Untitled 1969

Here's a dark painting by Mark Rothko made without a title and sometime before 1970 with what looks like oil on canvas. It's almost entirely black with a kind of maroon border and underpainting, but look closer and you'll see a horizontal band of murky grey across the bottom; it's like a horizon line in the fog. The surface is really worked, the paint dragged and pulled, each layer leaving a trace. You know, when you're painting, how the smallest shift in pressure changes everything? I can imagine Rothko, standing close, lost in the physical act of making, trying to find some kind of feeling through the colors and the marks. It feels very connected to the Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt or Clyfford Still, who were all searching for something beyond representation at that time, like a mood, a space, a presence. Painters are always talking to each other, riffing off ideas through time. Rothko makes you feel the power of painting.