Rothko - Crap/Not Crap?

[g force]

I had a great conversion to Rothko when I showed his work to a bunch of 9 year olds (as part of the big arts week) and they 'got it' within seconds, well they were able to identify the emotions within it.

His work is I think about his mental illness. Its an exploration of the totality of depression.

They need to be viewed in their correct size, rather than IKEA print on wall size.

*prepairs to be shot down in flames on this one*

I've been in the Rothko room at the Tate plenty of times. Many of my mates who's taste I implicitly trust said it was best to sit and stare at them to look at the ways the colours meld and form layers.

I do see a bleak almost repessivenes in them and like the room as a contrast to the other stuff in Tate but they do nothing for me.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

I had a great conversion to Rothko when I showed his work to a bunch of 9 year olds and they 'got it' within seconds, well they were able to identify the emotions within it.

His work is I think about his mental illness. Its an exploration of the totality of depression.

a bunch of 9 year olds totally getting mental illness and the totality of depression....that's rather alarming in itself...pass out the ritalin

I live close to here and love it. As above the context is critical, they work in the Tate

 

[exosculate]

There is a Simon Schama BBC DVD which has a piece about him, totally lights him up to a clearer understanding. Watch it if you can get hold of it somewhere.

In fact here it is - watch this,

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ8AIIAgYpg

 

[Spandex]

I don't think that unless you've seen the originals you really can say

</pretentious wanker>

I don't think that's pretentious at all.

I first saw small 2 inch by 3 inch versions of Rothko's pictures in an art book and was totally - wtf? It seemed to confirm all the worst assumptions about modern art: "it's just a red square, or a dark grey square, what a load of bollocks".

But when I actually saw a room full of the real things in the Tate it all made sense. Firstly, they're HUGE. Seeing a tiny copy of them just doesn't do them justice. And there's loads of them. His famous paintings (can't remember their name) were designed to be displayed together. They're meant to dominate the space they're displayed in. Then there's their texture and the subtle variations in the colour's tone. It creates an atmosphere in the room. I've been back to the Rothko room a few times and what that atmosphere is will depend on the mood I'm in at the time. You can reflect your own feelings, or meanings if you want to, onto them as they don't give you much to work with; after all they are mainly just big blocks of colour.

With a lot of modern art (well, most art really, but particularly modern stuff) you need to see the original works to get the full effect.

 

[ohmyliver]

a bunch of 9 year olds totally getting mental illness and the totality of depression....that's rather alarming in itself...pass out the ritalin

I live close to here and love it. As above the context is critical, they work in the Tate

oooh, that's on my 'list of places I must visit' along with the church with the Chagal stained glass in kent.

well ok, that was an exageration, I asked them how it made them feel and they all said virtually instantiously 'sad'... I don't think they were making a comment about the lack of represenation, or seeming lack of skill... but then again most of the questions I got asked about art were on the level of
'do you want to be famous'
'do you want to be on tv'
'have you seen art attack'
level

 

[alef]

I didn't like Rothko at first. Then once I sat down and stared at one of his paintings for a while and it started to move...

 

[El Jefe]

I feel like Ethan Suplee in Mallrats.

 

[butchersapron]

Portrait of the CIA as an artist

Nein Danke

 

[tangerinedream]

I like it. Not all of it, but I have a print on our stairs, it's the only ikea type print I have (I can't rember where I got it, but it was somewhere like that), but I have had it for ages and it just has a mood to it that echos with me. It's very rich but also sort of disturbing, it's like a close up of a side of meat or something like that.

I also quite like the band Rothko, but that's sadly, not the point of the thread.

 

[Orang Utan]

I feel like Ethan Suplee in Mallrats.

Oooh a sailboat!

 

[g force]

I feel like Ethan Suplee in Mallrats.

But there's nothing to see really, sure up close you can make out the fades from one colour to another but the overall effect, for me at least, is a complete "meh".

I hate this idea in art that there's something "to get" when many times their isn't, it merely keeps opinionated critics in a job

 

[ouchmonkey]

See, I've sat in front of Rothkos and thought - "oh look, that's a LOT of red".

And I appreciate that it's not art replete with symbolism, that is just 'is'.

whereas, that Pollock exhibition a few years ago really did it for me. The mayhem of it, the way the paint was caked on, it really did come to live for me. Maybe Rothko's too controlled or something

too quiet. It's best to just sit for a while and let the paintings come to you.
I can see that not really being your thing. For me, it's odd how revealing of your character your attitude to their work is.

 

[ouchmonkey]

I feel like Ethan Suplee in Mallrats.

And you look like him too. Bonus!

 

[kyser_soze]

Love him, totally fall into his paintings; they feel like a calm ocean, placid and relaxing but with an astonishing awareness of power...

 

[ohmyliver]

But there's nothing to see really, sure up close you can make out the fades from one colour to another but the overall effect, for me at least, is a complete "meh".

I hate this idea in art that there's something "to get" when many times their isn't, it merely keeps opinionated critics in a job

Well, with conceptual art, to be fair, it is all about the 'something to get'. Also with a lot of renaissance art alot of the subject matter is symbolic, which would also mean there is something 'to get'.

what paintings do you have in mind which don't have anything 'to get'?

What really keeps critics in a job is the dominance of critical theory, and critical theory based justification of art.

 

[g force]

I'm not that deep, sorry. If I like it, I like it i'm going to justify why and in some cases I couldn't really explain why....a feeling, an emotion when first viewing it etc that years later is somewhat tricky to then put into words.

Rothko I can appreciate but I don't personally like...a lot of my friends do and explain why. I can see their view and understand it but i've sat in the Rothko room at the Tate for a good hour or so then left feeling i'd wasted time.

I agree with conceptual art of course you have to read something into it but equally it can be viewed as "just a pile of bricks". Salceido's work in the main room of the Tate is a case in point. A giant crack in the ground. That's all it was. I liked it, it made we wonder how she'd done it and I stared at it for a long time, walking the length of it and enjoyed the experience.

Then I read her description and it was utter bollocks

 

[ohmyliver]

fair enough.

I've taken to not reading any of the post-structuralist blurb before seeing any art show these days. The vicerial response to art is the way forward. I wouldn't judge a 7inch single by the blurb on the cover, etc

 

[Pieface]

oooh - please go and see some. there's [going to be / is already] a new exhibition at tate modern.

on the right scale and in the right setting they are emotionally so communicative. i could watch them for hours.

utterly not crap.

i mean - i like the pseudo rothkos they sell in ikea, cos i like the aesthetic - but the scale and power of the real thing is like comparing a 1997 ringtone to mozart.

Was trying to think of how to say this /\/\/\ basically - I thought they were nothing much until sitting in a room of them on my own and they just wash over you.

They may not be technically very "difficult" but they made me feel something when I sat in the middle of them, and that was unexpected.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

oooh, that's on my 'list of places I must visit'

the Menil is probably my favourite collection anywhere and it's 10 minutes walk from my house, so let me know when you are coming.

 

[ouchmonkey]

I hate this idea in art that there's something "to get" when many times their isn't, it merely keeps opinionated critics in a job

I hate the way this lie has been sold to the public that they don't or can't understand modern or conceptual art. Advertising in this country is dense with complex visual language and conceptual ideas. The main reason it is is because it's aimed at a public who would ignore it if it were less sophisticated.
those same skills of reading or understanding images are how you makes 'sense' if you like of art. You are equipped, you've just been made to feel excluded.

I agree with conceptual art of course you have to read something into it but equally it can be viewed as "just a pile of bricks". Salceido's work in the main room of the Tate is a case in point. A giant crack in the ground. That's all it was. I liked it, it made we wonder how she'd done it and I stared at it for a long time, walking the length of it and enjoyed the experience.

Then I read her description and it was utter bollocks

Andre's sculpture is just a pile of bricks. there's no animating idea, it's formal sculpture, minimalism, it's just about shapes in space.
On the other hand reading the blurb in the corner of galleries is almost a waste of time. People spend more time looking at that than the art, which is a bit self defeating and it's worth going to form your own opinion not just be told.

 

[tangerinedream]

lol at all the london urbans going, 'oh ffs to like NOT SEE IT IN THE TATE IS HERESY.'

Here's a thought.

Fuck off eh? - we don't all live in Hoxton like you, but guess what, we can make our own mind up about art without your patronising urbancentric viewpoint.

Night night y'all

Yours 'ever seeking a chip on his shoulder and wishing he was some kind of minority so clinging on to his northern status like a dying sealion clinging to a rock'

tangerinedream

x

worst post ever.

 

[spanglechick]

lol at all the london urbans going, 'oh ffs to like NOT SEE IT IN THE TATE IS HERESY.'

Here's a thought.

Fuck off eh? - we don't all live in Hoxton like you, but guess what, we can make our own mind up about art without your patronising urbancentric viewpoint.

Night night y'all

Yours 'ever seeking a chip on his shoulder and wishing he was some kind of minority so clinging on to his northern status like a dying sealion clinging to a rock'

tangerinedream

x

worst post ever.

<blows big fat rasssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssspberry>

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

i went to sit on the rothko room and i loved the room, it felt very intimate and hushed. having these enormous red paintings on teh wall also made you feel quite cossetted. Womb like. I didnt spend long there and i hope that once this exhibtion is finished they will reinstate it.

Anyway, i've seen teh current exhibition and I give it mixed reviews. I've been twice, the first time I went along and i tried to understand it and i didnt. I appreciated the colour and teh technique but i didnt find any emotive quality there at all. I was viewing the paintings and not spending enough time looking at them.
the second time i went i went with more time and with fewer expectations. I enjoyed it a lot more. i think abstract art instructs you to slow down and not search for clues or for meaning but to look at what it presents; colour, form,light.
There were a few of teh seagram murals that i felt drawn to, one of them was red on red. the seagrams are very well lit and the big room is nice to sit in and look at them all in turn. anyway the red on red one, it was very interesting, very textural, the paint looked like satin on velvet and made me want to touch it though such things are frowned upon.
there was one other that sticks in my mind, i know this sounds wanky but it seemed quite a haunted painting. again it could well be the lighting or some rubbing back of the layers of paint but it looked and felt quite shadowy.
A lot of the work i didnt connect with but hose two painting in particular will remain with me.

 

[boskysquelch]

sudo apt-get -a connection Synaptic series 1 v III

 

[888]

OK, in that case, the thing to get is that they are an arrangement of shapes and colours that are not intended to represent anything more than (possibly) a mood. I have sat in the Rothko room at the Tate for a while and it is a haven from the noisy art around it. It is also melancholic (to me) in the same way as, say, the Isle of the Dead by Rachmaninov.

In fact, I would say that it doesn't so much represent a mood as inspire one - like music, it has an emotional reaction when it is as unmediated by the intellect as possible.

To carry on the music analogy, I think a Rothko picture is just two or three notes rather than a whole song, and therefore lacking.

 

[boskysquelch]

...my analogy with Rothko would be that he's more of a marmalade where people expect jam.

 

[Rollem]

my mate's taking me to the rothko exhibtion at tate modern, as she can get in for free - i cant wait

i like his work, i don't know why, i can't explain how it makes me feel. i just like it.

 

[kyser_soze]

lol at all the london urbans going, 'oh ffs to like NOT SEE IT IN THE TATE IS HERESY.'

Here's a thought.

Fuck off eh? - we don't all live in Hoxton like you, but guess what, we can make our own mind up about art without your patronising urbancentric viewpoint.

Night night y'all

Yours 'ever seeking a chip on his shoulder and wishing he was some kind of minority so clinging on to his northern status like a dying sealion clinging to a rock'

tangerinedream

x

worst post ever.

WTF?!?!

Why does one need to live in Hoxton to visit the Bankside?

 

[tangerinedream]

WTF?!?!

Why does one need to live in Hoxton to visit the Bankside?

But that's where you all live. It's where the website started, after the Hoxton Riots* and all that.

*I believe someone was served a sandwich on plain sliced not focaccia, which definitely didn't go down well.

 

[ouchmonkey]

lol at all the london urbans going, 'oh ffs to like NOT SEE IT IN THE TATE IS HERESY.'

Here's a thought.

Fuck off eh? - we don't all live in Hoxton like you, but guess what, we can make our own mind up about art without your patronising urbancentric viewpoint.


tangerinedream

x

worst post ever.

We do actually all sit in the pub together, in Hoxton obviously, and scheme how to exclude everyone outside London 'cos we're so much better than you.
Actually we are really making out that if you haven't seen the Rothko Chapel at The Menil collection, in Houston (which is in Texas, not east London next to Hoxton sadly) then you really haven't seen him at all darling


Here's a thought

reproductions don't do the paintings justice - where you actually see them is irrelevant.