Untitled 

Curator: This is an untitled drawing by Mark Rothko, rendered in pencil and ink. A preliminary sketch, perhaps? It presents a series of enigmatic figures and forms. Editor: Well, first impression—it looks like a dream I had after eating too much cheese. Kind of ghostly and half-formed, like figures emerging from the fog. What do you make of the composition? Curator: I am immediately drawn to the stark linearity. The artist employs a deliberate sparseness. Note how the delicate pencil strokes intertwine with bolder ink lines to define these ethereal shapes. It’s figuration reduced to its most fundamental essence. A kind of deconstruction, one might argue. Editor: Deconstruction! Yes! But, to me, the beauty is not only in *what* is drawn, but how. I love the raw, unfinished energy. The smudges, the faint lines that trail off… It feels like catching Rothko in the act of thinking, right there on the page. Curator: Precisely. These sketches allow access to his methodology. He is concerned not just with depiction, but with process. There’s a certain provisional quality. Each stroke serves as a kind of index of his thoughts. Observe the repetition of line creating an oval, a circular formation filled with cloud-like details. The linear approach, as evidenced here, almost preempts his work within color field paintings. Editor: Yeah, color feels… absent, but I can imagine how these ghostly figures might transform onto a massive canvas, filled with blues or purples, all washed with layers and layers of thin translucent oils... This single drawing, although quiet in tone and minimal in color, reveals how Rothko finds figuration in abstraction, if that makes sense. Curator: A fitting summary, indeed. A dialogue between line and form, figuration and the precursors of what would become the full immersion of color—captured in a fleeting, but nonetheless revealing, sketch. Editor: Like catching a glimpse of the man behind the myth, seeing his artistic process laid bare. Haunting in a very real, and tactile, sense.