Untitled (nude) [reverse] 1937 - 1938

Curator: Here we have Mark Rothko's "Untitled (nude) [reverse]," believed to have been painted sometime between 1937 and 1938. It is rendered in oil. Editor: My first thought? This has a ghostly, dreamlike feel. Like peering into a memory fading around the edges. Curator: I see that. The muted palette and rather diffuse application of paint do lend it an ephemeral quality. Notice the spatial ambiguity, too, created by Rothko's layering of the figure and what seems to be a geometric object behind her. Editor: An easel, maybe? And look how he handles light. It’s not quite representational; it feels more like an aura clinging to the skin, this ghostly skin. Like she might just…vanish. Is she in reverse as the title suggests, like an objectification gone back in on itself? Curator: That "reverse" in the title offers a layer of interpretive complexity. We might read the geometric form, or perhaps we may even go back to the "figure," as symbolic of the artist's own creative process—a reverse gaze, inward, from artist to muse and subject matter. The overall construction employs what Roland Barthes would identify as a signifying system. Editor: Exactly! Like he’s pulling apart the tradition of the nude, turning it inside out. Stripping away the…the expected, the conventional. Even the nude, typically loaded with power dynamics, becomes, maybe it becomes vulnerable instead, almost sad. Curator: There's certainly a departure from the classical rendering of the female form. Rothko uses line and texture to abstract her. The figure is there, recognizably, but then isn’t… Editor: It's almost painful. I love that contradiction; what appears resolved yet unresolved at the same time. Curator: A beautiful observation! Rothko leaves us not with concrete meaning, but more so the sensation of the body. Thank you for illuminating it! Editor: My pleasure, always enjoy playing with this ambiguous beauty. Gives us more than something to see. Something to *feel*.