The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Mark Rothko · oil on canvas, about 2.9 metres high by 2.7 wide · one upright field: a single warm ground holding two stacked, soft-edged horizontal rectangles, the upper one dark · painted in New York, 1960, after the painter withdrew from the Seagram commission · San Francisco Museum of Modern Art · the unit scored is the single canvas, as it hangs, whole; nothing of it known to be lost, replaced or repainted
Mode
Abstract painting as encounter; the classic format of stacked colour fields, carried into its dark register
Mythos
The threshold, the stele, night over fire: evoked by the structure and brought by the viewer, not built
Phase
Painted in New York in 1960, after the withdrawal from the Seagram commission, a decade into the format and ten years before the painter’s death
Presentation
Oil on canvas, about 2.9 by 2.7 metres, upright; one ground and two stacked rectangles with feathered edges, the paint laid thin in veils
Register
One register, held: grave and inward, a darkness pressing on warmth
Scale
More than half again the height of a standing adult; one viewer, close, before a field that fills sight
Governing Proposition
A canvas more than half again the height of a person holds two soft-edged rectangles stacked on a single warm ground, the upper one dark. There is no figure, no line and no sign; the edges are feathered so that nothing can be fixed, and the dark presses down on the warmth beneath it. Painted in 1960, after the painter withdrew from the Seagram commission, it carries his format into weight and night. The wager of the canvas is that colour and placement alone, met close and at the scale of the body, can carry grave feeling, and that what the painting means is completed in the one who stands before it.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The title is a number and a year. The canvas is upright, a little taller than it is wide, about 2.9 metres high and 2.7 across, so that it stands more than half again the height of the person before it. It holds one coloured ground and, on that ground, two horizontal rectangles stacked one above the other, the upper one dark, the ground warm. There is no figure, no line, no sign and no inscription. The edges of the rectangles are not drawn: they are brushed and feathered into the ground, so that each block ends in a zone rather than a line, and the ground shows between them and around them at every margin.
Mark Rothko, born in 1903, painted it in New York in 1960. He had fixed the format a decade before, in about 1949 to 1950, and repeated it across some two decades of canvases until his death in 1970. In 1958 to 1959 he had painted murals for the Seagram commission in a darkened palette, and withdrawn from it. This canvas comes after the withdrawal and shares the darkening: the warm format turned toward weight, the dark set above and pressing on the warmth below. It is held by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, sixty-six years after it was painted.
The work scored is the single canvas. The format it belongs to, the Seagram murals whose palette it shares, and the Chapel that the late dark canvases led to are context, and they are credited to it only where the canvas itself carries them. That matters, because the canvas is one of many in a format that was its painter’s for twenty years, and its departure and its reach are largely the format’s. What it does as a painting it does itself. No part of it is idle, and what it asks of the one who stands before it is asked here, at this size, in this dark.
Movement II
In June 1943 Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb published a letter in the New York Times. “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought,” it said; “We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal”; and “only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.” The paintings Rothko made in those years were mythic, with figures and signs, and Aeschylus was among his sources. Myth was the subject, and tragedy its measure.
The format came out of that painting by subtraction. The multiform canvases of 1946 to 1948 dissolved the figures into floating patches of colour, with Surrealist automatism and Matisse’s flat colour behind them. In about 1949 to 1950 the patches settled into a few soft-edged planes, stacked on one ground at the scale of a wall: no figure, no gesture, no incident, at a time when the painting around him in New York was the record of action. The turn was large, and it cost years of poverty and incomprehension. It is the format’s, and the canvas of 1960 inherits it.
In the classic format the myth has withdrawn into the colour. Here the stacked rectangles suggest a threshold, a doorway or a stele; the dark over the warm suggests night over fire, or the tomb over the living, and the late dark canvases have been taken as meditations on death. None of it is built. There is no particular to become universal, because the particular has been removed, and the threshold is brought by the viewer, supported by the structure. What the canvas adds of its own is the darkening: a real move within the format, risked by a painter of established fame who might lose by turning sombre, and not a new departure.
Movement III
Speaking at the Interiors symposium of 1951 about painting large, Rothko said: “you are in it. It isn’t something you command.” The canvas needs that. Seen close, where he asked the viewer to stand, the field fills sight and runs past it. Smaller, the painting would be a design; in reproduction it becomes a pleasing arrangement of colour, which it is not. The upright format sets the dark mass above the eye, where it presses down, and the warm ground rises beneath and around it at the height of the body.
The dark upper block reads less as a shape than as a depth or an opening. Against the warm ground it gives the dreadful, inward elevation that Robert Rosenblum named “The Abstract Sublime” in 1961: grandeur without an object. The soft edges keep the masses breathing, so that what is seen at five minutes is not what was seen at one. The height is real, and it is sustained. It is also single: one field, one register, one summit held, with no second height of another kind beside it.
Every part is needed. Take away the upper block and the weight goes; take away the lower and the dark floats unanswered, with no second interval to measure it; take away the ground between and around them and the rectangles become a flag or a wall, for it is the ground breathing at every edge that makes them hover. What yields is proportion. The heights of the two blocks and the widths of the margins could shift by a hand’s breadth, as the many canvases in the format show they did, without the painting losing its argument. Its necessity is of kind, and it is total.
Movement IV
The means look simple and are not. The dark field and the warm ground are held in exact relation: the dark neither dead nor opaque, the ground hot enough to burn through at the margins without overpowering what lies on it. The edge is brushed and feathered, so that each block has no line but a zone, and the eye cannot find where colour ends. The paint is laid thin, in layers, until light seems to issue from the surface rather than fall on it. A hard edge would make the rectangles objects on a ground; feathered and scumbled, they hover and advance, and cannot be fixed.
One law governs the whole: soft-edged horizontal planes of colour, stacked frontally on a single ground, each defined by its relation to the others and none by drawing. There is no line, no figure, no diagonal and no second kind of mark. The range within the law is real, from near darkness to near flame, from weight to glow, wider in temperature than the warm canvases of the early 1950s. But the territory is small by choice: three planes, one direction, one kind of edge, and a range of mark kept to a few broad brushings and a few relations. The command is exact, and it is shown in a small compass.
The letter of 1943 promised the complex thought in a simple expression. The simple expression is achieved. What the canvas brings into the open can be stated: that colour and placement alone can carry grave and specific feeling, the “basic human emotions” Rothko said in 1957 were his only interest; and that an image can be made whose meaning exists only in the encounter, so that the viewer finds how much of what is felt is supplied by the one who stands there. But the first concerns painting’s means, and much of what is given is a state rather than a meaning. The tragedy he named is felt here; it is not articulated.
Movement V
In The Tiger’s Eye in 1947 Rothko wrote: “A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer.” This canvas depends on that companionship and on what surrounds it: the height and closeness of its hanging, the light it is seen by, and the time it is given. The dark gives up its hue slowly. The edges change with distance and with the minutes, and the painting looks different at the end of a long look than at the start. Much of what it knows lies in conditions outside itself.
It has stood sixty-six years, one canvas, whole. Rothko’s media of these years are fragile: the matte surfaces are easily marked and some pigments are fugitive, as the fading of his Harvard murals of 1962 showed. No damage to this canvas is known, and only that general risk is weighed against it. The format has drawn a large and continuing literature, from Greenberg’s “American-Type Painting” (1955) and Rosenblum’s essay to Anfam’s catalogue raisonné of the works on canvas (1998) and the conservation studies of the painter’s media. Its questions stay open: whether the paintings are religious, tragic or purely optical, and whether the late darkening is a confession or a programme. They are asked of the format and the oeuvre, and this canvas shares them with dozens of others.
The format’s reach was wide: into the colour-field painting of the 1960s and the Minimal reaction against it, into the light works and large field paintings of later decades, and into the idea of a painting as a place of contemplation. The late dark canvases led directly to the Chapel in Houston. Of the orders of reality, the canvas holds consciousness, the body and, as a gesture toward them, death and the sacred; Rothko said that those who wept before his pictures had the experience he had in painting them. There is no person in it, no family, no labour, no city, no state, no history and no natural order. The world is outside the frame. Inside it, a dark field presses on a warm one, and the viewer stands close enough to be in it.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged part by part: a ground, two rectangles and the edges between them. Take away the upper dark block and the weight pressing down the field goes, and with it the tension against the warm ground. Take away the lower block and the dark floats unanswered, with no second interval to measure it. Take away the ground between and around them and the rectangles become a flag or a wall; its breathing at every edge makes them hover. The scale is compelled: smaller, the painting is a design. What yields is proportion: the heights of the blocks and the margins could shift by a hand’s breadth, as the many canvases in the format show they did. Necessity of kind is total; of exact measure, not.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Disclosure through image is credited in full, and two things can be stated that hold. Colour and placement alone, with no figure, sign or story, can carry grave and specific feeling to a viewer standing before them: the painter’s “basic human emotions” are not asserted but shown to be reachable by these means. And an image can be made whose meaning exists only in the encounter: the soft edges and the scale make looking the subject. But the first concerns painting’s means, and much of what the canvas gives is a state, a darkness pressing on warmth, which ranks below a meaning. The tragedy the painter named is felt, not articulated. Below Monet’s Water Lilies at 7.9, whose disclosure is wider.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Elevation is the work’s whole aim, and it is reached. The canvas stands more than half again the height of a person, and from close by, where the painter asked the viewer to stand, the field fills sight. The dark upper block reads less as a shape than as a depth or an opening, and against the warm ground it gives the dreadful, inward elevation that Robert Rosenblum named “The Abstract Sublime” in 1961: grandeur without an object. The soft edges keep the masses breathing, so the experience changes over minutes of looking. What holds it below the top is frequency and range: one field, one register, one summit sustained, and no second height of another kind.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The archetypes are present, and mostly evoked. The stacked rectangles suggest a threshold, a doorway or a stele; the dark over the warm suggests night over fire, or the tomb over the living, and the late dark canvases have been taken as meditations on death. Rothko came to this format from the mythic painting of the early 1940s, Aeschylus among his sources, and the letter of 1943 held that “only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.” But in the classic format the myth has withdrawn into the colour. There is no particular to become universal, because the particular has been removed. The threshold is a reading the viewer brings, supported by the structure, not built by it.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The swerve belongs first to the format, and the format is not this canvas’s alone. Rothko fixed it in about 1949 to 1950, out of the multiform canvases of 1946 to 1948, with Surrealist automatism and Matisse’s flat colour behind them: a few soft-edged planes of colour at the scale of a wall, with no figure, gesture or incident, against the action painting around him, at a cost of years of poverty and incomprehension. That turn is credited only as the canvas inherits it. What the canvas adds is the darkening after the Seagram murals, the warm format turned toward weight and night, at a risk to a painter of established fame. A real move within the format; not a new departure.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Substitute another form and almost everything goes. The scale is the knowledge: the canvas is built to exceed the field of sight at close range, and in reproduction it becomes a pleasing arrangement of colour, which it is not. The soft edge is the knowledge: hard, it would make the rectangles objects on a ground; feathered and scumbled, they hover and cannot be fixed. The thin layered paint is the knowledge: colour laid in veils, so that light seems to come from within the surface rather than fall on it. The upright format sets the dark mass above eye level, where it presses. Held below the top because the form completes a format already found, and depends on hanging and light outside itself.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Evidence over promise: sixty-six years, and the format has sustained a large and continuing literature, from Greenberg’s “American-Type Painting” (1955) and Rosenblum’s essay of 1961 to Anfam’s catalogue raisonné of the works on canvas (1998) and the conservation studies of Rothko’s media. The questions stay open: whether the paintings are religious, tragic or purely optical; whether the late darkening is a confession or a programme; what the viewer brings and what the painting does. The canvas yields on return: the dark gives up its hue slowly, and the edges change with distance and time. Held lower because the yield is largely the format’s and the oeuvre’s: the literature turns on them, not on this canvas.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Field: abstract painting in New York in the 1950s and early 1960s. Force and reach are scored together. The intrinsic force: the canvas is a strong instance of the reorganisation the format made, painting as an enveloping field of colour at architectural scale, carried here into its darker register; but that reorganisation was made a decade before, and this canvas does not remake it. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the format reached into the colour-field painting of the 1960s, the Minimal reaction against it, the light works of later decades and the idea of a painting as a place of contemplation; the late dark canvases fed directly into the Chapel. The reach is the oeuvre’s, and this canvas is credited as one mature instance among many.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Weighed on form, presence and fabric. Form: one canvas, whole, sixty-six years old; the image that makes the work stands, and no later hand is known in it. Presence: held by a major public museum; the format is among the best-known images of modern painting, but fame is presence, not proof, and this is not among the most famous of Rothko’s canvases by name. Fabric: his media of these years are fragile, the matte surfaces easily marked and some pigments fugitive, as the fading of his Harvard murals of 1962 showed. No damage to this canvas is known, and only that general risk is charged. The figure sits low in what sixty-six years can earn, for presence short of the widest and for that risk.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Judged as command of oil on canvas. The making is load-bearing. Colour: the dark field and the warm ground are held in exact relation, the dark neither dead nor opaque, the ground hot enough to burn through without overpowering it. The edge: brushed and feathered, so that each block has no line but a zone, and the eye cannot find where colour ends. The surface: thin layers built up until light seems to issue from the paint; the means look simple and are not. The costs: the range of mark is narrow by choice, a few broad brushings and a few relations, so the command is shown in a small compass; and the media chosen for their effect are fragile, which is weighed under The Imperishable.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the dark depth of the upper block and the heat of the ground at the margin. They obey one law: soft-edged horizontal planes of colour stacked frontally on a single ground, each defined by its relation to the others and none by drawing. There is no line, no figure, no diagonal, no second kind of mark; the law is total. The range within it is real, from near darkness to near flame, wider in temperature than the warm canvases of the early 1950s, and the law holds across it. But narrowness is not coherence: three planes, one direction, one kind of edge. Held a step below Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie and Monet’s Water Lilies, both at 8.9, whose territories are wider.
Score: 8.7 / 10
An abstract field holds few orders; this one holds three with any force. Consciousness: the viewer’s perception and feeling, which the painting makes its medium and its subject. The body: the scale is set to the standing figure, and the encounter is physical. Mortality, or the sacred: the grave dark and the suggestion of a threshold point toward death and toward a religious order, and the painter said those who wept before his pictures shared what he felt in painting them; but this is evoked, not held, and counts as a fraction. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: no person, no family, no labour, no city, no state, no history, no natural order. The figure describes the form.
Score: 6.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form at 8.9, then The Imperishable and The Made at 8.8, The Inner Law at 8.7, and The Inevitable and The Sublime at 8.6. A form in which the scale, the feathered edge and the thin veils of paint are the knowledge; a making that holds the dark and the warm in exact relation; one law with no second kind of mark; no idle part; and a dark, inward elevation sustained across the whole field.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.2: consciousness and the body are held, death and the sacred evoked as a fraction, and every other order is absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 7.5 and The Unconcealment at 7.6: the threshold and the night over fire are evoked by the structure and brought by the viewer, not built, and what the canvas discloses concerns painting’s means more than a stated condition. The Swerve at 7.9 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.0 are held down because the format’s departure and reach are its own, and this canvas is one mature instance of it.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.9, The Made at 8.8, The Inner Law at 8.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of its five conditions: The Imperishable at 8.8 clears the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.0, The Swerve at 7.9, The Unconcealment at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.5 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met at its edge: The Archetypal Deep stands at 7.5 exactly, against 7.5, and no other axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.6. The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.2. The twelve sum to 97.8, an average of 8.15 that displays 8.2.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the canvas held by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, of the format it belongs to and of the literature on its painter; not from standing before it, and no image or written source was consulted. The structure is known securely: an upright canvas taller than a person, one warm ground, two stacked soft-edged rectangles, the upper dark. The exact hues are known less well, and no figure rests on them beyond the relation of a dark field over a warm ground. The work scored is the single canvas, whole; nothing of it is known to have been lost, replaced or repainted, and no later hand is known in it. The classic format from about 1949 to 1950, the multiform canvases before it, the Seagram murals of 1958 to 1959, the Harvard murals and the Rothko Chapel are context and are not scored; the departure and reach that belong to the format are discounted. The fragility of the painter’s media is weighed only as a fact of survival and is not charged to the making. Words quoted are the painter’s, in brief: from the letter he published with Adolph Gottlieb in the New York Times in June 1943, from The Tiger’s Eye (1947), from the Interiors symposium (1951), and three words from his conversation with Selden Rodman (1957); the rest of what he said to Rodman is paraphrased. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the exact dimensions, the exact hue of the ground and of each rectangle, which rectangle is the larger, the make-up of the paint on this canvas, the year it entered the collection and how often it has been shown, any restoration, and any inscription.