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In the late 1940s, several prominent artists of the New York School--among them Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella--were intently studying the color black. That work, interrelated but not collaborative, resulted in an astonishing number of almost monochromatic black paintings, which today are considered treasures of many major collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art's. For the first time, Black Paintings gathers all of the best of the title artist's black works together: textured black, striped black, blue-black, brown-black, black-black. In thorough illustration and thoughtful analysis, it sheds light on the differences between these postwar works as well as their commonalities. For Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg, black was a way to disappear into something new, a way to a new artistic vocabulary. For Mark Rothko, it stood for emptiness and nothingness; it asked the spectator to reflect back on it. For Ad Reinhardt, it offered denial and invisibility. Each artist's black portfolio reflects a breakthrough or transition in his own work, and, combined, they represent a larger moment of transition. The Black Paintings marked both a beginning and an end: the end of painting as illusion, as a window onto the world, and the beginning of painting as the mode for the creation of self-sufficient perceptual objects--a change that granted new roles to both artist and viewer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Black is Light
Black Paintings offers a unique view of the creative process of image making among some of the prominent painters of our time. The book has an unusual format - the font used and layout of the text, almost as though it was done on a typewriter.
The quality of the reproductions is very good although some of them require taking a hard look to see the nuances of tonal differences within the dark shades of black.
I highly recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the art of painting. ... Read more

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In the first full-scale study of the artist, the author chronicles Rothko's life, work, artistic formation, and philosophical preoccupations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

definitive
The definitive book on Mark Rothko's work, by one of his closest friends.Ashton gets as close as she can to a very elusive, contradictory person.The book requires the same kind of sublime imagination that Rothko's paintings - his "children," as he often called them - require.Those without soul should pass this book by.

I thought it was about something else!
Seriously I did.The first time I saw a Rothko painting was at the SFMoMA.It covered an entire wall of the room and was the biggest thing on canvas I have ever seen.I was hoping that Dore Ashton's book would giveme an insight into the meaning and style of Rothko, but rather, it seemedto be a biography of the man rather than a critism of the work.I supposethat's partially my fault since I'm sure there quite a bit of art critismbooks out there on Rothko...unfortunately, the historical presentation ofthe book isn't really all that interesting.I guess in the end, the bigpicture is that Rothko was deeply influenced by his Marxist experiencesbecause that's what I got from Ashton's book.On a side note, Dore Ashtonwrites for Modern Painter magazine, which is actually a good magazine.

The worst book about Rothko?
Out of two hundred plus pages here you will find a grand total of maybe two pages' worth of remarks that strike you by their precision, sensitivity, and depth of understanding of the work -that is until yourealize that these are without exception quotes from the artist himself.Ashton herself seems to have nothing to say "about Rothko".Desperate to write a "big" and "important" book, sheoffers empty hyperbole in place of thoughtful analysis, coated in suchconvoluted, meaningless, and purely academic lingo that by page fivereading the book becomes a painful chore not unlike having to clean theunderside of a sanitation truck with a toothbrush. Frankly, I don't see howa manual on transmission repair could offer fewer insights into Rothko'spainting.

Ashton's cryptic writing mirrors Rothko's mystery
I read the book in the eighties, when it was published-- I was attracted to the great photo of Rothko on the cover-- the book is a loving Rothko-like homage--cryptic, deep, serious-- the lack of irony is sometimes hard to take-- but addsa sense of the compelling-- I found myself reflecting upon it-- as one might reflect upon one of the paintings-- Ashton obviously loved her subject-- oh, she describes her meetings with Rothko-- in his later, financially secure period eating in an upper east side chinese restaurant-- a delight. ... Read more

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Why taunt and flout us, as Beckett's writing does? Why discourage us from seeing, as Mark Rothko's paintings often can? Why immobilize and daze us, as Alain Resnais' films sometimes will? Why, Leo Bersnai and Ulysse Dutoit ask, would three acknowledged masters of their media make work deliberately opaque and inhospitable to an audience? This book shows how such crippling moves may signal a profoundly original - and profoundly anti-modernist - renunciation of art's authority. Our culture, while paying little attention to art, puts great faith in its edifying and enlightening value. Yet Beckett's threadbare plays "Company" and "Worstword Ho", so insistent on their poverty of meaning; Rothko's nearly monochromatic paintings in the Houston Chapel; Resnais' intensly self-contained, self-referential films "Night and Fog" and "Muriel" all seem to say "I have little to show you, little to tell you, nothing to teach you." Bersnai and Dutoit consider these works as acts of resistance; by inhibiting our movement toward them, they purposely frustrate our faith in art as a way of appropriating and ultimately mastering reality.As this book demonstrates, these artists train us in new modes of mobility, which differ from the moves of an appropriating consciousness. As a form of cultural resistance, a rejection of a view of reality - both objects and human subjects - as simply there for the taking, this training may even give birth to a new kind of political power, one paradoxically consistent with the renunciation of authority. ... Read more

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The evolution and philosophy of color field painting, as revealed by four masters of the movement.

Developed at the tail end of the abstract expressionist movement, color field painting is distinguished by pure, unmodulated areas of color, flat, two-dimensional space, and large, often irregularly shaped canvases. The genre is often associated with American painting, but was actually embraced by an international group of artists. Four of the most exciting of those practitioners are the focus of this penetrating study. Michael Auping sees the work of each of these artists as representing a different stage in the development of abstract painting in the 1950s and 1960s. He comments, "To my mind Rothko draws back the curtains, if you will, on the opening up of this space. Newman emphatically `declares' an almost totemic space, while Fontana literally slices through the picture's plane with a razor, and Klein, as he pronounced it, leaps into the void." Illustrated with color images of the artists' seminal works, Declaring Space shows how each painter made his own individual mark in a new realm of abstract art. ... Read more

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Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz was a Latvian-born American painter and printmaker. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted the classification as an "abstract painter". ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Rothko Chapel is a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas founded by John and Dominique de Menil. The interior serves not only as a chapel, but also as a major work of modern art. On its walls are fourteen black but color hued paintings by Mark Rothko. The shape and design of the chapel was largely influenced by the artist. In 1964 Rothko was commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil (also founders of the nearby Menil Collection) to create a meditative space filled with his paintings. The works are site-specific, one of the requirements of the program. As Rothko was given creative license on the design of the structure, he clashed with the project's original architect, Philip Johnson over the plans for the chapel. The plans went through several revisions and architects. ... Read more

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Chapters: Art Museums and Galleries in Latvia, Art Schools in Latvia, Latvian Artists, Mark Rothko, Lucia Peka, Kārlis Padegs, Jānis Kalmīte, Arnis Balcus, Adja Yunkers, Rihards Zariņš, Leo Michelson, Inta Ruka, Saldus Art School, Latvian National Museum of Art, Ivars Hirss, Rixc, Leonid Berdichevsky, Bernhard Borchert, Gints Gabrans, Riga Porcelain Museum, Arnold Mikelson, Arsenāls - Fine Arts Museum, Latvian Museum of Foreign Art, Latvian Museum of Decorative Arts and Design. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 80. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz (September 25, 1903 February 25, 1970), was a Latvian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted the classification as an "abstract painter". Mark Rothko (Marcus Rothkowitz, Mark Rotkovich) was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian Empire (now Daugavpils, Latvia). His father, Jacob Rothkowitz, was a pharmacist and an intellectual, who provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious, upbringing. Unlike Jews in most cities of Czarist Russia, those in Dvinsk had been spared from violent outbreaks of anti-Semitic pogroms. However, in an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, Rothkos early childhood was plagued with fear. Despite Jacob Rothkowitz's modest income, the family was highly educated, and able to speak Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew. Following Jacob's return to Orthodox Judaism, he sent Marcus, his youngest son, to the cheder at age 5, where he studied the Talmud although his elder siblings had been educated in the public school system. Fearing that his sons were about to be drafted into the Czarist army, Jacob Rothkowitz emigrated from Russia t...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=127657 ... Read more

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Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Man Ray, Arnold Schoenberg, Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Camille Pissarro, Max Jacob, Mark Rothko, Pascin, Moise Kisling, Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, László Moholy-Nagy, Jane Frank, Walter Goodman, El Lissitzky, Robert B. Sherman, Eliahu Gat, Ben Shahn, Philip de László, Archie Rand, Chaim Goldberg, Lasar Segall, Ronnie Landfield, Lucian Freud, Ilka Gedő, Mark Gertler, R. B. Kitaj, Al Feldstein, Philip Guston, Felix Nussbaum, Charlotte Salomon, Paul Burlin, Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman, Sonia Delaunay, Wolfgang Paalen, Isaac Levitan, Jules Olitski, Avi Schwartz, Samuel Bak, Dora Maar, Roberto Aizenberg, Morris Louis, Carlo Levi, Eric Fischl, Rhea Carmi, Solomon Hart, Felix Lembersky, Nicolae Vermont, Jim Dine, Leonid Pasternak, Ida Applebroog, Jack Levine, Mordechai Avniel, Dina Babbitt, Bill Meyer, Simeon Solomon, Raphael Soyer, Solomon Joseph Solomon, Ilya Schor, Léon Bakst, Adolph Gottlieb, Larry Rivers, Jozef Israëls, Shimshon Holzman, Nehemiah Persoff, Jacob Kramer, Gerald Davis, Menashe Kadishman, Fred Uhlman, Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan, Zahara Schatz, Nathan Altman, Max Liebermann, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Louis Marcoussis, Julia Goodman, Nahum Gutman, Fernando Gerassi, Isaac Soyer, Paul Brach, Joseph Solman, Larry Zox, Grégoire Michonze, Maurycy Gottlieb, Gluck, Richard Lindner, List of Israeli Visual Artists, Jesekiel David Kirszenbaum, Judy Cassab, Michael Gross, Bernard Meninsky, Hyman Bloom, Mane-Katz, Lionel S. Reiss, Liebermann-Villa, Ahuva Sherman, Nat Mayer Shapiro, Eduard Frankfort, Anna Ticho, Lubov Rabinovich, Joseph Kossonogi, Michel Kikoine, Isidor Kaufmann, William S. Schwartz, Pinchus Kremegne, Ludwig Meidner, Moshe Maimon, Yitzhak Frenkel, Eric Goldberg, Ofer Lellouche, Romeo Niram, Paul Citroen, Isaak Brodsky, ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=63135 ... Read more