kamitlan

I remember clearly when I was first introduced to Rothko's paintings. It was my sophomore year of high school. My advanced art class took a school trip to the Menil Collection. At that time we were "learning" about abstract art. I put the "" because honestly I don't think I really understood what I was learning. I did believe and still do believe that abstract art has its place...not something to simply be sneared as just crap that anyone could do (yet i can agree with that statement on specific pieces but not on the whole of abstract art). There can be a lot of theory and philosophy behind it. Perhaps that's why I loved and still do love art. I remember trying to "see" something in the(Rothkos) paintings and telling my teacher so. It wasn't an attempt to appease my teacher, but an attempt to really show that I had some hidden eye for art...that I understood it, therefore be good at it. But I failed horribly. Specifically when we had to do our projects. I couldn't come up with any insightful thing to do. I sat on my stool envious as I watched fellow classmates come up with awesome work. Ok not like an awesomeness that would astound art academia, but what a 15 year old chica would wish to have in creativity and imagination. At that young age I became frustrated and gave up on art. I didn't take advanced art that next year and since then I have barely picked up a pencil.
It's funny as a child drawing came easier. At least in regard to subject matter. My small obsessions with horses and cats, and mountains still bring back the joyful memories in just spending countless hours drawing them. Except now I have the misfortune of having lost all those drawings in an accidental throwing away of papers. But worst, I have lost being engaged in subject matter that I would like to draw, or paint.

Anyways in reading about a current Rothko exhibition the following quote caught my attention.

This is a Rothko Painting:

"The fact that this sense of reverence is almost impossible to quite define is the essence of Rothko's appeal.
While established religion dies on its feet in Britain, few of us are outright atheists. The more brutally we are told that there is nothing there, the more convinced we seem to become that something - however unquantifiable - is."

Full article can be found at:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/09/25/barothko125.xml&page=2

And then in reading a blog related to the article this next quote struck deep into the actuality of my current view of Rothko. I wanted to see something in his work, but in retrospect to be honest with myself I never did. And after spending sometime in not believing in God or more specifically in the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist this quote struck a synapse in the memory section of my brain.

"I have never felt such a philistine as when I went to the private view of the Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern. I just didn't get it. It was like being an atheist at holy communion."

You can find the full little blog at:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/paul_gent/blog/2008/09/25/help__i_dont_like_rothko