Seated Nude Leaning Right 

Curator: The image before us is titled "Seated Nude Leaning Right," a pencil drawing by Mark Rothko. It appears to be a sketch, full of understated grace. What is your first impression? Editor: There’s a certain melancholic quality. It's almost a somber stillness. I feel she could be an allegory of introspection. I can’t tell if the subject is merely resting or lost in deep thought. Curator: Indeed. It has that feel of a momentary glimpse captured on paper. A bit like Rothko stumbling into the room when she does not know he is watching her. The very act of leaning suggests perhaps reliance on the object she leans upon, vulnerability even. Editor: And look at the barest of outlines forming the chair—it's all suggestion. This amplifies the sense of… instability, doesn’t it? A reliance upon an idea rather than solid matter. She becomes timeless. A mother of sorrows. Or maybe I’m projecting! Curator: Ha! Projection is welcome here! Speaking of timelessness, her features lack sharp definition, right? Rothko gives us enough information to imagine her however we wish, a deliberate ambiguity. Editor: Exactly. Notice the almost total absence of light and shadow! The line work seems to almost flatten her form. Perhaps the choice of toned paper for the sketch has influenced that feeling. Are there any recognizable iconographic symbols we should consider? Curator: Hmmm, nothing immediately obvious. Yet, this drawing of an everywoman is pregnant with the pathos that all his art seeks to communicate, a collective emotional weight carried across cultures and through time, that will reach its apex with his Chapel. Here we find the origin of those silent sufferers inhabiting abstract space. What an insight! Thank you. Editor: It has been my pleasure. It seems to me the study invites empathy above all, as if encouraging each viewer to recognize a piece of themselves in the simple lines. Curator: Yes. And to bear witness to their private burden, together.