No. 64

Emma Shapiro
Mark Rothko, No. 64, 1957
By EMMA SHAPIRO

Marcus Rothkowitz, born in 1903 in modern day Latvia, moved with his family to the United States in 1913. He continued practicing Yiddish, Hebrew, and other Jewish customs in a neighborhood known as Little Russia. When he decided to pursue painting as a career he changed his name to his famously recognized name today, Mark Rothko, to escape being denied success on account of his religion. After failing to echo the realism of the artists in his time, he began to change his style to that of something more abstract. This sudden change in style occurred in the early 1940s, possibly influenced by the events in Nazi Germany. Through the 1950s the Holocaust references grew further, Rothko even denied German museums the ability to display his paintings because of their role.

The colors in Rothko's No. 64 reflect those of the Nazis. Not only do they symbolize Nazi Germany's flag and swastika but the extensive amount of blood, death, and decay in the time period. The Ochre in the center of the painting has a little life within it. It could even be assumed that the Ochre symbolizes Rothko, safe from the turmoil in his new home of the United States. Even though detached from the events overseas, he still feels a part of it and its' destruction within him. His life sits atop the deaths of others who could not be saved. The black has inconsistencies of red and gray mixed within it, like smoke rising from a chimney.The undefined color change highlights the indistinguishable difference in that of life and death.

This summer I traveled through Eastern Europe, specifically Germany, Poland, and Prague. I learned extensive amounts and also saw first hand the remains and evidence. Every time I hear something of relation to the Holocaust now, I flash back to the moments I stood in the very place millions of people died. Rothko could not witness the occurrences, and unlike myself, did not experience the camps. Instead Rothko painted his feelings. 

  • 7:00 AM

The Stolen Kiss

Ellie Schneider
Jean Honore-Fragonard, The Stolen Kiss, 1788

By ELLIE SCHNEIDER

Jean Honore-Fragonard’s The Stolen Kiss is the perfect addition to any collection. Completed in 1788, this work has a more realistic subject than previous pieces. The painting catches any eye with pastel colors on bottom contrasting with darker colors on top. The illuminated woman draws eyes to the center of the photo where one sees a flirtatious scene taking place. The young woman is seen kissing a young man while other women appear to play cards in the other room. The woman leans into the young man while he grasps her hand, but she looks back towards the doorway. She also holds onto her wrap, which sits about a side-table with an open drawer where ribbons pouring out of. Here, Fragonard hints at their sexual relationship. The curtains seem to engulf the young lovers in darkness. The shawl on the table hints to her needing to get dressed after sleeping with the young man. The painting showcases a snapshot of an intimate moment between the two lovers before they part. This promiscuous scene is similar to many of Fragonard’s paintings.

Technically, the painting is amazing. Fragonard's intricate details makes the painting look close to a photograph. Fragonard, a fan of Dutch artists such as Rubens and Hals, uses blended brushstrokes and little details similar to the Dutch. The young woman’s dress showcases Fragonard’s painting skills. The dress has amazing texture with wrinkles and pleats. The dress hints to the woman’s extreme riches, as does her furniture. The carpet, side-table, and curtains further showcase Fragonard’s technical abilities.

Why wouldn’t you want this beautiful piece in your library or above your mantel? Not only does this piece make a statement, it then starts a conversation. Every man should have this frivolous Fragonard as a great addition to any collection. The Stolen Kiss perfectly captures a moment of passion between two young lovers.

 Editor's Note: The authors were asked to write sales copy for Edme-François Gersaint, the prominent rococo art dealer who offered a printed catalog of available works.
  • 10:45 AM

White Cloud Over Purple

Rosie Pasqualini
Mark Rothko, White Cloud Over Purple, 1957
By ROSIE PASQUALINI

I stand stranded on a canvas            cold core churning, sides aglow
overhead the white sky dances        while a redness roils below
I had spent ten lifetimes fighting        for the love of rugged eyes
and the mouths that spouted        —purple!—        ‘twas my name, as I surmised.

I hung fast within the vastness, knowing nowhere could surpass
This sweet world where walls were windows, and truth trembled through the glass.
But my skin grew thin from coveting a fate I failed to see;
Though surrounded by my siblings, I knew not what lived in me.
Then, one sorry Sunday morning, when no painted faces paid,
And the house of hues grew humble, and no footsteps ricocheted
Off the dusty marble sea        then I languished        then I screamed:

“Who is purple? What am I? Have I distilled my silhouette
for the irises of pupils who look through me and forget?
What a scornful predilection! Can’t I catch a single hint
of my bare reflection, unadorned by someone else’s tint?”

I stood stranded on a canvas            hot core burning, sides aglow
when I felt the white sky dancing        as the redness roiled below
so I spun about in wonder—            I was them, and they were me 
tugging one way, then the other        in discordant harmony.
  • 7:00 AM

Untitled (Blue, Dark Blue, Yellow)

Madeline Vasquez
Mark Rothko, Untitled (Blue, Dark Blue, Yellow), 1953
By MADELINE VASQUEZ

Through art, one can see true perfection by the stroke of a paint brush, the shading of a pencil, or even the exquisite construction of an eccentric sculpture. It can be viewed as a way for someone to either discover their true self or lose themselves by getting lost in the portrayal of the work of art. Every artist has a different method of expressing their thoughts, viewpoints, and feelings through what they create.

Mark Rothko, one of the incredible expressionistic artists of our time, used the concept of simplistic beauty through his paintings. Although his paintings do not refer to any specific idea revolving around worldly encounters, there is deeper meaning and emotion when observing his art. After my initial observation of his work, No.5/No.22, I perceived a sense of happiness. But, sometimes things aren’t always what they appear to be. Rothko commented on this painting saying, “If you are only moved by color relationships, then you miss the point. I'm interested in expressing the big emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom.". After reading Red, by John Logan, I was able to understand Rothko as an artist and his reasoning behind why he did not want his work to be featured at The Four Seasons. I see Rothko as a man of complete brilliance that wants the people who see his art, to be able to connect with it rather than not think anything of it at all. Also because of this, I am able to appreciate his work more.

When looking at Untitled (Blue, Dark Blue, Yellow), I picture myself laying on the ground staring up into the nothingness of space. I can see the dark sky with hints of varying shades of blue and twinkling stars filling the openness of the sky. But, with this I also feel emptiness, as if getting lost into the emptiness of humanity itself. When looking at this painting, it makes me feel small because of how I view the painting. It allows me to think about my existence and know that I am just one being in the vast universe. This brings me back to watching the video on Existentialism and the concept of Sartre’s “existence precedes essence.” This means that we first exist and our actions later define the person we become and choose to be, thus relating to how the viewer of a painting relates or does not relate to the meaning behind an artist’s work.

Overall, after being able to learn about Rothko and his interpretation on art and what he sees to be profound, I am able to better appreciate how amazing the simple things in life can be.
  • 7:30 AM

No.9

Lisa Maeda
Rothko, No.9, 1954
By LISA MAEDA

 Standing on the surface of the moon, I look out into the horizon. Greeted by a dark abyss above, the luminosity beneath me assures me that I'm still grounded. All this, surrounded by a frame of burnt orange — a gentle reminder that this bleak, breathtaking landscape exists simply as a painting.

 Mark Rothko's formula for abstract works seemingly allow for little detail, at least from a distance. An assortment of 3 or 4 colors, a few horizontal blocks, an unsteady hand, and voila! A bona fide Rothko, or so I thought. However, we aren't supposed to view Rothko's paintings as tiny thumbnails on Google. When asked how they should be viewed, Rothko replied, "18 inches [away]," most likely while rapidly smoking away at a cigarette. Considering his canvases ran just above the size of a regular human being, viewing a Rothko from 18 inches away would remove all distractions from one's field of vision. Now that's a different way of seeing things.

 Rothko sought tragedy in his work. Yet, in a world plagued with war and the threat of nuclear annihilation, the public desired to avert their eyes from exactly that. It's no wonder, then, that his paintings prompted many to tears at the sight of them. In Simon Schama's Power of Art, Rothko's scenes are often accompanied by a grim piano track and grey scale. His actor speaks slowly and sparingly. He is solemn faced and still, surrounded by little in his giant workshop. This lonely cinematic experience and Nietzsche's existentialist teachings honed my outlook on abstract art as a whole.

 Though the wars of the 20th century have passed, the existentialist concept of a meaningless world still remains. Still, if faced with insignificant lives and a feckless world, it is our responsibility to make something of it. Rothko's works, vague as they are, hold the same principle. Engage with the work, and discover your interpretation.
  • 7:00 AM

Black, Black on Wine

Black on Wine
Mark Rothko, Black, Black on Wine, 1958
By MEGAN GANNON

 Initially Black, Black on Wine looks like any other of Rothko's later works with black consuming the painting, pools of color around the edges and a rough line through the center. Hinting perhaps at his fear of the artistic and literal death by black displayed in Shama and Red.

Now take a second, let the painting pulse. Let the two vague black squares pulse against the delicate yet messy line in the middle. Look how the painting pulls the little line in and out of the darkness, allowing it to escape at the edges of the canvas. That messy delicate line represents us. Humans. The loosely shapen blacken shadows represent the pressures of society and the internal struggle within ourselves. Day by day we pulse between what society deems correct and with our own internal conflict. Some days the two agree in nice symmetry and others the two struggle to coexist. Rothko argues that the pressures consume us.

 Transport yourself into the space between the shadows. Do you feel the anxiety? The rush in your blood, the pressure to succeed, to live. Didi and Gogo lacked purpose, but what happens when your subconscious argues over your purpose: pushing you in the way of society while simultaneously your mind pulls you in a completely different direction. What happens when the black shadows loom over you and your insides spill out the sides, trying to escape. The pigments bursting at the seams to overcome the pressures of society and ourselves.

Unfortunately we will not experience some explosion of technicolor freeing our little line, for us we exist between the black. Our own version of Sisyphus and his boulder.

  • 7:00 AM

Untitled 1959

Isabel Thomas
Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1959
By ISABEL THOMAS

 When I started looking through Mark Rothko’s paintings, I knew that I would spend a great deal of time with whichever one I selected. I tried to decide if I wanted oranges and yellows, grays and blacks, or tragic blues. This search turned into an emotional roller coaster, as some paintings made the emptiness of the universe all too immediate and others took me back to summer days in the yard with my brothers. After watching the course of my life in Rothko’s paint, I opened an image of Untitled 1959. Even an online copy had enough power to clear my mind of everything except this painting. The colors glow as if they create their own light source, and John Logan’s play Red suddenly makes more sense than ever – these reds define passion more completely than words ever could.

Untitled 1959 has more life than Rothko’s darker paintings. It is still a dramatic work – just less of a tragedy. One can feel the blood pumping through this painting – it radiates life. Rothko used all reds and plums and no black colors in Untitled 1959, and this shows how much passion he had. Created just over a decade before the artist’s suicide, this painting reflects that, despite Rothko’s pain and his frustration at society, his passion remained under all of the darkness. Rothko showed in this painting that he could still produce moments of brightness.

The work’s overall radiance initially hit me, but, as my eyes shifted to the darker top section, I felt my mood change and my outlook shift. Dark plum shades divide the painting into three distinct pieces. At first, I could not tell if the middle section sinks below or hovers above the rest of the painting, but I now believe that it breaks away from darkness to leave any black below.

No observer can escape from the emotion of this painting. It has no mild area for respite from the intense, concentrated feeling. In Untitled 1959, Rothko forces his viewers to face passion.

  • 7:00 AM

We Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

Mark Luce


Rothko in Antwerp
A note from the editor: 

After a lengthier than imagined hiatus, I am happy to report that My Kid Could Paint that will return in full tomorrow. We ran into any number of technical issues with the re-design, and we also found that several of our authors had virtually “disappeared” with their graduation and attendant removal from the Barstow e-mail system. 


Over the course of the next few months, we will do some needed housecleaning - getting the tags right for alumni authors, replacing images that have vanished and generally making the site easy to use. We encourage you to follow us on Facebook or Twitter, as each day’s article will be posted upon the social networks. 


The students started this year by reading John Logan’s Red, which traces Mark Rothko’s decision to cancel a large commission for the Four Seasons in the Seagram’s building. We watched an episode on Rothko from Simon Schama’s Power of Art, read Camus’ “Myth of Sisyphus” and traversed the futile landscape of Waiting for Godot. The students’ first posts simply made me smile. They are personal and probing, bold and brainy. Watching students gain intellectual confidence provides me with all the rewards I need from this profession. What will follow here: another group of students who will impress with their insight, wit and words. 
  • 7:00 AM

The Calling of Saint Matthew

Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600

Note: We mortals are not worthy to comment on this painting or its creator.

Sir Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio tore through restrictions in both society and painting. He killed over girls, pulled swords and daggers on people in the street, and vandalized his own apartment in a fit of rage. Caravaggio’s mouth got him in more trouble than did his actions, and when his life of debauchery got him exiled, he began an adventure that took him all over Italy, led him to become a knight in Malta, and set him up to blow everyone away upon his return.

The Baroque artist had indisputable natural talent. He did not sketch before painting, which only makes his works more impressive, and he rejected the classical idea that Biblical personages must be depicted as celestial beings in Utopian scenes. Caravaggio shared a covenant of honesty with his public, so he did not hesitate to show the morbid, painful, and real aspects of life. He brought all subjects down to the same base level, because saints were humans, just like the peasants of 1600, on the same Earth as Caravaggio.

The Fabbrica of St. Peter’s commissioned The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599-1600), coupled with The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, for the Contarelli Chapel. The first publicly displayed works of Caravaggio, these paintings highlight his artistic strengths of light and dark, weight, and earthliness. The Calling of Saint Matthew shows a conversion in austerity. Matthew, the apostle who wrote the first Gospel, was a tax collector obsessed with the material until called upon by Christ. Matthew counts money in a common, dirty tavern until the light of God comes down to bring him out of his materialistic darkness. In this representation, the partially-hidden Christ appears in the background instead of acting as the focus of the painting.

The aesthetic of The Calling of Saint Matthew comes from the vertical/horizontal balance of the painting's subjects. Contrast in body language and color also draws in observers to explore the variety of the work. The staging allows the scene to feel intimate and natural but still open its audience. Caravaggio breaks down the fourth wall in many of his paintings, and his use of heaviness and facial expression allows the masses to relate to Saint Matthew’s miracle, whether they first see this painting in 1600 or 2015.

  • 5:30 PM

Over the Town

Isabel Thomas
Marc Chagall, Over the Town, 1918
By ISABEL THOMAS

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.

On a family vacation over the summer, I skipped some of the more frivolous activities offered on the Allure of the Seas and, as a budding art historian, instead attended art lectures and three-hour auctions for paintings that I could never afford. During one of those lectures, the Park West Gallery representative painted a picture of the life of Marc Chagall, an artist with whom I became familiar the year before in Paris. Before the cruise, I had known Chagall simply as the man who recreated the ceiling of l’Opéra Garnier and painted colorful floating people, but as one of few audience members I learned about his tragic life and relationship with Bella Rosenfeld.

Chagall was born in Liozna, Russia (now Belarus) in 1887 and moved to Paris in 1910 to advance his artistic career. In 1914, he returned to Russia to marry Bella and bring her back to France with him. World War One broke out during Chagall’s trip to Vitebsk, and he could not leave the country. Marc and Bella did not return to France until 1923, and they once again escaped war when they left Nazi-occupied Paris for New York City in 1941. War eventually reached them in 1944 when Bella contracted a virus and died due to wartime medicine shortages. In addition to his wife’s death, the Holocaust sent Chagall into a deep depression, and, after a short hiatus, he painted only Bella to preserve her memory and the memory of his people.

Chagall’s comments about his wife were almost as colorful as his paintings. After he first met Bella, Chagall said, “Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me.” He created floating couples in his works to capture the celestial feeling of his love. In the early years of their marriage, Chagall included flowers in his paintings to celebrate their union, but these turned to funeral flowers after the war.

I had never learned to connect an artist’s personal situation with his/her work, and that lecture allowed me to see Chagall’s story and love for his wife in the details of his art. Over the Town, painted in 1918, captures weightless bliss in Chagall’s gray hometown.  The couple and a singular house provide the color of this work the same way that Bella brightened her husband’s world. I did not initially appreciate the appearance of this painting but learned that the historical and personal contexts are often more important. This understanding guided me through Art History, and the experience of that lecture brought me back every day of the trip and led me to this year’s class to discover the stories behind countless other paintings and sculptures.


  • 7:00 AM