Form, Feeling & Faith

Art Criticism in Post-War America:

Analyzed Through the Signature Style of Mark Rothko

“There is no such thing as a good painting

about nothing.” –Mark Rothko

“Things are entirely what they appear to be

…and behind them, is nothing.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

1“Nothing worse could happen to one

then to be completely understood.” – Carl Jung

In order to fully apprehend a particular style or era of art, one must also investigate the

various methods of interpretation associated with such art. These methods, often produced

simultaneously with the art they aim to explore, provide insight into the art itself, permitting

access into the social and cultural atmospheres that generate different artistic techniques and

creative processes, perpetuating the art beyond its original sphere. Often times, these methods are

symptomatic of a need to sustain adequate interpretations for a continually evolving artistic

aesthetic; with every innovative and different style of art, an equally fresh method is required to

stay in sync with artistic evolution. Just as the art itself exhibits modern techniques, interpretive

methods must also continually (re)evaluate themselves. This correlative relationship between art

and its systems of elucidation is demonstrated throughout history, and Post-War America is of no

exception.

The duration and gradual conclusion of World War II left America in an exhausted,

unstable state during the nineteen-forties and fifties. Even after Victory in Europe Day in May of

1945, wartime anxieties and uncertainties remained constant in the minds of the American

public. The Second World War set in motion a chaotic aftermath, expressing the elementary

fears and passions of man. Global warfare brought with it intense tragedy and the brutal aspects

of human nature, feelings directly related to the events of the time.1 These anxieties could no

sooner be forgotten in American society, and such emotions facilitated the onset of an impactful

modern artistic movement never before experienced in the United States.

1 Buettner, Stewart. American Art Theory., pp. 82.

The art produced during the years after the war became the first specifically American

movement to gain worldwide significance, shifting the center of artistic vitality from Europe

(specifically, Paris) to its new domestic address in New York City. Defined as Abstract

Expressionism, this new style epitomized American sentiments and developed itself as an

identifiable and important zeitgeist of the times. The title ‘Abstract Expressionism’ is derived

from the combination of emotional intensity articulated via an anti-figural aesthetic in works of

art. Coined in 1946 by art critic Robert Coates2 (after various articles that continually referred to

both terms, thus leading to their inevitable amalgamation), Abstract Expressionism denoted an

artistic style directly expressing ideas about the spiritual and the unconscious mind in rebellious,

idiosyncratic and sometimes nihilistic imagery. Abstract Expressionism represented an anodyne

artistic strategy for artists to abstract meaning and content of their works, to elude the political

influences prevalent during such highly sensitive times. In general, the art of Abstract

Expressionism seized upon the most personal and individual psychic material of the artist,

seeking to express a shared set of values and experiences. In the case of these works, the canvas

must be seen also as a microcosmic reflection of the larger arena of the public realm.3 The art of

Abstract Expressionism targeted the uneasiness of the American people, providing emotional

refuge to those in desperate need of assurance. Abstract Expressionism affirms its stature as the

quintessential American style, emanated from a myriad of ways in which it constituted a present

phase within a broad history of modern style.4

Among the artists of Abstract Expressionism, a premium was placed on developing a

distinctive formal vocabulary that was recognizably associated with a particular artist.5 Within

the New York school, the conception of style closely aligned with that of individualism – and

one artist in particular can be noted for this specificity of style. Mark Rothko, born Marcus

Rothkowitz in 1903 in present-day Latvia, immigrated to the United States at age thirteen to

avoid the draft in the Russian army. Marking the start of his artistic career, Rothko settled in

New York City and began painting in the mid-nineteen twenties. After several years of

experimentation with mythological subject matter and multiform compositions, Rothko

eventually arrived at his signature format by 1949. Coinciding with the dates of World War II,

Rothko had invented his own signature motif consisting of two or more rectilinear clouds of

color hovering silently within a vertical canvas. Mark Rothko adhered to this compositional

2 Robert Coates for the New Yorker, 1946, in reference to various works by Arshille Gorjy, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. 3 Joselit, David. American Art Since 1945. New York, Thames and Hudson, 2003. pp. 11.4 Landau, Ellen G., Reading Abstract Expressionism. New Haven, London; Yale. 2005, pp. 13.5 Joselit, D. pp. 14

formula for the subsequent two decades of his life, only ceasing with the artist’s suicide in

February of 1970. Over his productive career, Rothko mined this ostensibly simple abstract

hieroglyph in order to produce a wide range of perceptual and emotional effects, ranging from

sunny combinations of orange and yellow, which strike an almost painfully high key, to his very

somber almost monochromatic paintings of the mid-nineteen sixties.6 This ‘classic’ Rothko style

produces a perceptual contradiction established between the broad fields of color, which embrace

the viewer in their large-scale format and the “zips”, the transecting horizontal line through the

monochromatic area of color, upon which the eye can never rest, but rapidly slides back and

forth in an unending hyper-active blink, which serves both to divide and join together the tinted

canvases they transit through.7 Towards the last years of his life, circa 1964, Rothko received a

commission for the design and decoration of a Catholic chapel in Houston, Texas, courtesy of

John and Dominique de Menil. Dubbed the “Rothko Chapel,” several dark-colored panels adorn

the walls and invoke the quintessential style of the artist himself. The last works before his death;

the Chapel paintings may be considered the final culmination of the artist’s career. Rothko’s

abstract composition, constituting entirely of hazy rectangular areas of color and gradating hues,

became the archetype of his artistic style and personified the essence of Abstract Expressionism.

Loved or hated, Rothko’s mature work in the fifties and sixties was undeniably new and

completely unfamiliar.8 In the eve and aftermath of World War II, Mark Rothko no doubt

experienced the daily chronicle of evil reported to the American public, including various

refugee testimonies of the war, observing public fears of the Atomic Bomb and the disturbing

accounts of human slaughter. Rothko eventually applied for U.S. citizenship, following universal

trepidations of his Jewish heritage and the widespread paranoia of possible Nazi invasion.

Although permanent residence in New York kept such threats remote to Europe, their infiltration

into everyday American lives attained the war a surreal and symbolic existence. Rothko’s

impulse during those years of dread was an eyes-shut flight to primitive beginnings, to the vital

sources of life, art and myth.9 This attitude represented a blanket rejection of the unbearable

present of modern history in favor of a time when humanity itself was not at a loss. This struggle

between the futility of humankind and the necessity of a reactivation in faith and human nature

expressed itself distinctly within Rothko’s seemingly empty canvases, personified in the absence

of imagery yet overwhelming authority of his work. If ever there was an image of the world

6 Joselit, D. pp.237 Joselit, D. pp.258 Rosenblum, Robert. On Modern American Art, New York, Henry A. Abrams, 1999. pp. 1099 Rosenblum, R. pp. 102

when all of matter, all of man, all of history might be annihilated, it was to be found in the

pictorial format of a numbing atmospheric void.10

Rothko enthusiasts agree the act of looking upon one of his classic paintings can be

synonymous with an unmistakable perceptual and bodily effect; however, one would be hard

pressed to find any sort of agreement among those enthusiasts. Mark Rothko’s works have been

variously described; his art embodies the transcendental, tragic, mystical, violent or serene, as

representative of the void, as an experience in the sublime, as exhilaratingly intellectual or even

profoundly spiritual.11 It is within these different areas of interpretation that a new form of Art

Criticism is born; Rothko’s paintings represent a unique art, thus no literature was available at

the time of their inception. This lack of information on the time where this stage falls is indicated

by critic’s expressions of a need for a new interpretive strategy. Sources for the criticism of

Abstract Expressionism can be found in several earlier sources and preceding critical writing;

however, the New Art Criticism developed within post-war America combines with it novel

interests in aesthetics, ethics, political philosophy, Jungian psychology and Existentialism.12 In

the years after the war, the marketing of art accelerated significantly, with a proliferation of

publications reaching a wider range of audiences then ever before, and a surge of new art

galleries opening in New York City which took advantage of the city’s uprising artistic energy

and publicity. During the forties and fifties, a variety of these publications firmly established the

themes, assumptions, intellectual ambiance and contextual parameters that were of interest to

artists and spectators alike. The most prominently featured were those shared expressions of a

heroic belief in the centrality of the individual unconscious and the concomitant desire to

originate a style whose characteristics derived from immediate spontaneous decisions, rather

then a reliance on learned procedures.13 These publications gave rise to an entirely new body of

criticism, creating a niche for the newfound art historian – the critic of Abstract Expressionism.

The meaning and content of artworks is often discerned through the criticism contemporaneous

with the art itself, and in order to accurately account for the conclusions drawn, one must always

consider the art critic’s validity, success, and lasting significance. Much of mid-century art

criticism is utilized as a means to understand the pictures and activity of the times, providing

useful insight to an artistic phenomenon such as Abstract Expressionism. Yet, whom we identify

as a true critic remains an important point as writers, collectors and artists themselves frequently

commented on the nature of the movement itself. As no formal training was required to write (or

10 Rosenblum, R. pp. 10211 Crow, Thomas., Phillips, Glenn. Seeing Rothko. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2005. pp.112 Foster, Stephen C. The Critics of Abstract Expressionism, pp. 313 Landau, E. pp. 5

publish) art criticism, modern day art historians are obligated to identify specific criterion for

establishing a veritable critic. The main task of all art critics is the evaluation of quality in works

of art. However, they part company when it comes to determining on what basis this judgment of

quality is to be made.14 The conceptual evasiveness of Abstract Expressionism opened the

gateway for spokesmen, with their own agendas, to step into the breach. Given the variety of

descriptions of Rothko’s work, how many perceptual experiences might he engage? Do these art

critics all genuinely experience something different, or, perhaps, is the perceptual experience the

same, but the cognitive abilities to identify, process and represent those sensations differ

irreconcilably?15 The propagation of art criticism articulated basic polarities that would continue

to influence significantly both Abstract Expressionist practice, and the greater elaboration of

contexts for its reception throughout the following decades.16

The criticism that arose within the nineteen-forties and early fifties in American society

has received the most extensive development, and retained the largest portion of leadership in

ensuing years. The tenets of these methods remain consistent throughout their advancement, and

remain of significant influence on later critics, including those of present day.17 Due to the

aforementioned features, the specific areas of art criticism examined throughout the subsequent

paragraphs are limited to three specific prevalent approaches: Formalism; Existentialism; and

Spiritualism, and each of their particular assets/limitations as applied to an analysis of Mark

Rothko’s specific signature style. Each of these methods must be taken as an individual case

study, dissembling all parts in order to erect a clear, interpretive framework – one in which all

claims are measured for validity, objectivity and exposing any and all theoretical contradictions.

While none of these methods are the primary inventions of the art critics who typified them, they

all take precise form within their prosaic scales; each approach designates explicit measures and

sentiments that are strictly adhered to. Here, some techniques emphasize flatness of the picture

plane, while some emphasize illusionistic depth; these are techniques that both depict fullness

and emptiness, openness and closedness. It is within the cross sections of these writings, as well

as their antithetical arguments, that a comprehensive perception can, and should, be approached.

The term ‘Formalism’ denotes an artistic theory that posits exclusively formal aspects

constitute the value of a work qua artwork, whereas everything essential to its apprehension is

contained within itself. Such formal properties include the work’s arrangement, composition of

elements, construction and/or sensual qualities. Its form, emphasizing the purely visual features 14 Rose, Barbara. Readings in American Art, pp. 3115 Crow, T. pp. 216 Landau, E. pp. 917 Foster, S. pp. 3

and only taking aspects of the ‘medium’ into account, determines the significance of a work.

Non-formal elements, or “life-values” such as emotion, morality and content, are artistically

irrelevant within such an approach and of secondary importance. Value is exclusive to the

manner of presenting or expressing the meanings contained within; the meanings themselves

become auxiliary features of the work, of extraneous consequence. According to formalists,

these conventional aspects attain undivided focus because it is only through them that one is able

to value a work of art as a work of art, that is, as an autonomous and self-sufficient object.18

Noted art critic Clement Greenberg is perhaps the strongest advocate for the Formalistic

approach within Abstract Expressionism. A prolific writer and critic, Greenberg’s first published

work, entitled “The Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (The Partisan Review, 1939) marks the beginning

of his extensive and influential career. His numerous essays and critiques facilitated the

understanding of modern art through a strict adherence to the processes of artistic formalism,

deemphasizing the representational aspects of artworks and concluding that abstract art was the

purest art of all. Throughout his approach, Greenberg insists that ‘authenticity’ and emotion were

the engines of significant painting; he defines abstraction in terms of a larger supra-personal

development within the history of art,19 asserting the Abstract Expressionist artists advanced their

art by painterly means, without relaxing the concentration and high impassiveness of modern

style. His method militates a return to Apollonian classical standards, like those of high Cubism,

claiming the superior art of the movement owes its realization to a higher discipline. Greenberg

fervently protested the openness of interpretation that “bastardized” the Abstract Expressionist

style20. In Greenberg’s renowned and influential essay, “Towards a Newer Laöcoon” (1940,

Partisan Review), he alludes directly to those classical standards he wished to reinstate. The

objective of modernist painting, to Greenberg, was to analyze and express its basic constituent

conditions as a medium, where emotion transcends the painter’s own unconscious drives in order

to portray a broad cultural reality.21 Here, the ‘form’ of an artwork not only opens the way to

inspiration; it can also act as a means to it, as well as its technical preoccupations. Greenberg

refutes allegations of an ‘anti-historical’ attitude, claiming “it is quite easy to show abstract art

reflects social circumstance of the age. Nothing inside art itself, disconnected with history,

compels it to go in one direction or another.” When searching enough, and compelled enough,

then, anyone can generate or discover ‘content’ within a work of art; however, when the work

succeeds, it does so ipso facto by the content which it conveys, whereas such content cannot be

18 Dziembok, B. pp. 18719 Joselit, pp. 1120 Landau 2121 Joselit pp.11

separated from its form.22 This content, the values connected with representations of the external

world or evocation of emotions or ideas, retains little or no significance if not directly associated

within the artistic form. Such a separation of content and form embodies what Greenberg sees as

the ultimate problem with art, whereas the emphasis is shifted away from the medium and

erroneously transferred to the subject matter. With such transference, it then becomes a matter of

artistic ability to interpret subject matter rather then an emphasis on artistic production, creating

a regrettable circumstance in which the medium itself becomes a physical obstacle between the

artist and audience, rather then the priority. This circumstance is representative of previous

artistic attempts to achieve allusions by overpowering the medium, exploiting the practical

meanings of objects rather then in savoring their physical appearance.23

Clement Greenberg’s artistic formalism acquires increased stylistic relevance whence

applied to the later art of color-field painters such as Mark Rothko. The vocabulary of

Greenberg’s critical method achieves a greater authority with the movement’s later styles, even if

it does so by accident.24 Foregrounding the ‘high art’ qualities of flatness, opticality and purity,

which he believed to be more truly representative of avant-garde thinking, Greenberg applies a

new term: “post-painterly abstraction”, as demonstrative of artist’s such as Rothko’s more

progressive, self-critical emphasis on hue, physical openness of design, linear clarity and

integrity of the picture plane.25 According to Greenberg’s Laöcoon essay, the art of “pure form”

is capable of communicating sensations as its essential effect, revealing the advantages of

abstraction in art to the avant-garde. Art of this pure form attains a greater integrity and self-

sufficiency, for art that is abstract can be almost nothing else except sensuous. Here, it is by

virtue of the medium that each art is unique and strictly itself; to restore the identity of art, the

opacity of the medium must be emphasized. In a joint statement to the New York Times in 194226,

Rothko himself takes a pro-formalist stance, revealing his penchant for the simple expression of

complex thought, stating “it is a widely accepted notion among painters that it doesn’t matter

what one paints, as long as it is well-painted.” Rothko’s preference for a simplistic appearance,

and the unimportance of chosen subject matter, seem to endorse Greenberg’s predilection for

medium purity. Both the artist and critic converge in their strive for an art of infinite suggestion,

where minimal forms emphasize the proper values of visual art and the abstract qualities of the

work are the only ones that count. As Greenberg maintains in Laöcoon, such abstract art leaves

22 Greenberg, Necessity of Formalism, pp. 17523 Greenberg, Laöcoon, pp. 2424 Foster, S. pp. 8825 Landau, E. pp. 2326 1942 Letter to NY Times, Rothko & Gottlieb

“nothing to identify, connect or think about, but everything to feel.” The mature work of Rothko

may be understood in light of Greenberg’s influential argument that modernist painting arises

through a self-critical procedure of stricter and stricter analysis, leading to the minimal means

necessary to produce what the critic regarded as a superior painting. Abstract art, such as the

mature style of Rothko, does indeed lend itself to a formal approach, where no previous

knowledge is required to interpret or appreciate it. If one must look beyond the work itself and

confront it with historical or biographical facts or social or psychological phenomena in order to

adequately understand it, then the work of art must be artistically defective. Thus, to evaluate a

work, one needs no knowledge of the history of art, the artist’s biography, intentions or times of

society when it was created.27

Formalism indeed presents the art historian with several significant achievements of its

method, including a contribution to the development of art itself, recognizing the importance of

the uniqueness of individual art forms. A formalistic approach contributes in the elimination of

prejudice and unjust criticism, facilitating the acceptance of Modernist art and propagating the

artistic education of society. Through formalism, the previous one-sided theoretical assumptions

and methodological orientation of artistic study have been overcome, rejecting the enshrining

realist ideals, bourgeois-Victorian interpretations and all-encompassing Victorian moralism

prevalent within antiquated art criticism. American formalist Clement Greenberg assisted in the

acceptance and understanding of Abstract Expressionism, and his involvement in the New

Criticism helped protest the traditional artistic scholarship that did not sufficiently respect art’s

autonomy or uniqueness. Greenberg stressed correctly that critical studies in art that focused only

on external factors and conditions, thus ignoring the art itself, was incapable of correct

interpretation and evaluation. In a theoretical evaluation, formalism also attains importance

through several conditions applicable to abstract art and beyond. For instance, formal values are

common to all art forms, in all epochs, but more importantly, are also the only values in common

to all significant works of art and of all masterpieces. As previously mentioned, formal values

are necessary and prove to be sufficient for the determination of value in a work of art; an object

may be qualified as art if its value is based upon formal properties even if it exhibits cognitive

falsehood; however, conversely, a work with valuable insights but no formal values does not

attain the status of a work of art.28 Formalism itself also helps develop anti-formal theories in

reaction to it, encouraging new approaches to become more sophisticated and moderate while

still retaining an appreciation of formal elements of a work of art. Indeed, many contemporary

27 Dziembok, pp. 18728 Dzeimbok, 190

anti-formalist methods reject only the tendency towards absolutization of the formal aspects of

art works.

There can be no denial of formalism’s many triumphs as an artistic theory, however, in

spite of its many achievements, its limitations should not be overlooked. Generally speaking, one

cannot ignore the obvious implications of applying an approach whose aim is to suppress

emotional content to an artistic movement that values such as its primary means of expression;

the title ‘Abstract Expressionism’ itself denotes an equal importance on the artist’s expression as

the method of abstraction itself. The requisite adherence to such a strict theoretical structure

brings with it tribulations and discrepancies, especially among the artists themselves. Abstract

Expressionists rebelled against the idea of geometry, for it represented to them a rational system

that narrowed form and experience into the finite and commensurable,29 denying Greenberg’s

notion of stylistic lineage from Cubism. The art historian, via the formalistic approach, is

instructed to experience and appreciate a work of art exclusively as an object in and of itself, but

there remains a controversial debate on the reduction of the value of the nature and culture of the

artwork; shouldn’t an artwork be experienced, interpreted and appreciated within a broader

(artistic and cultural) context? In evaluating a work of art, one must take formal properties into

consideration, but also such ideas contained in the work, such as emotional expressiveness,

fidelity to represented external reality, depth of insight into and analysis of the moral and

psychological problems of man. One cannot disregard such features, as human beings we are

unable, and do not need, to limit ourselves to appreciation of only formal qualities. Greenberg

insisted upon the minimum means necessary to form a painting, but there is a dimension to

Rothko’s art that is much rawer and more potent then Greenberg’s formalistic approach can

capture. Despite its rigorous pursuit of non-objective self-referentiality, the art of Abstract

Expressionism cannot be limited to an exclusively formalist perspective; it simultaneously points

inward toward the content’s of the artist’s psyche, and outwards towards a universal symbolic

language.30 Along with a disregard for emotional content, strict adherence in taste for purity kept

critics, like Greenberg, from recognizing wide ranging implications of statements made by artists

themselves, which indicate a larger engagement with the world. In a personal statement issued by

Rothko, he quotes “I would sooner confer anthromorphic attributes upon a stone then

dehumanize the slightest possibility of consciousness.31” Formalism is untenable as a universal

theory of art and artistic values, and it specifically fails when confronted with contemporary

artistic practice and art history. Art itself is never motivated by purely artistic intentions, and it is

29 Rosenblum, book 9 pp. 20930 Joselit, pp. 3331 Rothko Personal Statement, Rose, pp. 137

impossible to separate the production of art from the life surrounding it. Whether influenced by

God, individual emotion, patronage or payment, art is consistently indebted to the social situation

in which it is produced. The universality of formalism comes into question regarding its

theoretical inability to deal with literature, photography and other visual arts. How can a

formalist approach be applied to the characteristics of film? Indeed, purely formal values are

important to all art forms, but they are not equally important to all.32 Formalism is constantly

charged with an unhistorical position, separating art from its appropriate context and becoming

overly dependent on the judgments of history.

Situated on the opposite end of the theoretical spectrum, the body of philosophy known

as ‘Existentialism’ gained widespread recognition and influence after the Second World War.

Originating in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Frederich Nietzsche, and perpetuated by

French philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre in the 20th century, existentialism emphasized the

conditions of experience of the individual person, acknowledging human emotions, actions,

responsibilities and thoughts. Existential philosophy focuses on the subjective human experience,

maintaining a constant struggle with the meaningless of life and demonstrates the futility of

existence. Within existential vocabulary, “drama” and “action” become important facets of life,

where one gives one’s own life meaning. The moods of Abstract Expressionism, the rhetoric of

fear and despair, the symbolism of death and isolation are all associated with existential

philosophy. The introduction of Nietzschean concepts into existential discourse in the late

nineteen-forties in New York is one of several factors that helped stimulate the desire to cultivate

recognizable artistic personae, such as Abstract Expressionism. Such concepts provided to

reinterpret artist’s doubts as “the consequence of self-confidence” and led to a quest for a greater

mastery of their art.33 Harold Rosenberg, American art critic and counterpart to Clement

Greenberg, became the authoritative figure on the existential theory of abstract art in the

nineteen-forties. Rosenberg perceived the painting of Abstract Expressionism as an aspiration

“not to a conscious philosophical or social ideal, but what is basically an individual, sensual,

psychic and intellectual effort to live actively in the present.34” Rosenberg, as Greenberg,

remains an influential figure within art criticism, and his famous essay, “The American Action

Painters” was published in 1952 in the December issue of ARTnews. Congruent with

Greenberg’s professional achievements, Rosenberg coins the term “Action Painters” in regard to

the heightened emotion and physical process of painting of the Abstract Expressionists.

Rosenberg perceived the existential imperative involved in the act of painting, identifying the

32 Dziembok, pp. 19233 Landau, p.1034 Landau 14

space confronting the artist at the beginning of his artistic process as “nothingness”. This space is

filled with the emotional response of the artist at work, filling a void similar to the efforts of the

modern man. To Rosenberg, art derives from the simultaneity of the artist’s consciousness of art

and his feelings about the state of man. Art presupposes the appropriation of experience by a

sensibility synthesized through the practice of painting, and the survival of abstract art depends

on such inner syntheses.35 The painters of Abstract Expressionism allowed the artistic process of

creation become a fundamental aspect of it’s ‘content’. Influenced by post-war existentialist

philosophy, liberally leavened by post-war anxieties and Cold War paranoia, artists sought to

externalize their internal psychological reality. The heroic struggle to attain and represent self-

knowledge among these painters grew from their conviction that an individual’s personal

existential acts – including acts of painting – could express a fundamental human nature.36

Perhaps Rosenberg’s most notable retort to the formalistic approach, and also his most

controversial claim in Action Painters, states, “the act of painting is of the same metaphysical

substance as the artist’s existence. The new painting has broken down every distinction between

art and life.” Within the same essay, Rosenberg utilizes an existential vocabulary to characterize

the artist’s canvas as an “arena to act” and identifies his role as art critic. In order to write about

Abstract Expressionist art, one must recognize the picture as an act in itself, and its value must

be found apart from art. The canvas becomes an event, no longer a picture, invoking the

existential focus on drama and action. Here, the critic becomes a connoisseur of gradations

between the automatic, spontaneous and the evoked – as opposed to connoisseurs of quality.

Continuing to eschew formalist analysis, Rosenberg discounted style and valorized artistic

process. In Action Painters, another notable claim is made, where “the big moment came when it

was decided to paint…just TO PAINT.” The new function of art emerges as a gesture of

liberation from all value: political, esthetic or moral. Rosenberg allegorizes this function in a

metaphor where the “Abstract Expressionist’s took the white expanse of the canvas as Melville’s

Ishmael took to the sea”, aligning the artist’s existential strive for self-definition with the doubt-

ridden protagonist of Moby Dick.

We can discern that the European philosophical model of existentialism guided a distinct

cadre of New York artists, the Abstract Expressionists, to an aesthetic that valorized emotion and

risk. As Harold Rosenberg’s projection of a public dimension onto the private act of painting

made clear, individuality was essential to the self-definition of mid-twentieth century artistic

abstraction meant to stand for a universal set of human values and experiences. As witnessed in

35 Buettner, AAP, p. 9036 Joselit, pp. 18

Rosenberg’s Action Painters, existential ideas framed the gestures and motives of the Abstract

Expressionists, whose paintings exhibited the artists’ strive for self-realization.37 Rosenberg

recognizes a new function for art as a process of individual thought rather then its execution. The

importance of this new criticism involves a new notion of the intrinsic character of meaning in

art, no longer limited to the scope of the canvas. Rosenberg’s criticism embodies the existential

image of a scene of action and the notion of drama in which an actor faces a situation. In an

essay known as “The Romantics Were Prompted”38, Rothko confirms Rosenberg’s claim

explicitly when he declared, “I think of my pictures as dramas. Shapes are the performers…

neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated or described in advance.” Rothko himself,

after the onset of the war, took a brief hiatus from painting in 1940 to read several works by

Frederich Nietzsche, among others, and such existential literature had a profound effect on him.

In Rothko’s work, fields of non-objective color function as ‘actors’ in what Rosenberg described

as the “arena of the canvas”. It is possible to understand Rothko’s distinctive motif of stacked

rectilinear fields of color as an anthromorphic theater of perceptual actions.39 Upon Rothko’s

symbolic stage, the perceptual drama derives from the emergence, and withdrawal, of figure into

ground: it is notoriously difficult to determine any precise spatial mooring among his ambiguous

color-fields. Rosenberg’s adaption of existential philosophy and Jungian psychology promoted

the creation of art from within the unconscious; offering the artist an alternative to the fixed rules

that previously governed art. This artistic freedom enabled Abstract Expressionists to explore

new approaches, techniques and eliminated preconceived notions. Counter to Formalism,

Rosenberg designated importance to the artist’s motive for extinguishing the object in art,

denoting formal aspects of color and composition auxiliaries easily discarded. To Rosenberg,

Rothko’s empty paintings are emotionally charged, stirring up feelings of awe, anguish and

release and buried too deeply within to be brought to the surface by visual metaphors.40 To

Rosenberg an action cannot be a matter of taste - it is automatic and unplanned. Limited to

aesthetics, the bureaucracies of modern art such as formalism cannot adequately grasp the human

experience. The glint of color below Rothko’s unchanging squares of silence emphasizes that all

differences in individual sensibility amount to nothing more then a scarcely perceptible nuance

against the massive truth of death and nothingness. Nullifying himself was Rothko’s discipline of

exaltation. In loneliness and sense of futility, the artist achieved the universal that was his artistic

ambition. Rosenberg describes Rothko’s art as “escapist” in the deepest traditional sense, rich in

the romance of self-estrangement. His canvases are passionate re-discoveries of a state of being, 37 Cotkin, George. Existential America, pp. 126-12738 Title – based on first sentence. Shapiro, C. pp. 39739 Joselit, pp. 2340 Rosenberg, “Rothko”, Shapiro, C. pp. 415

purging themselves of an identifiable self. To Rosenberg, Rothko posed the ‘anti-self’, even

stating, “I don’t express myself in paintings. I express my not-self.41”

An existential approach to interpretation of artistic value produces theoretical temptations

for the art historian; within a philosophical method, the parameters become flexible and yielding.

The ambiguity of existentialism conceals its disadvantages, and limits its applications for art

criticism. Harold Rosenberg’s vocabulary seems interchangeable with Sartre’s Being and

Nothingness, yet Rosenberg himself never called himself an existentialist. The art historian must

remain wary of such an open-ended approach, one in which the main spokesmen do not even

claim its title. Rosenberg himself admits this limitation, denying the presence of an “existentialist

painting.” Existentialism is a tendency in philosophy and literature, and never develops a specific

style within the plastic arts. This body of philosophy is not intended specifically for art, and

consequently refrains from providing useful guidelines in such an application. Rosenberg’s

profundity and symbolic prose correlate with existentialism’s philosophical tenets, but come

under scrutiny in the examination of the work of art itself. Unlike the formalistic approach of

Clement Greenberg, Rosenberg does not include traits of the actual work in his interpretations.

Instead, an existential approach focuses only upon symbolic associations and emotion and falls

short of a literal definition of value. In the refutation of traditional aesthetics, Rosenberg enlists

priority in the act of painting over the physical object; here, the art itself assumes little

importance. His existential approach shifts pure artistic value to the concept of pure value,

creating an indistinct question of the value of the art, which emerges from the process.

Rosenberg aims less at the analysis of a work of art then the discovery of a particular

“consciousness” and existential feeling.42 Rosenberg’s existential take on Abstract

Expressionism does not bring one very far in terms of understanding the particulars of the

artwork, and his approach “solved no problems.43” Within philosophical considerations,

unconscious desires and drives are identified as the artist’s proper subject matter, attempting to

externalize and internal psychological experience. But, how does an artist represent such a

mental topography? Here, art inherits the same problems as science – an artist working to

generate an image without premeditation is continually confronted with confounding variables

and unable to produce evidentiary proof. Without specific principles, an existential approach

falls short in its application of the interpretation of art; there is simply no way to gauge matters of

the unconscious and their manifestations within artistic practice.

41 Rosenberg, Rothko, C.Shapiro pp. 415-41642 Foster, S. pp. 2643 Cotkin, G.

The spiritual in art has been a constant and consistent theme in various interpretative

practices, and perhaps gains its fullest recognition in post-war America since the times of the

Enlightenment. Another method working against the tenets of formalism, spiritualism embodies

the emotional context of the artist in a way that existentialism does not. Thematic associations

with individual feeling and perception are joined with religious experience and sublime

phenomena. Rooted in mid-18th century European writings, such as the writings of Edmund

Burke, and the Romantic landscapes of J.W. Turner and Caspar Friedrich, the spiritual nature of

Abstract Expressionism is clearly defined by prolific critic, curator and professor Robert

Rosenblum. Spiritualism gains novel relevance in Rosenblum’s writing, who points out the

limitations of terms such as ‘Abstract Expressionism’ and ‘Action Painting’ to categorize the

artistic movement; the elements of impetuousness and violence are not all pervasive, and they

seem ill-suited to represent Rothko’s canvases who achieve their virtue instead through opposite

sensations such as stillness and meditation. As in Rosenberg’s existential method, the daily

chronicle of evil and widespread anxiety did in fact have a profound effect on Rothko’s art,

however instead of invoking a hopeless sense of futility, it provided the artist with a

transcendental escape. Rothko’s images, although abstract, may elicit metaphors within a range

of natural organic phenomena rather then evoking the rational constructions of the human mind.

Rosenblum argues that Rothko’s art, reduced to overtly abstract images, evoke a symbolic

moment from the Book of Genesis, providing a religious translation of the natural phenomenon

of a celestial body into a starkly simplified icon.44 Here, Rothko expresses the brooding element

of the mystical, and the ascetic with a range of gloomy and otherworldly associations.

The context of spiritualism in post-war America is symptomatic of the religious profile of

the country at that point in time. The tendency in the twentieth century was characteristically

non-traditional, following a ‘collapse’ in religion specifically following the Enlightenment era.

With the on-set of new practices and customs in the eighteenth century, and nominal interest in

figurative Christian iconography, the belief in the spiritual manifested itself instead through

nature and the sublime. The dramatic religious associations, and severe consequences, of World

War II only exacerbated this collapse, fostering such spiritual and mystical impulses after such

an apocalyptic event. Instead of turning to overt religious pictorial for refuge, artists sought a

secularized form of spiritual redemption through modern thought and artistic production. The

modern artist’s dilemma develops as a search to find, in a secular world, a convincing means to

express religious experience that had all been before channeled through means of traditional

themes of Christian art. Abstract Expressionism thus became a sacred and profane allegorical

44 Rosenblum, pp. 203

epic of biblical, ritual drama and romance for the modern age. Rothko’s abstract canvases might

be interpreted as a post-Second World War myth of Genesis, producing awesome simple

mysteries that evoke the primeval moment of creation. This modern religious sentiment is

representative of the quest typical of American painters in the post-war era and their efforts of

pursuit and capture of an elemental image or universal symbol capable of encompassing an

irreducible truth.

Perhaps as requisite for critical acclaim, Rosenblum also coins the term “the Abstract

Sublime” to characterize the spiritual element in abstract art. This term, explicitly defined by a

1961 article of the same title, recognizes the influence of the Romantic period as the springboard

for modern abstract art. In his article, Rosenblum adopts the ‘sublime’ from the aesthetic treatise

attributed to Greek philosopher Longinus (circa 100-400 CE). As an aesthetic category, the

sublime is defined as excellence or beauty that inspires great admiration or awe, elevating

something to an unparalleled degree of spirituality or divinity. In Rosenblum’s article, the

sublime acquires fresh relevance in the face of Abstract Expressionism, defining it as, “a flexible

semantic container for experiences of awe, terror, boundlessness and divinity.” For the Romantic

painters of the 19th century, the sublimities of nature gave proof of the divine, whereas modern

artists achieve the supernatural experience through the abstract medium of paint alone. The

modern painters, as with the Romantics, rejected materialism and sought to escape the

dehumanizing features of a technical society, making an equation between human kind and

nature. With a clever play of words, Rosenblum characterizes this shift from the pantheism of the

Romantics towards the paint-theism of Abstract Expressionists, where art itself celebrated the

mystical understanding between human and nature and the creation of the universe renewed

moment by moment with the artist as active participant.

Rothko’s lightly brushed hovering rectangles of color become a modern translation of the

Romantic landscape, updating the same metaphors for a twentieth century audience. By 1949,

Rothko had reached a more absolute statement producing a series of enormous canvases in his

signature color-field style. These canvases, composed of several layers of thin, glowing paint

attain a rare and sensuous poetic magic envisioned through the artist’s mystical conception of

nature. The canvases suggest the eternal presence of earthly elements such as air and water,

offering a sensuous spectacle of vaporous clouds of color whose mystery is both completely

apparent and impossibly remote. The Abstract Sublime, as proposed by Rosenblum, is the

breathtaking confrontation with boundlessness in which one experiences equally powerful

totality is a motif that continually links painters of the Romantic Sublime with Abstract

Expressionists. In the context of Romantic sea meditations, for example Caspar Friedrich’s Monk

by the Sea (1808-1810), Rothko’s works reveal similar affinities of vision and feeling. Yet,

literal details are no longer necessary within Rothko’s abstract language, and Rothko replaces

Friedrich’s “ragged fissures” with the numbing phenomena of light and void. Alluding to

Friedrich’s work, Rosenblum situates the viewer of Rothko’s canvases as the monk himself

before the sea, “standing silently and contemplatively” before the huge and boundless pictures,

on the threshold of those shapeless infinities as expressed by the aesthetics of the sublime. With

no figural insistencies, the floating tiers of tinted light in Rothko’s work conceal a total, remote

presence – one that we can only intuit and never fully grasp. These infinite glowing voids carry

us beyond reason to the sublime, where Rosenblum believes one can only submit to an act of

faith and let ourselves be absorbed into the radiant depths. In its search for a private myth to

embody the sublime power of the supernatural, the art of Rothko should remind spectators once

more that the disturbing heritage of the Romantics has not yet been exhausted.45

Robert Rosenblum equates the mid-century spectator’s experience as a purely religious

one, where one must abandon all measureable reason for mystical empathy. If one is concerned

with the covert religious drama of Rothko’s late works, Rosenblum offers the creation of the

Rothko Chapel as evidentiary of the overt glimpses of the artist’s preoccupations with Christian

tragedy. Being a ‘chapel’ itself denotes apparent religious associations, complete with triptych

altar-like paintings and Baptistery themed octagonal shape. Rosenblum states, “The impact of

unmitigated frontality and symmetry [of the paintings in the Chapel] are equivalent of an iconic

symbol of a religious cult.46” When inside the Rothko Chapel, Rosenblum also recognizes the

importance of light and shadow relationships. The total immersion in the evanescent phenomena

of colored light and atmosphere create a complete visual environment that becomes an

“engulfing shrine” for him, a sanctuary from the outside world. To Rosenblum, the chapel hovers

between a shrine of art and a shrine of the spirit, an avowal by a great painter to devote the whole

of his being to the religion of art47, making the implicit religious experience of Rothko’s art

outwardly explicit. According to Rosenblum, the lack of overt religious content may make

Rothko’s surrogate icons and altarpieces, as experienced in a non-denominational chapel, all the

more potent in their evocation of the transcendental. One must wonder: are such analogies of

form and feeling merely accidental, or perhaps reveal such analogies as too powerful to be

simply coincidental?

45 Rosenblum, The Abstract Sublime, book 7, pp. 7646 Rosenblum, Tradition, book 7, pp. 11447 Rosenblum, Tradition, pp. 121

In the nineteen eighties, art historian Anna Chave conceptualizes Rosenblum’s spiritual

theories, proposing innate religious imagery in Rothko’s non-objective signature style of

rectangles of color. She argues that Rothko’s canvases allude to evident pictorial codes, even as

the artist set out effacing them. Like Rosenblum before her, Chave believed Rothko wanted to

intensify his expression of meaningful subjects by providing visual analogies to figurative

conventions of sacred imagery. In a radical analysis of his work, Chave compares the blurry

shapes and warm color palette of Rothko’s No. 17/No. 15 (1949) with those characteristic of

Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna and Child (circa 1480). Here, she identifies oblique, nearly effaced

parallels between Rothko’s abstract multiform work and the iconological Renaissance

depiction48, and correlates several other compositions by Rothko with traditional Christian

themes of the Entombment and the Pietà. Chave reallocates Rosenblum’s spiritual inferences to

implications of more figurative religious vocabulary, notwithstanding the artist’s Jewish heritage.

Chave ameliorates this discrepancy claiming Rothko to be a “religious man without a doctrine.49”

Rothko’s pursuit of the most irreducible image pertains not only to his rejection of matter

in favor of an impalpable void oscillating between the extremes of an awesome mysterious

presence, or perhaps its existential negation, but also to his equally elementary structure, which

is of a numbing symmetry that fixes these luminous expanses in an emblem of iconic

permanence. These voids become metaphorical suggestions of elemental nature and generate

primal energies; Rosenblum identifies these voids not as empty chasms of desperation, but as

inspiring abysses testimony of the power of the sublime. The visual richness of Rothko’s classic

works often foster the idea that they are exclusively objects of aesthetic dedication, where an

epicurean sensibility to color and formal paradoxes of the tinted versus the amorphous may be

savored completely. Yet, their somber and mysterious presence, to Rosenblum, is sufficient to

convince any spectator that they belong to a sphere of experience profoundly different then that

of art pour l’art. Rosenblum takes the formalist approach into account, however concludes (as

with Rosenberg) that it does not satiate the viewer’s emotional response. In a personal statement

made by Rothko himself, he quotes “I repudiate this denial of the anecdote just as I repudiate the

denial of material existence of the whole of reality. For art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and

the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.50”

As with both approaches previously examined, the theological position issued by

Rosenblum also exposes various contradictions that question the validity of his interpretation. In

48 Landau, p. 5149 Landau, pp. 5150 Rose, pp. 137

hindsight of the tragic conclusion to the artist’s life, one can only surmise Rothko’s painful

rejection of spiritual redemption with his own suicide. The desperate isolation Rothko apparently

experienced in his last years is discernable within his darkening palette, directly projecting the

artist’s own sense of doom. Within traditional religious contexts, the acceptance of suicide runs

counter to Judaic/Christian requisite beliefs to “choose life” above all, demonstrative of Rothko’s

noncompliance to any specific religious conviction. Similar to the immeasurable efforts of the

unconscious within an existential method, the religious imagery within Rothko’s works also

remains speculative. The religious experience and transcendental emotions elicited in spectator’s

of Rothko’s work remain highly associational; and it may be wondered how an abstract painting

can possibly be religious in character. Although Rosenblum claims a lack of figurative imagery

may increase spiritual potency in Rothko’s work, this deficiency requires additional informative

cues to persuade the skeptical viewer, of which there are none within the abstract picture. To the

sensitive observer, these spiritual associations are created of the same fabric as faith itself;

however, without veritable evidence within the work, it remains up to the spectator himself to

speculate. Does the location of Rothko’s works, whether in a chapel or museum, alter their

spiritual suggestivity? The meditative atmosphere inside the Rothko Chapel may confound

aspects of how the works are experienced, taking into account the seclusion and sanctity of the

works in context. Perhaps the poignant enclosure of Rothko’s work within a chapel suggests an

alternate viewing experience, albeit less effective. Rothko himself felt his paintings had a life in

the world, recognizing their ability to reach beyond aesthetics, one that was sacrificed by the

detached museum display.51 Could a quasi-religious function better represent the artist’s

expression, or would these works elicit the same responses in a museum? It should be noted the

Rothko Chapel was not open to the public until 1971, a year after the artist’s death. Rothko was

a Jewish immigrant living post-war America, which may account for his desire and capacity to

present such religious themes in abstract terms. Fully belonging to Jewish tradition, “Rothko

carries as he does the annihilation of matter and the evocation of an imprecise yet mystical

content to an extreme,” according to Rosenblum, whom also, albeit of no coincidence, also

subscribes to the same religious tradition. The spiritual elements may surface as self-fulfilling

prophecy, unintentionally positioning themselves as representations within an art of

inexhaustible possibilities. It seems fairly likely the over-reaching tendency of Rosenblum’s

religious imagery could be due to the necessity of a newfound spiritual assurance, one in which

the Holocaust may be identified as a main culprit. Perhaps Rothko’s work, created at such a time,

embodies a spiritual essence that cannot be characterized by thematic associations of traditional

religious imagery.51 Buettner, pp. 102

Abstract Expressionism, the first specifically American art movement to gain worldwide

acclaim and stature, has become one of the widely held and extensively researched periods of art

history. Collectively defined by a group of artists living in New York City in the years during

and immediately after World War II, Abstract Expressionism is characterized by its anti-figural

and vivid artworks, which range in a variety of styles, from the violent and aggressive to the

serene and meditative. Latvian-born artist Mark Rothko typifies the painting style prevalent

during the movement, and the signature style he developed in the nineteen fifties represents the

quintessential color-field work. The classic Rothko paintings, his most recognized and celebrated

works, including those commissioned for the Rothko Chapel, comprise of an aesthetic

completely dependent upon rectangular form and juxtaposition of color; Rothko creates a

language of abstract expression through his layers of paint and composition, disregarding

pictorial traditions entirely. It is through this radical abstraction that Rothko embodies an artistic

revolution; the generation of art that represents nothing yet implies everything. The finest

Abstract Expressionist painting never fully resolves itself; the more open the situation, the

greater the suggestive quality.

The period of Abstract Expressionism cultivates a new body of writing along with its

artistic achievements; American art criticism proliferated in the years after the war and continues

to shape contemporary art historical studies and analyses. For the sake of simplicity, primary

focus on three specific approaches; Formalism, Existentialism and Spiritualism, have been

researched and evaluated on each of their individual achievements and weaknesses pertaining to

Rothko’s late works. Yet even with the vast amount of information surveyed, these approaches

only function as a minute sample of all the theories and methodologies within and after the

phenomenon of Abstract Expressionism. The ambiguity of content, non-referential and anti-

figural aesthetic, and the highly associational qualities of abstract artworks sanctions a variety of

interpretations and gives on to assorted realms of meaning, including the sacred, the

mythological and the metaphysical. And to further complicate things, all of these categories of

interpretation can, in turn, be supported by certain statements and claims made by artists such as

Rothko himself. Rothko appreciated the suggestiveness of irony, and often admits to saying less

than or opposite of what he actually meant; his indistinct attitude, non-descript art and denial of

labels all provide insight towards his artistic process. As quoted by Harold Rosenberg, “what

makes any definition of a movement in art dubious is that it never fits the deepest artists within

it.52” Indeed, for each theory, Rothko maintains an affirmative statement, accompanied by a

contradictory one – questioning the very validity of the critic’s interpretation.

52 Landau, E. pp. 31

The oppositional attitudes of American art critics developed from myriad of

irreconcilable differences and strict adherence to their particular theories. The critical canons that

arose pertained to the concept of a work of art as an act of self-expression and as a vehicle of

historical consciousness; disagreeing on the nature of the aesthetic crisis, moral content in art as

well as the overarching function and identity of criticism itself. Where as formalism located

quality exclusively contained within elements of the work, existentialism attributed meaning to

the process of creating while a spiritual approach equates meaning to religious experience. Yet,

even with obvious polarization, all three methods contain considerable commonalities.

Art critics in America took too literally Baudelaire’s advice that a critic should be

passionate and partisan resulting in several polemical methods in which adherents vehemently

took sides. Consequently, and regardless of stature, the critics designed themselves too closely

with one particular style and have been noticeably blind, antagonistic and insensitive to other

developments. This produced a substantial body or writing all with a common shortcoming,

where American “art criticism has often depth, but seldom breadth.53” However seemingly

different, the critics of the forties and fifties are all confronted with collective problems; the

critics not only struggled with the transcendence of their individual points of view, but also the

widespread skepticism of the great American artist and designation of European heritage as

equation for quality in art, as well as for acceptance of American art in general. Examined at a

distance, each of the three distinct methods contains complimentary elements and mutual

aspects, which float to the surface. Each agrees that Rothko’s signature style emerges after 1949,

distinguished by an obliteration of subject matter and a vital utilization of color. All identify

certain formal aspects as central and significant to Rothko’s technique, including his lack of

figuration, his massive canvas size, the crucial aspect of color and delicate treatment of light.

Given the variety of methods, each with identifiable limitations and precise tenets,

deciding upon a singular interpretive approach as ultimately appropriate is both counter-

productive and ineffectual. The formulating of a conclusive and universal theory, as applied to

Abstract Expressionism, is untenable; such adherence to a particular method situates the art

historian at square one. Instead, we are challenged to originate a practice less blinkered and more

historically aware, where there is not a single truth, but several, each determined by an

intermediate vantage point. Here, an exercise in compromise is required, simultaneously

acknowledging and mediating each critical practice. In a ‘Convergent’ theory, each of the three

methods are reduced to the common aims and valid points they share, aspiring to eliminate

extremist claims and biases and thus providing an objective framework of interpretation. Such an 53 Rose, pp. 20

inclusionary theory exposes theoretical contradictions and takes controversial issues into

account, seeking to appease the heated debates prevalent in American criticism. This convergent

theory incorporates a comprehensive formal analysis of an artwork, while also exploring the

social conditions, artistic intentions and historical context in which it’s created.

If an explanation of a work of art is clearly defined beforehand, the viewer’s primary

impulsive reaction is detracted and confounded. Perhaps abstract art, such as those works in

Rothko’s signature style, is better interpreted by an individual experience, either today or in the

future, in a museum or in a private chapel. This experience elucidates meaning by virtue of the

spectator’s encounter with a work, open to explanation by the beholder alone. By way of

promulgating the individual experience, we are able to expose a more syncopated, social,

political and intellectual context for such a crucial period in artistic development and beyond.