Ongoing

MoMA

Mark Rothko. No. 10. 1950. Oil on canvas, 7' 6 3/8" × 57 1/8" (229.6 × 145.1 cm). Gift of Philip Johnson. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • MoMA, Floor 4, 403 The David Geffen Galleries

“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on,” Mark Rothko once said. Like many of his fellow Abstract Expressionist artists, Rothko, in response to unthinkable atrocities—the Holocaust, the vast casualties on the battlefields of World War II, the atomic bomb—believed in the power of abstract art to reassert the highest ideals of humankind.

From the late 1940s until his death in 1970, Rothko tested the limitless possibilities of layering dense fields of colors on large-scale canvases. His paintings invite the viewer to become, in his words, “enveloped within” them. His early palette was rich with vivid reds, yellows, and blues that at times vibrate against each other; later, these colors gave way to somber dark purples and greens and, ultimately, blacks. For Rothko, art was a profound form of communication, one capable of conveying the “scale of human feelings, the human drama,” as he described. Through works like these, he hoped to create the conditions for silence and contemplation.

Organized by Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, and Danielle Johnson, former Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints.

6 works online

Support for the exhibition is provided by the Annual Exhibition Fund. Leadership contributions to the Annual Exhibition Fund, in support of the Museum’s collection and collection exhibitions, are generously provided by Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, the Sandra and Tony Tamer Exhibition Fund, the Kate W. Cassidy Foundation, Alice and Tom Tisch, the Marella and Giovanni Agnelli Fund for Exhibitions, The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Eva and Glenn Dubin, Mimi Haas, The David Rockefeller Council, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz, Kenneth C. Griffin, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, and Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder. Major funding is provided by The Sundheim Family Foundation.

Artist

Installation images

How we identified these works

In 2018–19, MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos. That project has concluded, and works are now being identified by MoMA staff.

If you notice an error, please contact us at [email protected].

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].