In Search of Number Seven
on being asked, what this painting means & what it's good
"For its vibrant coloration, transcendent aura, and pivotal date of execution, No. 7 stands amongst the finest masterworks from the incomparable painterly oeuvre of Mark Rothko." --Sotheby's statement
The art world is corrupt, but not in the way you think. The art world is corrupt, because it erects a superstructure of pseudo-value, redeemable in dollars & buttressed by varyingly sincere discourse, which takes the place of perception & emotion based on discernment. For a long time now this pseudo-value, like everything else cultural, has been more & more squeezed by the greed of the top strata, moving possession of the most desirable objects into a game played by multimillionaires; at the same time, disenfranchising those living who dare to create in the present day, competing in such one-sided sweepstakes. Things are “iconic” because we can’t seem to stop repeating them, not because they do more for us than other images might. They have become, in fact, a kind of currency.
If we want to talk about what it means, we must leave this discourse. There is a history of the place of this painting in the life of its creator, the reception of it in the time it was made, & the place it later made in the perception of what his contemporaries were doing, seen as a single movement. For me, part of the success of Abstract Expressionism was its political symbolism in the Cold War era. There were more visually interesting artworks being made by the CoBrA painters in Europe (not to mention the Mexican muralists) at the very same time with the very same means, but their symbolism could not transcend the individual point of view (though this is interesting enough). Because of this non-artistic context, almost all of the careers of the Abstract Expressionists were tragic, not least because of the distance between what they thought they were doing, & what everyone outside their little community decided they were doing. It was humiliating, & it was immensely rewarding.
These relics from a past, “heroic” age strike us now as poignant beyond retrieval, drenched as we are in an irony that seems to know no limits, & a stupidity that claims all things as its own. They are religious relics, but relics of a religion that the priesthood no longer believes in, only the lowly amateur artist who hasn’t kept up with the times. I have sat in Rothko’s chapel in Houston a long time, soaking up his late dark paintings as they are best received, & I have to say, there is a vibe—nothing as definite as peace, or despair, or the struggle not to have lost everything—but compounded of all of these. And that is something that was not spoken by the other Abstract Expressionists, even the ones who lived to a ripe old age.
Number 7 didn’t know where it was going. We do.
That, & so much more.