What is the best book to learn about Mark Rothko and his work?

Thanks for the earnest response. I'll check out your recommendation. Hopefully I can either find it online or in my uni's library.

Can we not all agree that art, like anything else, is only for us to feel good about ourselves? Whether we enjoy the "beauty" of it or the "meaning", we look at it at the end of the day to say we are better for simply looking. And if museums will hang both types regardless, and if collectors will buy both types regardless, what does arguing do other than make us split ourselves more? It's a free market, baby.

It's a sort of "catalog raisonne" plus extended biography. As a work of scholarship the book is tits, though I haven't read its essay-text part (been meaning to do).

He starts out with these earlier, figurative new-york paintings, then starts abstracting with this amorphous blob-stuff around the thirties (like this). They are squiggly bio-forms, and over time they simplify, and simplify, until finally in the late 40s/early 50s, Muh Rectangles. This is the signature style which continues until he slits himself.

Other phases of his professional life are the seagram murals, which slightly vary Muh Rectangles, and the chapel.

Have you seen a Rothko work in real life?

I haven't unfortunately, but I've heard from many people most of the impact is when you look at one in a gallery.

nobody ever told me that you can only enjoy da vinci in real life

It's a big wall of color. Abstract expressionist artists, being Americans, liked "Big".

It's interesting to see a Rothko in person because of the meme, but as for the COLOR, the one I've seen didn't FLOOR me or anything.

Color is experienced subjectively, variously, and in confused ways. Wittgenstein writes about this.

The single most impressive display of color that I can recall personally seeing in a painting is link related. The jpg absolutely does not do it justice; it arrests your attention when you see it in person, it got me as a kid and I still look at it periodically. Those greens and brights just pop like fuck against the drab of the rest when it's lit right, as it always is, in the museum.

collections.artsmia.org/art/10361/the-carpet-merchant-jean-leon-gerome

Why did he slit his wrists senpai

He seems to have been a genuinely sensitive and depressive jew, so who would probably abhor the art market today about his pictures, though he did have a comfy living off of them in life.

Gerome is GOAT

I've seen the ones in the MoMA, and the nearest museum to me has one. It is certainly more impressive and affecting in person, but not much more than all paintings are tbqh.

I live in Houston and the Rothko Chapel is next to the Menil Collection downtown. It's like an austere cathedral dedicated to human lonliness, real lonliness, the kind you can never get over. Funny because people taking wedding pictures there every once in a while.

This
I never got Rothko, but I don't mind that other people like him.
On the other hand, I remember that the first time I saw American Gothic by Grant Wood in the Art Institute in Chicago, I thought "OH. I get it now. This is actually a really great painting."

I thought Rothko was a hack until I saw the an episode on him in the documentary series 'the Power of Art'.

Moved me deeply

What can I read to brush up on modern art? Should I just go to a gallery first?

It might be useful to look at some representative works by some major movements / figures, and then go to a gallery:
- Just before Impressionism (Ingres, Delacroix)
- Impressionism (Monet, Manet)
- Post-impressionism / Fauvism (van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse)
- Cubism (Picasso's cubist paintings, Braque)
- Dada (Duchamp)
- Surrealism (Magritte, Dali)
- Abstract impressionism (Pollock, Rothko)
- Hyperrealism (Colville)
...and maybe some scattered more recent artists, like Warhol, Liechtenstein, St. Phalle, Koons, Gormley, Gilbert and George, Ai Weiwei.

I'd like to interject by mentioning that orange and yellow is not worthy of being seen as art just like the majority of similar style "art"pieces

>collections.artsmia.org/art/10361/the-carpet-merchant-jean-leon-gerome
God damn this painting is such a fucking vibe. I need to see it

An Artist's Reality - Mark Rothko, Christopher Rothko or something like that.

Pretty good stuff. His son found his writings somewhere and published them. Sorry i can't google the exact name right now. I'm on a train and i need to jerk off.

I would replace Dalí with Max Ernst or André Breton, they were much more important to the surrealism movement.
Good list tho.

>le Classicism superiority meme
It's gonna be another >durr I've found you get out of these pieces what you put in. The experience of color (and it's indexical relationship to the viewer) is subjective, but beyond muh theory, seeing a work like Rothko for me has always been a matter of investment. Even for the psudes, they're floored by a Rothko because they've invested all their (ego) fauxhype. For those who've studied the work itself, the knowledge of the intentions and process is the reward. When art became more conceptual, it (opened the door for the return of >connoisseurship and all the armchair psudes and bougeouis critics that come with it) required more than just visual investment to be appreciated than Gerome (read: Classicists that blurred/later became kitsch) provided. All that said, it still doesn't do anything for me, but learning about it helped me appreciate what it does instead of getting buttrekt by >muh squares.

user's right. Go to your local uni/museum research library and start with a catalog raisonne. If it's worth its salt, it should have an extensive biography for further reading. You can always overcome your autism and even ask one of the research librarians, if you're at a respectable institution, they'll be able to really dig into some good stuff for you.

Solid list user, but learning the pieces without context isn't going to help OP understand anything other than chronology/scope.

>le Classicism superiority meme
>people can't like different thinga because it triggers my autism

Fuck off.

>implying it isn't all counterculture conservative reactionism that drives all plebs to
and muh Classical Idealism
>implying you aren't proving the point and took the bait
>implying this isn't also the same falacial circular logic bait you'll fall for anyway
>implying Veeky Forums can escape it's own pleb pseudo-contrarian gravitational center

art was a mistake

The best one I've read is Rothko: From the Inside Out by his son, Christopher.

Nice painting. My 6 year old niece could draw that.

Yeah but she didn't.

Not an argument.

>rothko
>not based Hopper

Nah you are a faggot

The woman is so ugly

>I've found you get out of these pieces what you put in.

Yep this is crucial for a fulfilling experience with any art instead of approaching it like you know better and you have to show how stupid everyone else is for not thinking like you.

>people can't be triggered because it triggers my autism

le kys

>receding hairline
>angular features
>bad makeup
>broad shoulders
>woman

Cool. I've never seen a child paint with that single purpose of mind like you see in a Rothko. You should encourage her to pursue the arts.

I have
It's as shit IRL as it is online

Do the colourful rectangles not have enough edges for you? Post a pic of your gut.

A comfy CIA funded life

Most women are ugly, just like most men.

Why do you think women slather themselves with 100kg of make-up a year?

What does my stomach have to do with anything

It's a theory I have, the relation between stomach sizes and taste in art

Interesting

youtube.com/watch?v=1v1mBepDlOw

>le easy access spoonfeed me mommy youtube

is right, you plebs are never going to make it

what did he mean by this

This is at the Rothko chapel in Houston. I read a little bit of it every time I go and like it a lot, although I can't compare to anything

>comparing the two of them
>le false equivalency maymae

They have a copy at the houston public library. You just have to put a hold on it onlind.