Inside those rich red canvases lies something which the institution of formalism denies. Through a brief phenomenological investigation I am going to attempt to uncover what I think it is.

Rothko pushes, pulls, spreads and pours layers of paint over large canvases. We then view these works fully aware that in essence all we see is paint across a surface. Yet within these specific processes there is something which not only moves us but seems to resonate with metaphysical potential. Why?When we enter the room we break away from the hive and bustle of the rest of the gallery and the in general. The low lighting and the sculptural seats have the feeling of a secularised vestibule. Our cultural awareness of convention and etiquette ensures we echo this solitude, our voice goes lower our pace gets slower. Already we have been tricked into a certain kind of viewing. When we approach each canvas we are taken over by there scale. Beyond the physical size of the works there is a sense of epic scale alluded to throughout. This is generated by the manipulation and interaction of various surfaces and colours. Multiple veils of paint have been layered up to create soft edged rectangles. We are left unsure what sits on, within or behind what. The colour adds to the confusion. Reds pour forwards at us, drowning our eyes. The dark plumy blues look to sit back, inviting us in like a bottomless sea. Within this interaction is another variable between gloss and matt layers. The matt paint sits across the canvas, confronting us and presenting itself to our eyes. The glossy paint seems to reach backwards or forwards, not allowing us to settle on its surface. He is able to make paint appear so heavy yet so light, from mere atmosphere to fatty and congealing gunk. The relationship between all these parts is crucially subtle. What is creating is a dynamic between binary oppositions. One moment the rectangles are a window, opening up infinitely deep spaces for us to reach and then fall into. Deep perspectival holes to nowhere. Then the same spaces become walls; dead, flat and blocking our entry into or beyond the dull flat surface. Flicker again and they come pouring forth, not pulling us in but engulfing us. To a slow beat they pulse, vibrate and shimmer, arresting our attention our senses like a strong red wine laced with a silent string quartet. Our cognitive desires are paralysed, our attachment to the tangible and material world gradually eroded. We are pushed to the edge of an imaginary Friedrich like abyss. What we have found at this point is a visual equivalent to Keat’s romanticism of ‘Ode to a nightingale’. This as been something I have long felt to be relevant. MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness painsMy sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,Or emptied some dull opiate to the drainsOne minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:Keats could literally be talking about these paintings if History did not deem that impossible. That ability to induce a form of amnesia. What do we want to forget though? Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forgetWhat thou among the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan;Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;Where but to think is to be full of sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs;Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. The specifics of what we want to forget have changed but the sentiment remains. Transience, lose, grief, the continuous, self indulgent, tragic themes of human existence. Beyond this it is the self, thought, consciousness of us a body which occupies space. It seems that somewhere in the play and viewing of matter this has been found. Artists, painting and viewer are able to temporarily find passage ways into what feels like a sacred, spiritual space and moment. We seem capable of erasing the self and that which is around us. In its place we exist in a sub reality of emotions, sensation and slow time. When we are snapped out of this romanticised moment we are left to reflect in a more rational manner about meaning. Ill tackle this despite my utter distaste for the hierarchy of values in art. It seems that these more intellectualised philosophical dimensions of a work are deemed more important than the airy fairy poetry of experience. Is it that they are more measurable, more definable, more justifiable? Is it that we are frightened of the more tenuous and unexplainable nature of experience? In terms of meaning Rothko’s work, in this case, seems to be about grand and permanent human themes. He may have erased imagery from his work but subject matter and content are explicitly present. Not the kind of subject we can sit in front of us and draw from, not the kind of content we can clearly define, but something we find in the journey of creating and viewing the works. In fluctuating between utter emptiness and infinite depth the works become about fundamental aspects of our experience of reality. Not about specific individuals occupying or not occupying a particular space in a particular moment in time; but about our conscious and subconscious awareness and occupation of real, emotional and spiritual space. These grand themes underlie all humanity but are addressed on a personal level. Its about the overwhelming suffocation of everything and the desolate grief of nothingness. Its therefore a pure incarnation of tragedy, of that which is inevitable, that our grasp of existence, of life is slippery. That our ability to exist in one state, one place and one time is impossible. Instead we are constantly floating in an ether. The power of these emotive and tragic themes resonates even more when we consider Rothko’s biography. Such contextualisation can become boresome due to it’s over centralised position in much art historical literature. Yet in this particular case it has relevance. Never has an artist been able to both empty his presence and ego so comprehensively from the work yet equally had those same facets underpin his whole oeuvre. This paradox should not be dwelled on too excessively. Such detailed and systematic an approach to Rothko’s work does not do him justice. In reality, as with all great painting, he goes beyond words. So much is lost in translation. It remains frustrating that so much credit is given to language as a form of communication. We seem to think it has a purity which it does not. Whilst necessary it is an artificial and constructed system. It is limited to the nuances of each cultures linguistic evolution. So often it traps and confines rather than explaining or revealing truths. As much as it is the key to articulate standing it is the bars which blocks our pursuit for a particular subjects essence. Shrouded in convention it will never be able to express, describe or induce the motive like Rothko’s Seagram murals do. That, above all else, is what makes them so great.