Mark Rothko Quotes

American painter of Latvian-Jewish descent (1903–1970)

Mark Rothko (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), born Marcus Rothkowitz, was a Latvian-born American painter usually considered an Abstract Expressionist.

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Native Name: Markuss Rotkovičs

Alternative Names: Marcus Rothkowitz

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I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room.

It was not that the figure had been removed, not that the figures had been swept away, but the symbols for the figures, and in turn the shapes in the later canvases were substitutes for the figures.. ..these new shapes say.. ..what the symbols said. [Rothko, explaining Seitz his new way of painting during the mid-1940s]

A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.

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 academism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.