highly recommended reading for those who have experience the miracle of standing before a Rothko image. Grady Harp, May 06

2 comments about Mark Rothko, 1903-1970: Pictures as Drama (Taschen Basic Art).

1. There are many larger, fatter and even better books on Rothko, but this little volume is pretty solid. At ten bucks, you shouldn't even wait for the second thought: it's a sure thing. It includes a wealth of color reproductions, and frankly their scale is surprisingly generous for a book of modest dimensions. Some are as large as the repros in all but the largest-format Rothko books. Taschen has wisely chosen to devote a full, text-less page to most of the canvases reprinted here, and the photography is fine and sensitive. Good quality photos like these reveal nuances that make the photos effectively "larger".

   The text covers Rothko's life and analyzes his thought, innovations and development through abundant quotations and sound analysis. There's unusually full exploration of his early work, and a good chapter on his symbolist-surrealist myth-paintings (though I miss seing "Slow Swirl by the Edge of the Sea.") The book also includes a few works by other artists where appropriate (as in the reprint of a Matisse painting that Rothko answered with his "Hommage to Matisse"). It's a complete yet efficient book, as are most of the titles in this series.

   My sole important reservation about the book concerns the minimal coverage of the essential "multiform" period of Rothko's work--only three or so examples appear here. That's an important failing, but not enough to dull my overall enthusiasm.




2. If you do not want to spend a fortune and still read a good introduction to Rothko's work, this is the best choice. It covers the whole career of the artist in a text which is short and easy to read, with surprisingly good illustrations of famous or rarely seen works (many are in private collections, like the one on the cover). This is what you call good value for your money. Do not expect, though, to have a comprehensive analysis on each of the works; I would call this book "Rothko for beginners", which is, in no way, a negative opinion.

5 comments about Mark Rothko.

1. It was nice to see the transition that Rothko made throughout the years from complex modern art (ala Picasso and Dali) to more simplistic yet rich in colors.



2. This is the catalogue for a beautiful exhibition that was held at the Beyeler Foundation. Many of the works reproduced are hidden in private collections (e.g. a huge 1958 canvas in black, white and red) and it is great to be able to admire them. Nothing replaces the live experience of being engulfed in a Rothko, standing a short distance from the canvas itself, but this book is undoubtedly a valuable addition in any art library.



3. I recently bought this book, and I want to comment on the discussion regarding the color - the color is NOT great, and it does NOT show Rothko's work in its best light. Anyone who says differently should get their eyes checked. That being said, other than that it seems to be a very nice book, and I'll still be glad to have it in my library. I just need another book for better color reference.



4. I saw the original show that went with this book. While the book cannot do justice to the works one can still appreciate the greatness of Rothko by reading/viewing it.



5. I must admit that I have not been the biggest fan of Mark Rothko, but after reading this book and seeing the quality plates, I am very much a fan of Rothko. Now, when I go to museums, I am very interested in seeing his work and studying his color, edges, paint handling and spirit. This book is worth owning.