Writings on Art

The first collection of Mark Rothkos writings, which range the entire span of his career While the collected writings of many major 20th-century artists, including Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and Ad Reinhardt, have been published, Mark Rothkos writings have only recently come to light, beginning with the critically acclaimed The Artists Reality: Philosophies of Art. Rothkos other written works have yet to be brought together into a major publication. Writings on Art fills this significant void; it includes some 90 documentsincluding short essays, letters, statements, and lectureswritten by Rothko over the course of his career. The texts are fully annotated, and a chronology of the artists 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 This provocative compilation of both published and unpublished writings from 1934--69 reveals a number of things about Rothko: the importance of writing for an artist who many believed had renounced the written word; the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 Rothkos The Artists 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.