But it should be. I'm a geek, so I was reading about the preparations for the new Star Wars, due in 2005. Apparently, it's style will be about "darkness and color", influenced by the painter Mark Rothko. So, I went to check out Mr. Rothko's work and discovered that he was indeed a painter -- and a con-man -- but not an artist. Here's one of his early "works"
The National Gallery of Art (your tax dollars) has a nice little part of its website (your tax dollars) set aside for educating us on the talents (such as they are) of Mr. Rothko. Now, I'm sure Mr. Rothko was a nice man, and my "con-man" comment may be a little severe because he may have truly believed in his talent as an artist. But really, check out how hard the National Gallery of Art has to work to make this modern "art" sound good. I couldn't help myself -- my comments are embedded.
By 1949 Rothko had introduced a compositional format that he would continue to develop throughout his career. Comprised of several vertically aligned rectangular forms (or one rectangle split in half) set within a colored field (he colored the background), Rothko's "image" (no quotes necessary, it is indeed an image of a rectangle) lent itself to a remarkable diversity of appearances (he could change colors while painting the same thing -- a secret known to artists for decades). In these works, large scale (big rectangles), open structure and thin layers of color combine to convey the impression of a shallow pictorial space (no, they convey the impression of washout rectangles). Color, for which Rothko's work is perhaps most celebrated (compared to all those painters who paint in black and white), here attains an unprecedented luminosity (he used yellow maybe? Jan van Eyck attained an unprecedented luminosity, not this box-painter). His classic paintings of the 1950s are characterized by expanding dimensions (bigger canvas) and an increasingly simplified use of form (more simplified than rectangles that don't even overlap?), brilliant hues (found out that crayola had a 64 box), and broad, thin washes of color (watered down his brush). In his large floating (?) rectangles of color (not black and white, mind you), which seem to engulf the spectator (like the rectangles of blue satin Behr I applied on my wall, that sure engulfs me), he explored with a rare mastery of nuance the expressive potential of color contrasts and modulations (yawn).I've just always believed that good art could be appreciated without the talents of an english major to explain the art to me. I think the folks at The Art Renewal Center would agree.
Labels: Star Wars
