Twenty-two years after the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, the Fondation Louis Vuitton once again offers us the pleasure of immersing ourselves in the hypnotic fields of color of the painter Mark Rothko, the great master of colorfield 1.
“How can one express what cannot be expressed, yet is felt so intensely? How can words introduce a work that has brought pictoriality to its incandescent peak […]? What is the visitor seeking, captivated by what speaks so powerfully to their eyes, their heart, their entire being? What is the artist himself relentlessly searching for, as rare photographs show him in his studio, tirelessly scrutinizing the colored fields to which he has gradually reduced his own canvases? Why, even today, does this work appear so necessary to us in its timeless urgency to evoke the human condition, this poignancy 2 hidden deep within each of us, as Rothko intended it to be at the heart of his work […]?”, wonders Suzanne Pagé 3, curator of the exhibition, in the catalogue preface. It is difficult, in fact, to describe the emotion that overwhelms us at the sight of one of the abstract canvases by the American painter who conceived his works "as spectacles" but also as "transcendental experiences." 2.
"Abstract icons"
Far from theaction paintingHis abstract work, which developed in the late 1940s after figurative beginnings inspired by Expressionism and then Surrealism, stems from a slow, meditative process and invites contemplation, even meditation. We feel ourselves floating before his reduced, floating spaces—two or three rectangles with diffuse, blurred contours, a velvety texture, and luminous color. Rigorously flat, entirely devoted to color, the space nonetheless creates multiple depths arising from imperceptible chromatic variations. The blues, yellows, reds, greens, and then, at the end of his life, the blacks and grays, like the gold backgrounds of icons, are suspended and seem to evaporate or dissolve in their own light. And the fascination takes hold…
- Literally meaning "colored field," this term was used in 1962 by critic Clement Greenberg to refer to the painting of artists such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still, who emerged from abstract expressionism and were heirs to Matisse in their conception of color as an object in itself, autonomous, not subject to form or any narrative or illustration.
- Quotes from the artist himself.
- Artistic director of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Suzanne Pagé was already, in 1999, the curator of the MAM exhibition (of which she was then the director).
Born Marcus Rotkovitch in 1903 in Dvinsk, in the Russian Empire, Rothko emigrated in 1913 to Portland to join his father who had left three years earlier, before settling in 1923 in New York, where he took his own life in his studio in 1970.
“I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing, and stretching one's arms again transcendental experiences became possible. »
"I don't believe it was ever about being abstract or representational. It's actually about ending this silence and this solitude, about breathing and reaching out so that transcendental experiences become possible again."
The Romantics Were Prompted, essay by Mark Rothko, 1947-48; cited in Possibilities, flight. 1, no. 1, winter 1947-48, Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko.
“Mark Rothko”
Louis Vuitton Foundation
8, avenue du Mahatma Gandhi, Paris 16e
From October 18, 2023 to April 2, 2024
