"Rothko is often grouped with the abstract expressionists, yes, his work is based on his emotion and it is abstract. However, there is something that clearly separates him, Rothko is calculated, he is not cold but he plans. The outside world is removed from his work, at first it bears no resemblance to anything, it should bear no resemblance to anything, that is how it is planned. Rothko visited Italy during the production of his Seagram Murals, the blacked out windows of the Laurentian Library in Florence are the black monoliths floating within his canvases, these monoliths are not windows, but what the windows conveyed to Rothko, the oppression, the looming watcher. Rothko was to make the diners at the Four Seasons feel what he felt standing before those windows, he wanted them to be threatened, penned in. These windows are a means to an end, a tool not a representation, the Library merely an inspiration.

 

There is maintained a sense of sterility and distance, Rothko plans, he is calculated. He paints what he feels and by the nature of his process, as is clear in his work, there is a veneer of calm between the content of his canvases and the viewer. I see his work lie separately from the rest of the world, it references nothing but itself, an impossible task, it is an escape.

 

Viewing the Seagram Murals, I am protected from the painting, I see it and I feel it as such but I don’t know it as if I have lived it, I am the observer I understand as I am taught. I can feel the the disgust and the oppression, it forms a lump in my throat, I am absorbed into the canvas however I still only observe. I can leave and I can put it behind me." 

 

-Alistair Blake