Mark Rothko: Why is his work considered "art", and why so valuable?

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

@RickJay

It’s mostly pulykamell repeating the same words over and over.

I’m not sure you are correct. (From the thread I linked to)

@pulykamell

Ah, I didn’t notice this one. Rothko. He’s one of those guys that I didn’t quite get by looking at his pictures in books. When I first saw a Rothko in person, I was floored. I don’t know what the hell he does or how he does it, but his paintings just “vibrate” and exude this ethereal spirituality, for lack of better expression. I know it sounds like crazy talk, but that was my first experience with Rothko in person-- a guy whose work I didn’t expect to like, I see it and have a sublime moment. If someone were to ask me how to represent “spirit” in a painting, I would point them to Rothko.

@lissener

Yeah, Rothko is a strange experience: he somehow managed to figure out how to communicate raw, powerful emotions with nothing but color and shapes. Seeing Rothko in person is a life-changing experience.

@pulykamell

I know it’s not directed at me, but for me at least, it obviously changed my opinion of Rothko in one fell swoop. Secondly, it taught me never ever to judge a painting by its representation as a reprint or on the web. Thirdly, it’s the closest I’ve had to a truly religious experience in the last twenty or so years. I’m not a religious person, but if I were, Rothko would be proof to me that artists talk to gods.

@Miller

I had a similar experience with Rothko, though not as strongly as you and lissener. But it was definitly the “lightbulb” effect. One look at his work in the flesh, and something that I’d never seen the appeal of just clicked for me. Not just him, but minimalism in general. Color has always been one of the tools artists have used to convey emotion, but Rothko could do more using only that tool as most other artists could do with a fully equipped metaphorical machine shop. Rothko was a fucking samurai. He opened up a whole bunch of other artists for me, too, who did the same thing using other tools.

My real Road to Damascus moment was when I saw Guernica in person. I’d seen reprints of it over and over, and while I didn’t dislike it or anything, I thought I’d “gotten” it. Then I saw it in Madrid, life sized, and I almost ran from the gallery. It was overwhelming. It made me sick to my stomach. It was amazing. I’ve never been so affected by any other painting. Hell, there are damned few works of art in any medium that have affected me like that.

You remember a few years back, there was that guy who had stolen billions of dollars worth of art over the years, and his mother dumped most of it into a canal so that it couldn’t be used as evidence against her son? I remember arguing here that it wasn’t really that big a deal, because we had photographs of most of it in art books and the like.

I was a goddamned idiot.

@Idlewild

I had seen photos of Rothko’s work before, but last year I was in Houston dealing with in-law crisis and my husband and I managed to sneak away to the Rothko Chapel. At first I was a little underwhelmed by what appeared to be relatively monochromatic panels, but as I took time to sit with each painting individually, they came to life in front of me as details and movement revealed themselves. The way it was lit was also something that could not be conveyed in a photograph, there was a skylight and as the light changed and moved, the paintings showed different moods. Truly, truly breathtaking work. Probably almost completely unphotographable.