Editing Mark Rothko (section)

==Early career==
In the autumn of 1923, Rothko found work in [[Garment District, Manhattan|New York's garment district]]. While visiting a friend at the [[Art Students League of New York]], he saw students sketching a model. According to Rothko, this was the beginning of his life as an artist.<ref name="grange">{{Cite book |last=Grange |first=Susan |title=Mark Rothko: Break into the Light |publisher=Flame Tree |year=2016 |isbn=9781783619993 |page=17}}</ref> He later enrolled in the [[Parsons The New School for Design]], where one of his instructors was [[Arshile Gorky]]. Rothko characterized Gorky's leadership of the class as "overcharged with supervision."<ref>Hayden Herrera, ''Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work'' (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003), pp. 129–130.</ref> That same autumn, he took courses at the Art Students League taught by Cubist artist [[Max Weber (artist)|Max Weber]], who had been a part of the French avant-garde movement. To his students eager to know about [[Modernism]], Weber was seen as "a living repository of modern art history".{{sfn|Ashton|1983|p=11}} Under Weber's tutelage, Rothko began to view art as a vehicle for emotional and religious expression. Rothko's paintings from this era reveal the influence of his instructor.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=62–63}}<ref>Ashton, an art historian and close friend of Rothko's, goes further: "Weber presided over [Rothko's] early development" (p. 19).</ref> Years later, when Weber attended a show of his former student's work and expressed his admiration, Rothko was immensely pleased.{{sfn|Ashton|1983|p=69}}

===Circle of friends===
Rothko's move to New York landed him in a fertile artistic atmosphere. Modernist painters regularly exhibited in New York galleries, and the city's museums were an invaluable resource for a budding artist's knowledge and skills. Among the important early influences on him were the works of the [[German Expressionism|German Expressionists]], the surrealist art of [[Paul Klee]], and the paintings of [[Georges Rouault]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Aspley |first=Keith |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3KK7JHqNrRsC&pg=PA426 |title=Historical Dictionary of Surrealism |date=2010 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |isbn=978-0-8108-5847-3 |pages=426 |language=en}}</ref>

In 1928, with a group of other young artists, Rothko exhibited works at the Opportunity Gallery.<ref name="AAA" /> His paintings, including dark, moody, expressionist interiors and urban scenes, were generally well accepted among critics and peers. To supplement his income, in 1929 Rothko began instructing schoolchildren in drawing, painting, and clay sculpture at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he remained active for over twenty years.<ref>Grange, pg. 20.</ref>

During the early 1930s, Rothko met [[Adolph Gottlieb]], who, along with [[Barnett Newman]], [[Joseph Solman]], [[Louis Schanker]], and [[John D. Graham|John Graham]], was part of a group of young artists surrounding the painter [[Milton Avery]]. According to [[Elaine de Kooning]], it was Avery who "gave Rothko the idea that [the life of a professional artist] was a possibility."{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=91}}Avery's abstract nature paintings, utilizing a rich knowledge of form and color, had a tremendous influence on him.<ref name="AAA">{{Cite web |year=2011 |title=Oral history interview with Sally Avery, 1982 Feb. 19 |url=http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-sally-avery-12685 |access-date=June 18, 2011 |website=Oral history interviews |publisher=[[Archives of American Art]]}}</ref> Soon, Rothko's paintings took on the subject matter and color similar to Avery's, as seen in ''Bathers, or Beach Scene'' of 1933–1934.<ref>On Avery's impact on Rothko: Ashton, pp. 21–25.</ref>

Rothko, Gottlieb, Newman, Solman, Graham, and their mentor, Avery, spent considerable time together, vacationing at [[Lake George (town), New York|Lake George, New York]], and [[Gloucester, Massachusetts]]. In the daytime, they painted, then discussed art in the evenings. During a 1932 visit to Lake George, Rothko met Edith Sachar, a jewelry designer, whom he married later that year.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=81}} The following summer, his first one-person show was held at the [[Portland Art Museum]],<ref>''Drawings and Water Colors by M. Rothkowitz'', July–August 1933, Museum of Art, Portland. Cited in Adam Greenhalgh, ''Mark Rothko Paintings on Paper'' exh. cat. Washington 2023–2004 (Yale University Press, 2023), page 12, no 6.</ref> consisting mostly of drawings and [[aquarelle]]s.<ref>Catherine Jones, "Noted One-Man Show Artist One-Time Portland Resident." ''Sunday Oregonian'' (July 30, 1933). Cited by Adam Greenhalgh, ''Mark Rothko Paintings on Paper'' exh. cat. Washington 2023–2004 (Yale University Press, 2023), page 13, no 9.</ref> For this exhibition, Rothko took the very unusual step of displaying works done by his pre-adolescent students from the Center Academy, alongside his own.{{sfn|Ashton|1983|p=26}} His family was unable to understand Rothko's decision to be an artist, especially considering the dire economic situation of the [[Great Depression|Depression]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Jahn |first=Jeff |title=PORT |url=http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/03/rothko_in_portl.html |access-date=July 13, 2011 |publisher=Portlandart.net}}</ref> Having suffered serious financial setbacks, the Rothkowitzes were mystified by Rothko's seeming indifference to financial necessity. They felt he was doing his mother a disservice by not finding a more lucrative and realistic career.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=57,89}}

===First solo show in New York===
Returning to New York, Rothko had his first East Coast one-person show at the Contemporary Arts Gallery.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=87}} He showed fifteen oil paintings, mostly portraits, along with some aquarelles and drawings. Among these works, the oil paintings especially captured the art critics' eyes. Rothko's use of rich fields of colors moved beyond Avery's influence. In late 1935, Rothko joined with [[Ilya Bolotowsky]], [[Ben-Zion (artist)|Ben-Zion]], [[Adolph Gottlieb]], [[Louis Harris]], [[Ralph Rosenborg]], [[Louis Schanker]] and [[Joseph Solman]] to form "[[The Ten (Expressionists)|The Ten]]". According to a gallery show catalog, the mission of the group was "to protest against the reputed equivalence of American painting and literal painting."{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=101–42}}

Rothko was earning a growing reputation among his peers, particularly among the group that formed the Artists' Union.{{sfn|Ashton|1983|p=30–32}} The Artists' Union, including Gottlieb and Solman, hoped to create a municipal art gallery, to show self-organized group exhibitions. In 1936, the group exhibited at the Galerie Bonaparte in France, which resulted in some positive critical attention. One reviewer remarked that Rothko's paintings "display authentic coloristic values."<ref>Ashton, 35.</ref> Later, in 1938, a show was held at the Mercury Gallery in New York, intended as a protest against the Whitney Museum of American Art, which the group regarded as having a provincial, regionalist agenda. Also during this period, Rothko, like Avery, Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, and many others, found employment with the [[Works Progress Administration]].{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=121}}

===Development of style===
Rothko's work has been described in eras.<ref>Anfam, pp. 26, 46, 70.</ref> His early period (1924–1939) saw representational art inflected by impressionism, usually depicting urban scenes. In 1936, Rothko began writing a book, never completed, about similarities between the art of children and the work of modern painters.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=130–42}} According to Rothko, the work of modernists, influenced by primitive art, could be compared to that of children in that "child art transforms itself into primitivism, which is only the child producing a mimicry of himself."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Rothko |first1=Mark |url=https://archive.org/details/writingsonart0000roth/page/8 |title=Writings on art |last2=López-Remiro |first2=Miguel |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2006 |isbn=9780300114409 |location=New Haven |pages=[https://archive.org/details/writingsonart0000roth/page/8 8] |language=en |oclc=1008510353}}</ref> In this manuscript, he observed: "Tradition of starting with drawing in academic notion. We may start with color."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Rothko |first1=Mark |url=https://archive.org/details/writingsonart0000roth/page/6 |title=Writings on art |last2=López-Remiro |first2=Miguel |date=2006 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=9780300114409 |location=New Haven |pages=[https://archive.org/details/writingsonart0000roth/page/6 6] |language=en |oclc=1008510353}}</ref> Rothko was using fields of color in his [[aquarelle]]s and city scenes. His style was already evolving in the direction of his renowned later works. In the 1930s, Rothko and Gottlieb together worked through intellectual perceptions and opinions they had about contemporary art. By the 1940s, both artists were delving into mythology for themes and forms, tapping into what could be considered universal consciousness.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Milgrom |first1=Michaela |title=Artists Who Inspired Mark Rothko |url=https://www.nga.gov/stories/artists-who-inspired-mark-rothko.html |website=National Gallery of Art |access-date=20 March 2024}}</ref>

This period extended into his middle, "transitional" years (1940–1950), continuing incorporation of mythical and "biomorphic" abstraction, and "multiforms", the latter being canvases with large regions of color. Rothko's transitional decade was influenced by World War II, which prompted him to seek novel expression of [[tragedy]] in art. During this time Rothko was influenced by ancient Greek tragedians such as [[Aeschylus]] and his reading of Nietzsche's ''[[The Birth of Tragedy]]''.<ref>Grange, pp. 50–54.</ref>

In Rothko's mature or "classic" period (1951–1970), he consistently painted rectangular regions of color, intended as "dramas"<ref>Grange, p. 47.</ref> to elicit an emotional response from the viewer.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Mark Rothko and the dialogue in his mind - Hektoen International |url=https://hekint.org/2021/10/01/mark-rothko-and-the-dialogue-in-his-mind/ |access-date=June 28, 2022 |website=hekint.org|date=October 2021 }}</ref>