Silence is so accurate

Blue, Green and Brown, 1952 (Rothko) 

"You may call it still painting, because in fact there is an absence of gesture, or activity or angst on the canvas. (...) In Rothko's paintings you have three or four zones of different thin washed layers of color, all interacting with each other in a subtle way - not like bold contrasts, but instead, of almost swimming into each other, to get your eyes and your brain working optically to almost immerse your consciousness in these fields that Rothko has created.

The mystery of the whole thing is actually appropriate to Rothko's goals. He's wanting to make a picture that advertises its own mystery, its solitary quality, its introspective quality. It's a quality that he felt was reflecting his own state while painting. I think it's a quality he wanted to inspire his viewers who were in the space of his paintings.

There is definitely a spiritual side to what Rothko was doing. It's not at all an ironic art, or a kind of calculated, clever, sort of tactical art. In fact, one of the quotations of Rothko that is repeated often is 'silence is so accurate'. What he was really doing was extolling the power of an abstract language to say so much more than words could do.

In fact the action of the painting - if there is action - is distributed equally from top to bottom, and from side to side. And there is no way you can complete your experience of that picture without letting your eye wander, or even, your body wander all over the surface of that canvas."

Ann Temkin

(The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, MOMA)