1957, Mark Rothko, White Center -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art
From the museum label: The three richly colored rectangles blending together in White Center explore color as a tool for evoking transcendental truths, or what Mark Rothko referred to as the sublime. Together with Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, Rothko used swaths of color to produce a meditative response in the viewer, not unlike a religious or mythic experience. For these artists, color was capable of communicating essential aspects of the human experience, whereas recognizable imagery was not. When pressed to explain the apparent absence of subject matter in his work, Rothko argued that his canvases took on the "tragic and timeless" as subject, the most basic and universal of human emotions.
1957, Mark Rothko, White Center -- Los Angeles County Museum of Art
From the museum label: The three richly colored rectangles blending together in White Center explore color as a tool for evoking transcendental truths, or what Mark Rothko referred to as the sublime. Together with Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, Rothko used swaths of color to produce a meditative response in the viewer, not unlike a religious or mythic experience. For these artists, color was capable of communicating essential aspects of the human experience, whereas recognizable imagery was not. When pressed to explain the apparent absence of subject matter in his work, Rothko argued that his canvases took on the "tragic and timeless" as subject, the most basic and universal of human emotions.