Visual Literacy Blog

When Mr. Tallman told us that we had to do a visual literacy blog for homework, I knew immediately what I was going to do, and it's kind of cheating.
The show I'm currently working on is entitled "Red" by John Logan and it's about Mark Rothko. More specifically, it's about Rothko and his assistant Ken, but I digress. Mark Rothko is a rather controversial painter from the mid to late 20th century. While usually described as an abstract expressionist, he resisted any sort of classification of his work with vehemence. The painting you see below is one that exemplifies the style he came to be known for: large rectangular blocks of color. What's important to note is that these blocks are not solid, singular colors. The red shifts hue, with the black sometimes creating a darker shade than the area around it. Rothko's methodology involved painting massive amounts of layers, constantly creating slight adjustments in the shade until he thought it was right.

I chose this painting because of a theme in Rothko's words in the play. He finds life, emotion, and hurt (he was a bit masochistic) in the color red and the exact opposite in the color black. His big concern in the play, literally and metaphorically, was that the red would swallow the black. In this painting, you can pretty clearly see this happening. Not only does the black surround the red, as I mentioned above the black is also working its way into the red. It is stealing its vibrancy and its life and sucking it out.
The key to feeling the emotion in these paintings is to stare. To sit and to look at it for hours on end, with no other distractions, watching the red and the black combat each other. These colors are, in a strange way, not static. They move, they morph, and they fight each other.
Ultimately, the black wins though as Rothko killed himself in 1970 by slitting his wrists. In a final act of defiance, he tried to fight the black with his own blood, but it was too late.