The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Mark Rothko · a series of large canvases under one shared title · acrylic on canvas · each divided once, a black field above and a grey field below meeting at a single horizontal edge, inside a narrow white margin on all four sides · painted in New York, 1969 to the first weeks of 1970 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, among other holders · the series scored as one work: its canvases are dispersed among owners and each stands whole, so the format they share stands in every one of them
Mode
Late abstract painting turned against its own manner; the colour field made into a bounded object, in two colours
Mythos
The horizon: night over ground, the upper world over the lower, reduced to their division; evoked by the structure, with no particular place or hour
Phase
Painted in New York from 1969 into the first weeks of 1970, after the aneurysm of spring 1968 and a year of smaller works on paper; the painter died in his studio on 25 February 1970
Presentation
Acrylic on large canvases, each with two fields and a white margin; one shared title with no distinguishing number; the canvases now held apart, reassembled only when a retrospective brings them together
Register
Cold, grave, close to dread; a stillness of one height, repeated canvas by canvas with small changes of weight
Scale
Each canvas scaled to a person standing before it; the series a format held through variation, not a room
Governing Proposition
In the last year of his life a painter whose fame rested on soft rectangles that glowed to the edge of the canvas painted a series of large canvases in two colours only: a black field above, a grey field below, meeting at one horizontal edge, and round all four sides a narrow margin of white that states where the object ends. The wager of the series is that a field divided once and bounded is enough to show a limit, a place where something ends, without depicting what ends or what lies beyond, and that one format, held through small changes of proportion and tone, can be a law rather than a habit.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Every canvas in the series carries the same title, Untitled (Black on Grey), and none carries a number to tell it from its siblings. Mark Rothko painted them in New York from 1969 into the first weeks of 1970, in acrylic on large canvases. Each is divided once. A black or brown-black field fills the upper part, a grey field the lower, and the two meet at a single horizontal edge. Round all four sides runs a narrow margin of white, bare of paint. There is nothing else: no figure, no inscription, no third field. Two of the canvases hang in the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, each given by the Mark Rothko Foundation in the 1980s; the others are held apart, by other institutions and owners.
The work here is the series, scored as one. The title is shared, and what the series achieves lives in one format held through variation. From canvas to canvas the proportion of black to grey changes, the edge rides higher or lower, the grey grows paler or darker and its brushing looser or closer, and the law does not change. A single canvas shows the law; the series shows that it is a law. The canvases are dispersed and each stands whole, so the format stands in every one of them. The series was not made for one room, and its hanging is not part of the work. Around it stand the works on paper of 1968 and 1969, the dark Chapel canvases of 1964 to 1967 and the Seagram murals. They are context, and none of them is scored.
Within a canvas, each element bears weight, and there are only three. Take away the margin and the fields run to the edge: the picture opens into a window, and the horizon becomes a landscape, which the white band refuses by stating where the object ends. Take away the edge between black and grey and the canvas becomes a monochrome. Take away the brushing of the grey and the lower field goes dead, and the black has nothing to weigh on. Across the series the test bites harder. A canvas could be taken away and the series would know what it knew. Its variations are of degree, and the count is permitted rather than compelled by anything the work has to say.
Movement II
For twenty years Rothko’s canvases had been fields without an edge: soft rectangles stacked on a coloured ground, hovering, their borders dissolving, the colour glowing out to the limit of the canvas and seeming to go on past it. These canvases close the field. The white margin states the edge of the object on all four sides. The light that seemed to come from inside the classic canvases is withdrawn, and the field is shown bounded, an object on a wall: the infinite contained.
That is the series’ clearest disclosure, and it is a meaning, stated through image. A field divided once, dark above and pale below, is enough to show a limit, a place where something ends and nothing begins, without depicting either. In 1943, in a letter written with the painter Adolph Gottlieb, Rothko had asked for “the simple expression of the complex thought”, and for a subject “tragic and timeless”. The series is simple in its means, and the thought it expresses is a limit. Most of what it gives, though, is a state, stillness and a cold quiet, and a state ranks below a meaning however strongly it is rendered.
The margin is also what holds the elevation in check. It keeps the viewer outside. The classic canvases offered a field that seemed to breathe and to envelop whoever stood before it; here that transport is withdrawn on purpose, and what the viewer meets is a thing, not an atmosphere. The canvases are scaled to a person standing before them. Smaller, the black would be a band; larger, it would be a wall. At this scale it is a field of the body’s own size, set at a distance by a strip of white.
Movement III
The black and the grey meet at one horizontal line. It is brushed by hand, never ruled, and held straight without the deadness a ruler gives. The two fields do not float one on another, as the classic rectangles did; they meet, and the picture holds a limit rather than an apparition. Soften the edge and the canvas returns to the classic manner. Change the colours and it becomes a picture about the relation of colours. What the series knows lives in its form: the margin, the single edge, a dense black over a brushed grey, and a field scaled to the body.
The elevation comes at first sight, the black heavy over the grey and nothing between them. It comes again in long looking. The grey is laid in visible strokes and begins to move under its brushing; the black, which seemed flat, shows a depth and a faint sheen. Weight lies over breath. The black is dense and near opaque, weighted so that it presses on the grey without swallowing it, and the margin, cut clean, is the one hard element set against the hand in the fields. The register is cold, grave, close to dread, and it is of one height, repeated canvas by canvas with small changes of weight.
One law governs everything: the canvas is an object divided once, its fields bounded and the bound stated. The margin states it at the outer edge, the line between black and grey states it within, and the grey’s brushing is the one freedom the law allows, kept inside its field. Across the series it never breaks; no canvas adds a third field, a curve or a colour. The proportion of black to grey is searched for from canvas to canvas and placed with authority. The costs are named: the range of mark is narrow by design, the territory is two colours, one direction and one division, and acrylic denied the painter the layered translucency that had been the craft of his classic canvases.
Movement IV
In the spring of 1968 Rothko suffered an aneurysm. For a year afterwards he worked on smaller works on paper, the Brown and Grey group among them, and in 1969 he returned to large canvases with this series. The canvases overturned the format on which his standing rested, one he had fixed from about 1949 and made famous. The edges hardened to one line. The fields stopped hovering and met. They ran to a margin that framed them. Colour, his instrument, was reduced to black and grey, and oil gave way to acrylic. A famous and ill painter, at the end of his life, set aside his manner for a shape that could be read as the landscape he had refused for twenty years.
The darkness was not new to him. The Seagram murals of 1958 and 1959, which stand at 8.3, were dark, and the black forms of the Chapel canvases of 1964 to 1967 came before these. And the field had gone further before him: Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings, Frank Stella’s black paintings of 1959, the Minimal object. Malevich’s Black Square, the founding dark field, stands at 8.3; this series inherits the territory that canvas opened. The swerve is from the painter’s own tradition more than from the field’s.
The series answers the moment in which it was painted. At the end of the 1960s Minimalism was ascendant and colour-field painting was in its later phase, and the Minimal claim was that painting was finished. The series turns the colour field into a bounded object, and the luminous field into a dark one: a real move, made from inside painting. It reorganised little. Its reach has run with the general image of the painter’s late dark work, which the Chapel carries more strongly, and it is diffuse, shared with the rest of that work.
Movement V
In July 1969, while the series was being painted, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Viewers have since seen in the canvases the grey surface of the moon under black space. Others see the horizon, night over ground, or death descending as the black. The horizon is the composition’s only structure, and so it is in the work; the other readings are brought to it from the date and the biography, and the canvases neither confirm nor refuse them. There is no place in them, no hour and no figure, only this black and this grey.
Rothko took his own life in his studio on East 69th Street on 25 February 1970, with these canvases about him. The date belongs to the record, not to the meaning. The questions it raises stay open: whether the series is the end of the classic manner or a new beginning cut off; what the margin is, a frame, a claim to objecthood, an answer to the Minimal object from inside painting, or a painter testing a way of working; how far the canvases should be read through the suicide, and whether they can be read against it. On return they yield at the edge between the fields and in the grey. Part of what has been written about them is about the man rather than the canvases.
The canvases have stayed whole, and the format is wholly legible. Acrylic has aged well on present evidence; the late surfaces are matte and easily marked, and that general risk is all that is charged. The series has been in view since the 1970s, but it is dispersed, and is seen as a group only when a retrospective brings it together. The orders it holds are few: the natural order, as horizon, and consciousness, in the viewer before a field of the body’s size; there is no person, family, labour, city, state or history. The Rothko Chapel, painted a few years earlier in the same dark register and built as one room, stands at 8.6, the larger and more consequential work. The series is its coda: a field of black over a field of grey, bounded by white, and nothing past the edge.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged first within a canvas. Take away the margin and the fields run to the edge: the picture opens into a window and the horizon becomes a landscape, which the white band refuses by stating the edge of the object. Take away the edge between black and grey and the canvas is a monochrome. Take away the grey’s brushing and the lower field goes dead, and the black has nothing to weigh on. There are three elements, and each is structural. Judged then on the series, the subtractive test bites: a canvas could be removed and the series would know what it knew. The variations are of degree, and the count is permitted rather than compelled.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Two things can be stated through image, and they hold. A field divided once, dark above and pale below, is enough to show a limit, a place where something ends and nothing begins, without depicting either. And, more particular to these canvases, the white margin closes the image. The classic canvases glowed outward and seemed to have no edge; here the light is withdrawn and the field is shown bounded, an object on a wall, the infinite contained. That is a meaning, and a turn against the painter’s own earlier work. It is held where it is because most of what the series gives is a state, stillness and a cold quiet, and a state ranks below a meaning.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Elevation is real and of one kind: cold, grave, close to dread. It comes at the first sight of a canvas, the black heavy over the grey and nothing between them. It comes again in long looking, when the grey begins to move under its brushing and the black, which seemed flat, shows a depth and a faint sheen. And the series repeats it canvas by canvas, with small changes of weight. What holds it is the work’s own meaning: the margin keeps the viewer outside, and the transport the classic canvases gave, a field that seems to breathe and envelop, is withdrawn on purpose. The register is narrow, the summits few and of one height, and no canvas surrounds anyone.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The archetype is the horizon: sky over earth, night over ground, the boundary between the upper and the lower world. It is the composition’s only structure, so in one sense it is built and not alluded to. But the axis asks that a particular become archetypal while staying particular, and here there is no particular to become anything: no place, no hour, no figure, only this black and this grey. The deeper readings, the black as death descending, the surface of the moon under black space in the year of Apollo 11, the last canvases of a painter who took his own life where they stood, are brought from the date and the biography. The canvases neither confirm nor refuse them.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The inheritance is the painter’s own, fixed from about 1949 and famous: soft-edged rectangles stacked on a coloured ground, hovering, their edges dissolving, the field glowing to the canvas edge. The departure: the edges harden to one horizontal line; the fields stop hovering and meet; they run to a margin that frames them; colour, his instrument, is reduced to black and grey; oil gives way to acrylic. The stake was real: a famous and ill painter at the end of his life overturned the format his authority rested on, in a shape that could be read as the landscape he had refused for twenty years. Held where it is because the darkness was already his, and the field had gone further before him.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Change the form and almost everything the series knows goes. The margin is the knowledge: without it the field is a window, with it a thing bounded, and what the series knows is that boundary. The single edge is the knowledge: two fields meeting, not one floating on another, so that the picture holds a limit rather than an apparition. The opposition of surfaces is the knowledge: a dense black over a brushed, moving grey, weight over breath. The scale is the knowledge: a body before a field of its own size. Soften the edge and it returns to the classic manner. Held below the top because the format lies close to a horizon picture, which it must resist rather than transform.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Evidence over promise: about fifty-six years and an active literature. The questions stay open: whether the series is a landscape, the moon, or nothing seen; whether it ends the classic manner or begins something cut off; what the margin means, a frame, objecthood, or an answer to the Minimal object from inside painting; how far it should be read through the suicide; how the acrylic surfaces were made and have aged. On return the canvases yield at the edge between the fields and in the grey. Held where it is because part of the writing is about the man rather than the canvases, and the format is legible at once.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Field: American abstract painting at the end of the 1960s, with Minimalism ascendant and colour-field painting in its later phase. The intrinsic force is modest as a reorganisation of the field. The series turns the colour field into a bounded object and the luminous field into a dark one, a real move inside painting against the Minimal claim that painting was finished; but the dark monochrome and the hard horizontal were already in the field’s hands, in Reinhardt’s black paintings and Stella’s of 1959. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the series has reached its public as part of the general image of the painter’s late dark work, which the Rothko Chapel carries more strongly. The reach is diffuse, and shared.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, over fifty-six to fifty-seven years. Form: each canvas whole as far as can be shown, none cut or altered, and the format, which is the work, wholly legible. Presence: the series has been in view and in the literature since the 1970s, in two of the principal American collections among others, but it is dispersed among institutions and owners and is shown as a group only when a retrospective reassembles it. Dispersal is not loss of form, since the group was never an installation, but it is a charge on presence. Fabric: acrylic, which on present evidence has aged well; the late surfaces are matte and easily marked, and only that general risk is charged.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Judged as command of acrylic on canvas, to the same anchors as any medium. The making is load-bearing where it matters. The edge between the fields is brushed by hand and held straight without the deadness of a ruled line. The grey is laid in visible strokes, so that it breathes against the black. The black is dense and near opaque, weighted so that it presses without swallowing the grey. The margin is cut clean, the one hard element set against the hand in the fields. The proportion of black to grey is placed with authority. The costs: the range of mark is narrow by design, and acrylic denied him the layered translucency that was the craft of his classic canvases.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the white margin, bare and exact, and the grey field, all hand and movement. They obey one law: the canvas is an object divided once, its fields bounded and the bound stated. The margin states the bound at the edge; the edge between black and grey states it inside; the grey’s brushing is the one freedom the law allows, and it stays inside its field. Across the series the law never breaks: no canvas adds a third field, a curve or a colour. But narrowness is not coherence, and the territory is very small: two colours, one direction, one division. Within it the range, from flat black to moving grey, from a high edge to a low, is real and held.
Score: 8.4 / 10
An abstract field holds few orders. The ones held here: the natural order, as horizon, earth and sky reduced to their division; and consciousness, in the viewer before a field of the body’s size and the long looking it asks. Those two are integrated, one division seen as world and as limit. Death and the cosmic dark are present only as readings the format permits. 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 sacred made visible. The year of the moon landing and the painter’s death lie outside the frame. The figure describes the form.
Score: 6.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.0 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.7, then The Living Form at 8.6, The Made and The Inner Law at 8.4 and The Inevitable at 8.3. Canvases whole and a format wholly legible after more than half a century; a form whose margin, single edge and opposed surfaces are what it knows; an edge brushed straight by hand, a grey that breathes and a black that presses without swallowing it; one law, an object divided once and bounded, held across the series without a break; and three elements, none there for its own sake.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.2: the natural order as horizon and the viewer’s consciousness are held in one division, death and the cosmic dark only as readings, and there is no person, family, labour, city, state, history or sacred made visible. Next above it, Pressure on Tradition at 7.6, The Archetypal Deep at 7.7 and The Unconcealment at 7.8: the dark monochrome and the hard horizontal were already in the field’s hands; the horizon is a structure with no particular to carry it; and beyond the bounded field the series gives a state more than a meaning.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.3 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.6, The Made at 8.4, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 8.7 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Swerve at 8.2, The Unconcealment at 7.8, The Archetypal Deep at 7.7 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.6 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis it counts falls below 7.6, against 7.5. The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.2. Four of the five summit conditions are met; the summit is withheld on the Epochal Gate. The twelve sum to 96.3, an average of 8.03 that displays 8.0, the first figure of Tier IV: a full point fewer on the sum, 95.3, would place the work in Tier III.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the canvases titled Untitled (Black on Grey), acrylic on canvas, painted by Mark Rothko in New York from 1969 into the first weeks of 1970, of the place of the series in his work and of its later history. No image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the series, as one work: it shares one title with no distinguishing number, and what it achieves is one format held through variation. Its canvases are now dispersed among institutions and owners, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, among them; each stands whole, so nothing stands in place of a lost part, and the format stands in every canvas. The series was not made for one room, so the grouping of the canvases is not scored as an installation, and their dispersal is weighed only on presence. The works on paper of 1968 and 1969, the Chapel canvases and the Seagram murals are context and are not scored. The only words of the painter’s quoted are two phrases from the letter of 1943 written with Adolph Gottlieb. Facts and figures that could not be verified are not given, among them the number of canvases in the series, their dimensions, how the white margin was made, the medical advice behind the works on paper, the year each holding was acquired, the passage of the canvases through the painter’s estate, and when they were first shown together.