Description of the artwork «Untitled»
The year 1947 was a turning point in the work of Mark Rothko: both for the development of his technique and style, as well as for the departure from mythological subjects and surrealism. If up to this point in its anthropomorphic forms one could still consider some figures or a hint of a plot (or imagine them based on the name of the paintings), then from now on Rothko will forever leave the territory of figurative painting.
Since the mid-1940s, the artist’s works began to be actively exhibited in American museums, he began to communicate more with colleagues -
Robert Motherwell,
Barnett newman and
Clifford steele, from whom he adopted the practice of using numbering of paintings by numbers instead of names. A little later, Rothko will also refuse this, signing his work with a concise “Untitled”. Thus, he, like his colleagues, abstractionists, sought to completely abandon any sign systems in order to clear his art of specificity and expand the scope of public perception, providing complete freedom for interpretation.
The works of this transitional period - from surrealism and mythological motifs to painting color fields, which became Rothko's hallmark in the 1950s, are commonly called "multiforms." They are characterized by ephemerality and weightlessness of color fields, as if poured on canvases by different faces. In these melting whirlpools of color and light, like a seething cauldron, the artist's corporate identity gradually crystallized.
The author: Natalia Azarenko