TEXT ANA ESCOTO

Mark Rothko, Rouge sur Rose sur Rose, oil on canvas, 1953.

In an age of restless minds and ceaseless overstimulation, the screen we carry as a second limb—the phone—has transformed us into impatient, all-consuming entities with the concentration span of an ant. I count myself among those afflicted. The pile of books gathering dust on my nightstand—simple reads, no less—serves as a quiet rebuke, reminding me that I can only indulge in them by forcing myself to lock my phone in a cupboard.

‘It is a rare and beautiful feat when a painting makes you forget everything and swallows you whole.’

It is a rare and beautiful feat when a painting makes you forget everything and swallows you whole. How ironic, then, that this escape is often found in abstractionism—yet only by the hand of a master. Mark Rothko was someone who dedicated his entire life to contemplation. 

This is, of course, a controversial opinion. Rothko himself was no stranger to controversy. His practice, often criticized and ridiculed as vapid, empty, or even dismissed as a cash grab, persisted in the face of relentless jeers.. Rothko worked tirelessly throughout his life, eventually gravitating toward a monumental format in his later years, culminating in constructing a literal cathedral to his works.  

When the thought I could have done this myself creeps into our minds, we must remember that Rothko was a wildly talented, classically trained artist. His technical skill was on par with any master of the Renaissance. But, of course, many who receive such training can achieve technical mastery. What set Rothko apart was his willingness to plunge headfirst into abstraction, finding in it the purest synthesis of emotion—a universe distilled into hues and forms.

Some of his works feel serene; others are suffused with sorrow and dread. The differences lie in the tones he chooses, the weight of his composition, sometimes tectonic, sometimes inverted. But how can such minimalism convey so much emotion? Arguably, it is understood instinctively, through each viewer’s intrinsic intuition. The key to his paintings is the unveiling of our unconscious self through mystic contemplation. 

For reasons too tired to explain, I’ve recently reached a point in my life where everything seems to be crumbling around me. It was in this vulnerable state that I walked into the Tate Modern and stood before a Rothko. As I gazed, I felt tears welling up. At that moment, I understood him—understood the beauty in his dedication to monumental abstraction, the meditative quality of his repeated, almost mechanical practice. The motion of traversing the brush from top to bottom of the canvas in silence—as Rothko often did—becomes a form of prayer. In this emotional state, it was as familiar to me as reuniting with an old friend.

‘Rothko’s compositions are charged with a profound energy—a stillness so dense it becomes agitated.’

Rothko’s compositions are charged with a profound energy—a stillness so dense it becomes agitated. Within the layers of pigment, there is calm in excess, melancholy in simplicity, and a radiance reminiscent of a deity’s halo. His works create an abstract landscape so vast and unknowable that one has no choice but to turn inward. Rothko leaves space for our thoughts to reflect on the canvas, making those thoughts the true subject of his work.  

This meditative quality calls to mind the ascetic monks who built their own desert, such as the convent Desierto de los Leones, a 30-minute drive from my parents’ flat in Mexico City. While not a literal desert, this pine-covered mountain forest housed monks in scattered huts, where they lived in isolation. Sustained only by a daily slice of mouldy bread and a cup of water, they combined starvation with ceaseless meditation, often inducing mystical hallucinations and uncovering hidden truths.  

‘He lived for his practice.’

Rothko’s process, too, was marked by repetition and physical exertion, a sacrifice for craft and a greater purpose. His grief, born of personal and professional tragedies, suffuses his work, translating into canvases that evoke what he described as “basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom.” Rothko leaned into the practices of sleep deprivation and starvation, ultimately tragically ending his life in his studio when he could no longer paint. He lived for his practice. As he famously stated: "The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”

So, it’s okay to cry with him.

Published November 20th, 2024