“The vibrant late works on paper contain a force not experienced in the earlier small works…These late creations, with their dense unmodulated surfaces, do not flicker with light; rather they generate a strong, constant glow.”
Vibrating with an irrepressible chromatic energy, Untitled from 1968 encapsulates the themes and aims at the very heart of Mark Rothko’s painterly project. Concentrating the remarkable potency of his best-known canvases onto an intimate scale, Rothko here demonstrates his complete mastery of media and hue. A rare, exquisitely vibrant example from a period often characterized by a decidedly somber palette, Untitled exemplifies Rothko’s work in a medium that bore an increasingly profound significance in the twilight years of his career when, tirelessly seeking to broaden the horizons of his artistic practice, he focused his energies upon exploring the absolute limits of painting on paper. Although he created works on paper throughout the entirety of his career, the present example reflects the climax of the evolution of his output on paper.
Bonnie Clearwater explains that “the late vibrant paintings on paper contain a force not [previously] experienced” (Exh. Cat. New York, American Federation of the Arts, Mark Rothko: Works on Paper, 1984, p. 54). Untitled employs the visual vocabulary of Rothko’s “matured style,” with its “two soft-edged and rounded rectangles,” and bespeaks the great achievement of his output: the illusory creation of light (Duncan Phillips in Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Mark Rothko, 1998, p. 248). The medium of paper, especially prominent in the later stages of his oeuvre, allowed Rothko to flaunt his ability to produce the perceptual effect of a lit surface; viewers luxuriate in the sultry hues of Untitled, experiencing, if only for a moment, an overwhelming sense of awe. For this reason, Robert Rosenblum defines Rothko as the art historical descendant of the nineteenth century master painters Joseph Mallord William Turner and Caspar David Friedrich (see figs. 2 and 3); equally interested in the sublime, Rothko advanced their artistic achievements by moving into the realm of total abstraction—a development which he fully realizes in Untitled.
A paragon of Rothko’s expressive command of pigment, Untitled demonstrates the artist’s profound ability to communicate spatial depth and volume through abstract form. Two rectangular panels of vivid, gleaming yellow fill almost the entire composition and hover atop a backdrop of washes of fiery crimson. Flickers and stutters of yellow flash across the scarlet perimeter like sparking embers in a flame. Viewers can feel the touch of Rothko’s brushstroke; they can sense the movement of his gesture across the modulated planes. In describings his practice, Rothko explained: “Two characteristics exist in my paintings; either their surfaces are expansive and push outward in all directions, or their surfaces contract and rush inward in all directions” (the artist cited in ibid., p. 299). In the present work, the surface expands outward unrestrainedly; the loose brushstrokes that dust the edges of the yellow panels elicit a sense of extension, as if Rothko could barely contain them in the intimately scaled sheet of paper he selected. Jeffrey Weiss characterizes the evocation of space in Rothko’s slab-like forms by suggesting they “possess an elusive quality of plentitude or depth.” (ibid., p. 303) Upon close viewing, the expanse of Untitled’s two forms feels immeasurable.
Untitled shimmers with brilliant energy, illuminating the space surrounding it. It is because of examples like the present that Max Kozloff terms Rothko’s paintings “auto-luminous,” for they emit “a radiance that belongs to the [work] alone rather than to the realm of representation” (ibid., p. 304). Rosenblum describes the rectangular planes in Rothko’s paintings as “infinite, glowing voids [that] carry us beyond reason to the Sublime; we can only submit to them in an act of faith and let ourselves be absorbed into their radiant depths” (Robert Rosenblum, “The Abstract Sublime,” ARTnews , vol. 59, no. 10, February 1961). To view the present work is to experience a perceptual transformation; meditation on its glorious planes removes viewers from their surroundings.
Market Precedent: Mark Rothko
"The paradox implicit in Rothko's best work is that he wished also to name the light itself and not only the things it illuminated. How often in his later works there are flares of burning light, sparks that grow uncannily."
Remarkable illustrations of paper's unique capacity to both absorb and reflect light, the vibrant hues of Rothko’s late works are infused with an unprecedented vitality. Describings the significance of the medium within his oeuvre, Clearwater reflects: “throughout his career, [Rothko] produced many lesser known works on paper which share characteristics with his canvases while exhibiting their own special qualities. These works… are essential to a fuller understanding of Rothko’s career. Together with the canvases, the works on paper chart the artist’s quest for an elemental language that would communicate basic human emotions and move all mankind” (Exh. Cat., New York, ibid., p. 17). In the late 1960s, after completing the two commissions whose magisterial brilliance cemented his status as one of America’s most revered abstractionists—the Seagram Murals and the Rothko Chapel paintings commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil—Rothko pursued the intricate subtleties of painting on paper with unprecedented focus. Evincing the artist’s incessant artistic probings , Rothko described the impetus behind this shift in his practice from canvas to paper with the following: “…to whom a certain medium becomes too easy and who runs this risk of becoming too skilled in that.mes dium, to try another which presents more difficulties to them” (ibid. p. 59).
With its strikingly saturated hues, Untitled exemplifies the drama Rothko came to attain on paper, emanating a luminescent vibrancy utterly impossible to reproduce in illustration. To the viewer, bathed in its heady glow, it is almost as if this extraordinary painting is brilliantly illuminated from within, transformed from mere pigment into a translucent vessel of pure color and light.