Very early in his career, Mark Rothko identified the relationship between the painting and the viewer as the central focus of his art. This appealingly designed publication delves more deeply into his concept of "a sensual fusion beyond the reach of language." (Oliver Wick)
Mark Rothko, the great American artist of Russian descent, is one of the chief exponents of Abstract Expressionism. His paintings, predominantly in a large format and featuring horizontal layers of pigment on a monochrome foundation, will forever be in our pictorial memory as the epitome of classical modernism.
By means of Rothko's central work groups from all creative periods - among them the Rothko Room in the Phillips collection and the Harvard Murals of Harvard University - this book takes a look at the artist's continuous endeavour to attain "a consummated experience between picture and onlooker". Rothko's adamant insistence on controlling the presentation of his works set him apart from the art scene of his time as early as the beginning of the fifties. His large-format pictures were to be hung closely together in small rooms with soft lighting to provide an immediate experience - a concept which has been most famously and definitively realized in the Rothko Chapel in Houston.
