Mark Rothko Quotes

And last, it may be worthwhile trying to hang something beyond the partial wall because some of the pictures do very well in a confined space.”
-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

I also hang the pictures low rather than high, and particularly in the case of the largest ones, often as close to the floor as is feasible, for that is the way they are painted.”
-Mark Rothko

If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.”
-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 academicism.”
-Mark Rothko

Silence is so accurate. ”
-Mark Rothko

That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.”
-Mark Rothko

There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.”
-Mark Rothko

This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative; and have been painted in a scale of normal living rather than an institutional scale.”
-Mark Rothko

We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.”
-Mark Rothko

The reactions that I myself get from the Japanese, the Germans, the French, etc., is they are all agreed my work has the power to convey a new vision. Its message becomes visible in a new structural language never before experienced by them. In my work one therefore finds the direct awareness of an essential humanness. Monet had this quality and that's why I prefer Monet to Cezanne ... Despite the general claim that Cezanne had created a new vision and that he is the father of modern painting, I myself prefer Monet. Monet was for me the greater artist of the two. ”
-Mark Rothko