Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
White Center, 1950
Mark Rothko
No. 5/ No. 22, 1950
Mark Rothko
“Rothko really wants us to engage with his pictures and let them work on us to actually find our position in relationship to them… Moving backwards and forwards until you find the right place and then I think that, as your eyes settle to it, things start to happen… Effectively, you are, as Rothko says, the component to the picture helping to make the picture perform.”
-John Elderfield, quoted from an audio clip found here.
Rothko is one of my favorite artists because of the way his paintings just envelop the viewer. The work seems to make you aware of new, unknown emotions as you keep staring into the painting. I love that introspective aspect of this kind of art. And I so admire the incredible ability that Rothko had to evoke these feelings in his viewers using only color and simple shapes. It shows how finely tuned his understanding of the human soul was and it is something that really can’t be learned.
