I am not an abstractionist...I am not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else...I'm interested only in expressing basic hum… - Mark Rothko

The aesthetic is the sine qua none for art: if a work is not aesthetic, it is not art by definition.. .We feel through the senses, and everyone knows that the content of art is feeling; it is the creation of an object for sensing that is the artist’s task; and it is the qualities of this object that constitute its felt content.

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.

One does not paint for design students or historians but for human beings, and the reaction in human terms is the only thing that is really satisfactory to the artist. [in conversation with W.C. Seitz]