The Role of Mith in the Art of the Mark Rothko

Abstract

Although globally recognized as one of the most iconic names of Abstract Expressionism, Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970) did not consider himself an abstractionist, or at least not in the "formalist" sense of the term. A famous statement of his reads: "I am not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship between color and shape and whatever. My only intention is to express basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom, etc." (Rothko, 2006: p. 119). In this sense, he sees myth as an "eternal" and "universal" means of expressing emotional impact. Rothko was heavily influenced by F. Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1871), which argued that Greek tragedy and tragic myth represented universal human truths that were infinite and eternal. Nietzsche's idea that art should dramatize terror and struggles for existence supports Rothko's concept of the artist as a modern mythmaker, whose works reflect the course of the human spirit in all its aspirations and vicissitudes. In a 1943 radio interview, the artist also said: "If the titles (of my paintings) recall the famous myths of antiquity ... (I) have used them because they are the eternal symbols to which we must return to express basic psychological ideas. They are the symbols of primal human fears and motivations, no matter in what country or at what time, changing only in detail but never in substance... and modern psychology finds them to persist in dreams, our common speech, and our art, for all the changes in the "external" conditions of life.". It must be emphasized that the artist's intention, referring to Greek mythology for example, is not to illustrate an anecdote, but to express the "spirit" of the narrative or the "spiritual essence" of the myth. Although figurativeness was present in the author's early works, over time it evolved into pure abstraction and raised the question of "image – myth" (or brought the abstract form to the status of "myth"). The purpose of the present report is to trace precisely this genesis in the pictorial language of Mark Rothko.