Mark Rothko - Art Quotes

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We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.

Mark Rothko
It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.

Mark Rothko
The aesthetic is the sine qua none for art: if a work is not aesthetic, it is not art by definition... We feel through the senses, and everyone knows that the content of art is feeling; it is the creation of an object for sensing that is the artist's task; and it is the qualities of this object that constitute its felt content.

Mark Rothko
Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.

Mark Rothko
Feeling must have a medium in order to function at all; in the same way, thought must have symbols. It is the medium, or the specific configuration of the medium that we call a work of art that brings feeling into being, just as do responses tot the objects of the external world... The medium of painting is such changing and ordering on an ideal plane, ideal in that the medium is more tractable, subtle, and capable of emphasis (abstraction is a kind of emphasis) than everyday life.

Mark Rothko
.. one must agree with Rilke when he says that with 'nothing can one touch a work of art so little as with critical words..'. It was Marcel Duchamps who was critical, when he drew a moustache on the 'Mona Lisa'. And so was Mondrian when he dreamed of the dissolution of painting, sculpture, and architecture into a transcendent ensemble.

Mark Rothko
To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.

Mark Rothko
While the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.

Mark Rothko