Lot Essay
Mark Rothko's series of paintings known Multiforms, with their complex and shifting fields of color, represent a dramatic turning point in his artistic career. In these works of the late 1940s, Rothko for the first time turned his focus to the expressive power of pure color, creating compositions with a range of hues that are arrayed across the canvas as flat planes that coalesce into rich and subtle harmonies. Untitled, 1947, is a superlative example from the series, marked by a luminous palette of warm earth tones punctuated by high-key passages of red and touches of bright blue and yellow.
In his Multiforms paintings, Rothko abandoned all vestiges of the figurative forms that he had explored in his earlier, surrealist-influenced works. Like many painters of his generation, he had been interested in how biomorphic, myth-inspired forms could express inner truths of human consciousness and experience. In his surrealist phase, Rothko often painted what appeared to be primordial landscapes, full of enigmatic figures that alluded to primitive life forms and mythic symbols. These evoked a dream-like atmosphere of a psychic, rather than physical world. The shifting rhythms of horizontal and vertical elements of the Multiforms still hint at these notions of a landscape, but only on the most subliminal level.
The catalogue for Rothko's first exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of the Century Gallery in January 1945 remarks upon how the artist had arrived at a formative stage: "Rothko's painting is not easily classified. It occupies a middle ground between abstraction and surrealism. In these paintings the abstract idea is incarnated in the image.Rothko's symbols, fragments of myth, are held together by a free, almost automatic calligraphy that gives a peculiar unity to his paintings - a unity in which the individual symbol acquires its meaning, not in isolation, but rather in its melodic adjustment to other elements in the picture" (Mark Rothko: Paintings, exh. cat., 1945, n.p.). The underlying structure of the surrealist works, where Rothko made the relationships between forms a central focus, would always be maintained in the entirely abstract compositions of his subsequent paintings. By the later 1940s, however, Rothko decisively abandoned the calligraphic line that was a central feature of his early work, in favor of planes of color that are energized by flickering brushwork at their edges. Rather than trying to use universalizing symbols or pictographs as before, Rothko explored how color, light and form could be a bearer of meaningful expression.
Rothko's paintings of the late forties were heavily influenced by his experiments with watercolors and gouache. The thin veils of paint that he applied to his canvases have a remarkable luminosity and sense of weightlessness and the colors seem to almost float freely upon the surface. These amorphous forms, with their feathery, dynamic edges, eloquently convey a sense of incipient growth and movement. The themes of transition and metamorphosis are beautifully captured on a formal level.
A major impetus for Rothko's turn toward fully abstract painting was his involvement with Clyfford Still. The two painters had met in 1943, and in the summer of 1947, Rothko was invited by Still to teach at the California School of Fine Art in San Francisco. Rothko was deeply impressed with Still's powerful paintings, in which the field of the canvas was completely unified through color and abstract form. In an introduction to an exhibition catalogue dedicated to Still's work, Rothko praised his friend for his 'unprecedented forms and completely personal methods' (M. Rothko, quoted in Mark Rothko: A Biography, p. 222).
Like Still, Rothko developed his own highly personal visual vocabulary, which is exemplified in his Multiforms paintings. These floating, mosaic-like combinations of colors would gradually evolve into the broader expanses of stacked rectangles. The sense of growth and expansiveness conveyed by the Multiforms paintings corresponds to their germinal role in the evolution of Rothko's painting. Here, he explored with greater freedom than ever before the expressive potential of color, light and form. He saw these compositional elements as having the ability to convey a sense of elemental human drama, which was, in his view, the center of gravity of his art. As Rothko expressed in 1947, 'I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in the pictures are performers...Neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated, or described in advance. They begin as an unknown adventure in an unknown space. It is at the moment of completion that in a flash of recognition, they are seen to have the quantity and function which was intended' (quoted in M. Rothko, Writings on Art, 2006, p. 58). The sense of spontaneity and life is particularly resonant in Untitled, 1947, making it exemplary of Rothko's mastery of form at this pivotal stage of his career.
In his Multiforms paintings, Rothko abandoned all vestiges of the figurative forms that he had explored in his earlier, surrealist-influenced works. Like many painters of his generation, he had been interested in how biomorphic, myth-inspired forms could express inner truths of human consciousness and experience. In his surrealist phase, Rothko often painted what appeared to be primordial landscapes, full of enigmatic figures that alluded to primitive life forms and mythic symbols. These evoked a dream-like atmosphere of a psychic, rather than physical world. The shifting rhythms of horizontal and vertical elements of the Multiforms still hint at these notions of a landscape, but only on the most subliminal level.
The catalogue for Rothko's first exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of the Century Gallery in January 1945 remarks upon how the artist had arrived at a formative stage: "Rothko's painting is not easily classified. It occupies a middle ground between abstraction and surrealism. In these paintings the abstract idea is incarnated in the image.Rothko's symbols, fragments of myth, are held together by a free, almost automatic calligraphy that gives a peculiar unity to his paintings - a unity in which the individual symbol acquires its meaning, not in isolation, but rather in its melodic adjustment to other elements in the picture" (Mark Rothko: Paintings, exh. cat., 1945, n.p.). The underlying structure of the surrealist works, where Rothko made the relationships between forms a central focus, would always be maintained in the entirely abstract compositions of his subsequent paintings. By the later 1940s, however, Rothko decisively abandoned the calligraphic line that was a central feature of his early work, in favor of planes of color that are energized by flickering brushwork at their edges. Rather than trying to use universalizing symbols or pictographs as before, Rothko explored how color, light and form could be a bearer of meaningful expression.
Rothko's paintings of the late forties were heavily influenced by his experiments with watercolors and gouache. The thin veils of paint that he applied to his canvases have a remarkable luminosity and sense of weightlessness and the colors seem to almost float freely upon the surface. These amorphous forms, with their feathery, dynamic edges, eloquently convey a sense of incipient growth and movement. The themes of transition and metamorphosis are beautifully captured on a formal level.
A major impetus for Rothko's turn toward fully abstract painting was his involvement with Clyfford Still. The two painters had met in 1943, and in the summer of 1947, Rothko was invited by Still to teach at the California School of Fine Art in San Francisco. Rothko was deeply impressed with Still's powerful paintings, in which the field of the canvas was completely unified through color and abstract form. In an introduction to an exhibition catalogue dedicated to Still's work, Rothko praised his friend for his 'unprecedented forms and completely personal methods' (M. Rothko, quoted in Mark Rothko: A Biography, p. 222).
Like Still, Rothko developed his own highly personal visual vocabulary, which is exemplified in his Multiforms paintings. These floating, mosaic-like combinations of colors would gradually evolve into the broader expanses of stacked rectangles. The sense of growth and expansiveness conveyed by the Multiforms paintings corresponds to their germinal role in the evolution of Rothko's painting. Here, he explored with greater freedom than ever before the expressive potential of color, light and form. He saw these compositional elements as having the ability to convey a sense of elemental human drama, which was, in his view, the center of gravity of his art. As Rothko expressed in 1947, 'I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in the pictures are performers...Neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated, or described in advance. They begin as an unknown adventure in an unknown space. It is at the moment of completion that in a flash of recognition, they are seen to have the quantity and function which was intended' (quoted in M. Rothko, Writings on Art, 2006, p. 58). The sense of spontaneity and life is particularly resonant in Untitled, 1947, making it exemplary of Rothko's mastery of form at this pivotal stage of his career.