Untitled
This large untitled work belongs to a pivotal moment in Rothko’s career when he had developed a mode of abstract image making that drew upon not just Surrealist automatism and Jungian psychology but also his deep interest in archaic cultures of the Aegean and the Ancient Near East, interests shared by his friends, the artists Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman. In 1943, Rothko famously proclaimed their kinship as well as their shared investment in subject matter that is "tragic and timeless."[1] Rothko’s compositions from this period, primarily made in watercolor on paper, evidence this engagement with universal and mythic ideas through a proliferation of pictographic or biomorphic elements that reference prehistoric forms of expression such as cave paintings, carved symbols, and glyphs. With its horizon lines and atmospheric haze, the submerged or emerging forms in the center of the composition have often been described in submarine or geological terms. The partly recognizable, mostly abstract forms have been interpreted as metaphors for the unconscious. Suggestive and nebulous in equal measure, the bulbous shapes become reminiscent of vegetal or animal forms, or vessels, such as Greek amphorae and lekythoi, or ancient anthropomorphic figures which the artist might have even seen at The Met (43.89.3; 34.126.53).
Artwork Details
- Title: Untitled
- Artist: Mark Rothko (American (born former Russian Empire, now Latvia), Dvinsk 1903–1970 New York, New York)
- Date: ca. 1944–46
- Medium: Watercolor and opaque watercolor with scraping over graphite on paper
- Dimensions: 22 15/16 × 31 1/4 in. (58.3 × 79.4 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: Gift of the Maria and Conrad Janis Estate, 2024
- Object Number: 2024.88.28
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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Mark Rothko
1949
Mark Rothko
1954
Mark Rothko
1969
Mark Rothko
1969
Mark Rothko
ca. 1944–46
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