Irene 1933

Mark Rothko made this painting ‘Irene’ with oils on canvas, but we don’t know when. Looking at it, I see someone really pushing paint around, figuring out how to describe a person with as few marks as possible. The color palette is really muted, mostly browns and blacks, with small areas of reds. There’s a roughness to it. The paint is applied thickly, creating a tactile surface that invites you to run your fingers across it. It’s like Rothko is wrestling with the materials, trying to capture something essential about his subject. Look at the way he’s rendered the hands, so gestural, like scribbles, but somehow they convey the essence of a hand. The face is also a series of broad strokes, capturing an almost ghostly figure. This reminds me a bit of some of Philip Guston’s earlier representational work, before he went full-on into his cartoonish style. Both artists share a similar sensibility, a willingness to embrace ambiguity and imperfection in their mark-making. And ultimately, that’s what makes art so compelling, its ability to embrace multiple interpretations.