Word: abstraction
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While Mark Rothko ultimately became famous for his luminous abstract paintings of colored fields, his less well-known early realist work—though fundamentally different—shaped and, in hindsight, foreshadowed what was later to come, an evolution clearly visible in the collection of early works curated by Klaus Kertess at the PaceWildenstein Gallery...
...beautiful and composed as they are, it is difficult to look at Rothko’s realist works in a vacuum without considering his later abstract work. His use of color and brushwork, particularly in the settings, bears a close resemblance to the colored planes to come. In “Untitled (Subway)” (1937), isolated figures—none of them apparently aware of each other’s presence—sit or stand waiting on a train platform. At right, the tracks narrow and fade into the distance; the sense of space and perspective...
...does illuminate his later work, which is so well known that it informs any consideration of the exhibition, the show presents the diversity, quality, and quantity of Rothko’s figurative work, which perhaps could have become a career in itself had it not been overshadowed by his abstract paintings...
...well about his own prospects? It seemed hard to imagine that a man so rich and cunning, however confident that when he died others would take his place, would not have made arrangements to put that day off as long as possible. Martyrdom may have its appeal in the abstract, but as the eagerly surrendering Taliban revealed, the reality is less appealing. "We're chasing a person," President Bush said Friday, "who encourages young people to go kill themselves, and he, himself, refuses to stand and fight." The rumors of bin Laden's escape into Pakistan persisted last week...
...opposite extreme from this image is Signac's wonderful and bizarre Portrait of Felix Feneon, Opus 217, 1890-91--the fox-jawed face with its little tuft of beard in profile, the hand holding a cyclamen, against a madly spiraling background of fruit-jelly abstract forms. The dandified, loony energy of Feneon's argot-filled writing seems impacted into that background, even though its source is a Japanese kimono pattern. My, you think, those guys must have had some laughs together. Which they...