Colour is an emotion, it always is. Think of a blue sky versus a grey one, versus a pink-tinged orange one or the deep velvety blue or black, all rife with completely different moods and hence emotions. Of all the expressionist painters, say Van Gogh who brought sunny, cheery sunflowers to life or Monet who poured a dull hue over every scene, or Matisse who defined block, opaque colour in a different narrative. But an artist who gave colour it’s due, without a subject, or rather a subject that could be arrived at by the bystander themself is Rothko.
A New York based artist of Russian origin (now that park of Russia is present day Latvia), who painted rectangular floating clouds of art on a large scale canvas to bring out raw, unfiltered colour and hence raw, unfiltered emotion. It is said that in a gallery filled with Rothkos, the average museum goers have been filled with joy or brought to tears at their own accord. He intended to provoke tragedy, ecstasy, doom, as he says. Though his artistic evolution saw him begin with early figurative works and urban scenes, to a period of transition figuring biomorphic abstraction influenced by mythology and surrealism, finally abandoning all rules with his Colour-field work, his mature works feature two or three soft-edged rectangular floating clouds of saturated colour on a contrasting coloured background. The large canvases that he usually painted on be believed could create a sense on intimacy and a rich spiritual experience for the viewer. He insisted his paintings were not merely about color relationships, but were dramas designed to communicate basic human emotions.
It is true, when one observes a Rothko its floods one with a serie of emotions, while yellow, red and orange are truly uplifting, black, burgundy and maroon could be equally devastating. Its the colour field when our visual senses are flooded with swathes of opaque solid colour and evoke an experience of seeing that colour balanced with another. In this day and age of extreme information, where we can even live vicariously through pictures that can at times be microscopical in nature, that have so much information that it can feel like we have lived it in real, it is a welcome break to have abstraction in art that bring one back to one’s body and feelings. A lot of talk and research is being done in this world on meditation and its benefits, that solely impress to bring one back to oneself in this world that offers a myriad of experiences, can we go back to experiencing oneself. One of the best ways to meditate and ground oneself, could simply be to watch a Rothko painting, or equivalent work that are a part of the Colour-Field painting. The best part of a Rothko or how it stands apart from all the others is the fact that the soft edges of the clouds are almost surreal, but then he had me with the colours and what they are paired with.
Vedasri Siddamsetty 