What do you think ?

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Mark-Roth ... b271e65cb/

It's funny, we were at a museum this weekend and there were several pieces like this one hanging around. My wife and I both have a problem with them, she's the artist - I'm the collector.

To me, they are just oversized color studies. There's nothing ground breaking about them and they really do fall into that category that I hate to hear people talk about "the my 6 year old could have painted that".

When someone says that about a Jackson Pollock, I laugh because I know the mastery and skill he possessed to put the paint whereever he wanted it. These big color blobs just don't fall in that realm - at least for me.

Rothko is really cool!
There's a Rothko room at the Tate with a series of paintings that he was commissioned for for some restaurant, in the end he decided not to give them those, and gave him something else.
Which is a good thing, cuz if you sit in the room too long, they creep into you and can result in a very heavy somber mood.
Really cool stuff.

worth every penny. Rothko is amazing

I love the colors on it.

Rothko's nice and all, but more than 1 - 2 million for that piece is bonkers.

Uneducated people always say this...... "my 6 year old could have painted that"........ if that is true, then why aren't they hanging in museum, selling for $35,000,000?
Artwork that was produced during this time and during this movement was conceptual and not literal, ie. abstract expressionism, field painting, happenings, etc. It was more about the simple expression of the complex thought than the literal image itself.

I got my minor in art history and one of the things that really stuck with me was a quote I heard my professor say when speaking about this type of art.... "You may be able to paint like that now, but you wouldn't have been be able to paint like that then". I really think that statement sums up a good point of view for the complex thought that was behind the nonobjective compositions of indeterminate shapes that Rothko and his contemporaries were exploring and creating at that time .

I like that quote.
I am of the opinion that it is not so much what it is but the original thought, drive or willingness to do certain things or take certain risks that is sometimes the art in these sorts of pieces.
However, Rothko does manage to stir something in people when they veiw his work.
Plus, what doesn't come across in that picture, or presumably most pictures of his work, are the millions of shades in each colour and the over lapping, just the whole texture of his work.
My friend introduced me to him, and she'd be so proud of me defending him right now

I never really understood Rothko. Someone please enlighten me (where's xocoDean when I need him).

The Wikipedia entry on Rothko is good. Bert I think you know at least as much about art as me if not more, but I love what color relationships can do so I tend to like Rothko's abstract work a lot.

I love his multiform at the SFMOMA. Whenever I see it, there are usually people staring at it, completely entranced. I just looked up some photos of it, and there's really not much point in looking at them. They capture nothing. These paintings need to be seen in person to really be experienced. At best they have a meditative and spiritual quality which is possibly why people become sort of reverent in their presence. They aren't the result of laziness or childishness, although rather than rejecting the common "a child could do that" sort of response that detractors repeat, he embraced the idea that the modernists of his generation had a purity in common with the art of children.

As we constantly argue in our toy collecting scenes, value is relative. To me, 35 million seems unimaginable and maybe even obscene, but the art game is very competitive and has its own standards of valuation, not to mention a large international pool of wealthy collectors for whom this would be an affordable and hopefully enjoyable investment. Nevertheless something my hippie-ish color theory teacher said many moons ago always rings true: "The pure enjoyment of color is one of the best things in life, and it's free!"

I started to read the Wiki but it's a bit long for reading at work. I found a nice read from the National Gallery of Art in Washington and found out a few things that I didn't know (or was suppose to know but probably fell asleep during Art History lecture). One of the key things is where you stand when viewing his later pieces from Multiform on. It makes a lot more sense now and brings a little more appreciation for the pieces that Rothko has done. After reading up, it was very interesting to see how Rothko arrived at the paintings we are more familiar with now and I wonder what was to come if he hadn't passed.

"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints, as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art." - Mark Rothko
There is a lot of truth in this statement, and somehow reflects on the customs that people paint.