Untitled 1969

Mark Rothko made this large, untitled painting on paper, and what I love is how it looks like he’s just figuring it out as he goes, almost like a sketch. The paint is really thin, washy. It soaks right into the paper. The colors are like browns, grays, a little bit pink. I feel like Rothko wanted to see what these colors would do next to each other, like he was testing something out. Look at the bottom section, you can see the horizontal strokes, like he's dragging the brush across the surface. It feels direct, immediate. It’s about the doing, the process of painting. It's like he's saying, "Let's see what happens if I put this here, and then this next to it." I think of Joan Mitchell working in a similar way, building up layers and letting the painting evolve. Rothko’s work reminds us that art is a conversation, not a monologue.