Mark Rothko and Purity of Vision

The truth-seeker strives to get to know ultimate reality, the most fundamental reality. If this quest is philosophical and metaphysical, it will also involve introspection. Therein, the truth-seeker will also encounter the truth of his own mind, as an integral element of that reality. Such a quest for truth will lead to purification. If you are lucky, you will finally encounter a purified vision of fundamental reality and a purified vision of the mind. Mark Rothko aimed at expressing “universal truths”. In the world of his time, there were no universal truths anymore. Actually, only in medieval, in ancient, in atavistic times there have been lifeworlds and experience realms that were wholly integrated in themselves, unitarian and universal (or so we are inclined to think). Ours is a time of partial truths and accumulations of expert knowledges. Since man cannot bear living in an environment of partial truths, Rothko sought for expressing universal truths, yet at the basis of a contemporary, appropriate worldview and knowledge about the world. (And, I reiterate, what is likeable about the Abstract Expressionists, respectively about modern artists, is that, in apparent contrast to contemporary artists, they wanted such things.) For Rothko, the artist has the task to create a “plastic equivalent to the highest truth” and not to reproduce the specific details of a certain object. Since he was also seeking for truth in art, i.e. the medium in which truth can be expressed in specific ways, he was seeking for an absolute power of painting in itself, revealed not in reference to something, but in reference to itself. Rothko struggled a lot. Like the other major Abstract Expressionists it took him many years, decades to come up with the ultimate results that then became his signature paintings. (Because of this, the art of the Abstract Expressionists, and of the moderns in general, has the charisma of being born out of a transcendent effort, of having been through something, whereas contemporary art has not and therefore deems intellectually powerless.) If you want to get to know reality and the reality of your mind in a fundamental way, you have to be very active and contemplative. It will require great effort. You have to progressively deconstruct traditions, inherited knowledge, ideologies, affiliations, etc. You will finally encounter a vision in which there will be not very much to see. It will be some rather undifferentiated primal ground. Yet out of the primal ground emerges everything; virtually, the primal ground contains everything. In terms of the reality of your mind, you will encounter the primal ground of the power of imagination, the basic capacity of imagination. If you have managed to encounter this in such a fundamental way, you will finally be in control of reality and of the power of imagination. You will have achieved versatility. You will be enlightened. The signature paintings of Rothko are expressions of fundamental reality and epiphanies of the purification of mind.

The primal ground is something primitive and tranquil, but also, and foremost, something extremely sophisticated and very active, agitated. The individual visions of the primal ground are somehow similar to each other, but they are also different and differentiated from each other. Also Ad Reinhardt and Barnett Newman came up with visions of the primal ground (respectively practically all the Abstract Expressionists sought to come up with such a kind of thing, with something primordial). I personally prefer Newman over Rothko. Newman´s signature paintings contain the “Zip”, a narrow vertical flash that emerges over an undifferentiated ground. Such truly is the basic structure of the world: a motif emerges out of, or within, a background. With the right mindset, you understand them both. (“Enlightenment” means: you can permanently switch between motif and background, you oscillate between motif and background: this is then the desired vision of (an internally highly differentiated) “unity” of all things.) Rothko´s paintings are more unclear. They are less internally differentiated. It is said that Rothko wanted to express the Sublime, the Divine, or that he wanted to express harmony. He wanted to create pacifying environments. He wanted to do something  purely meditative. In contrast to this, Newman´s paintings are actually unsettling, even terrifying. They express the IN THE BEGINNING was the word, the Let there be light. They express basic creation, they express the event, something that rips, something that tears apart. Newman´s paintings express the Logos. With the “Zip”, the possibility of narration, of rationality, and therefore of eternal agitation, uneasiness, turmoil and tumult enters. Rothko´s paintings are pre-narrative. They are more oceanic or, if you may, they are more mud-like. Rothko´s paintings are more formulaic, they are more boring, they are weaker. They are, in their repetitiveness, even a bit silly and a bit stupid. But Rothko´s paintings are considerably more popular than Newman´s. Rothko is some kind of household name; Newman is not. If you are into sarcasm you may think this is so because Rothko is “less intellectual” than Newman. People do not want to be confronted with the Logos, especially not if it comes as an aggressive flash. They want to be lulled. Yet, first and foremost, Rothko, maybe more than Newman, actually has managed to create something truly iconic. Rothko´s paintings are more like – paintings (Newman´s actually are more conceptual). Maybe more than Newman´s, Rothko´s signature paintings are iconic, like Warhol´s soup cans, Dali´s Camembert watches, Raphael´s little angels in the Sistine Madonna, Michelangelo´s Creation of Adam, Leonardo´s Mona Lisa, or Duchamp´s urinal. If you have managed to come up with something iconic, then you have most likely triumphed over other frailties that there might be. In his comparative superficiality, Rothko is perhaps more profound, deeper, universal than Newman. (Superficial as I am, I still prefer Newman over Rothko.)