Writings on Art

While the collected writings of many major 20th-century artists, including Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and Ad Reinhardt, have been published, Mark Rothko s writings have only recently come to light, beginning with the critically acclaimed The Artist s Reality: Philosophies of Art. Rothko s other written works have yet to be brought together into a major publication. Writings on Art fills this significant void; it includes some 90 documents including short essays, letters, statements, and lectures written by Rothko over the course of his career. The texts are fully annotated, and a chronology of the artist s life and work is also included.
This provocative compilation of both published and unpublished writings from 1934--69 reveals a number of things about Rothko: the importance of writing for an artist who many believed had renounced the written word; the meaning of transmission and transition that he experienced as an art teacher at the Brooklyn Jewish Center Academy; his deep concern for meditation and spirituality; and his private relationships with contemporary artists (including Newman, Motherwell, and Clyfford Still) as well as journalists and curators.
As was revealed in Rothko s The Artist s Reality, what emerges from this collection is a more detailed picture of a sophisticated, deeply knowledgeable, and philosophical artist who was also a passionate and articulate writer.