Untitled (scene with nude figures) 1933 - 1934

Curator: I see a fever dream. Figures swarm, as if pushed forward from the depths of the earth. The air feels thick with secrets. Editor: Secrets sealed in oil paint, I imagine. This is an early work by Mark Rothko, made around 1933 or '34. Untitled (scene with nude figures), the name suggests, and look how he's wrestling with figuration, even as you can feel him wanting to transcend it. Curator: "Wrestling" is perfect! There's a palpable struggle here. It's almost unsettling, like these forms haven't quite decided if they want to emerge or dissolve back into the primal ooze. Do you feel that tension too? Editor: I feel the layering. Look closely—you can see how Rothko built this world. Pigment upon pigment. It is an investigation into how materials become meaning. The blue beneath almost feels like raw canvas peeking through, doesn’t it? Curator: Like glimpsing the void underneath everything, yes! The colors are so earthy. Editor: True, those ochres, browns, flesh tones...it anchors it to the body, to labor, to the messiness of existence itself, right before he moved into ethereal abstractions. There's so much humanity, so much "stuff" crammed in there. Curator: Do you think there’s any connection between his later weightless planes of color and the contained chaos of this early period? Like, he had to condense and distill the raw material of the human experience to finally levitate beyond it? Editor: I think so. He grappled with making. In doing so, maybe Rothko needed to literally erase those signs of struggle—brushstrokes, layering, the "objectness" of the painting. In the end he came full circle as an artist using process to express his innermost self. Curator: Indeed. Rothko went on quite a transformative and, perhaps, even rebellious journey during his time. Editor: Ultimately it comes full circle, and his work continues to echo among different social experiences across time.