Rothko Artist Quotes & Sayings

It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them. — Mark Rothko

great men are urged on to the abuse of power (when they need urging, which is not often), by their flatterers and dependents, — Charles Dickens

My husband and I are big givers to charity, and we are teaching our son Barron all about giving his old toys away to children who might not have any. — Melania Trump

All this has been my fault. — Robert E.Lee

Here's a little bit of good news. The Coast Guard says that BP is now catching up to 630,000 gallons of oil a day. The bad news is that they're capturing it with ducks. — Jimmy Fallon

We never realize the power of real love unless we witness or experience a transaction, because real love costs. — Eric Samuel Timm

Therefore we can posit this generalization: That a painting is the representation of the artist's notion of reality in the terms of the plastic elements. The creation of a plastic unit reduces all the phenomena of the time to a unity of sensuality and thereby relates the subjective and objective in its relevance to man. Art therefore is a generalization. The use of the plastic elements to any other ends, which are most usually particularizations and descriptions of appearances, or which serve the stimulation of separate senses, are not in the category of art and must be classified in the category of applied arts. — Mark Rothko

My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled "True History of Autua, Last Moriori" & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what: - "Streams of blood"? "Themes of mud"? "Robin Hood"? — David Mitchell

Strategic partnership is the truest foundation for marriage and intimacy. Strategic thinking does not assume atomistic individuals; indeed, Austen argues that strategic thinking in concert forms the basis of the closest human relationships. — Michael Suk-Young Chwe

It is really one of the most serious faults which can be found with the whole conception of democracy, that its cultural function must move on the basis of the common denominator. Such a point of view indeed would make a mess of all of the values which we have developed for examining works of art. It would address one end of education in that it would consider that culture which was available to everyone, but in that achievement it would eliminate culture itself.
This is surely the death of all thought.
This quote is taken from "The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art" by Mark Rothko, written 1940-1 and published posthumously in 2004 by Yale University Press, pp.126-7. — Mark Rothko

When the heart is heavy cheerful words can carry it. — Matshona Dhliwayo

I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship. — Charles Darwin

Nobody travels on the road to success without a puncture or two. — Navjot Singh Sidhu

We thus see the artist performing a dual function: first, furthering the integrity of the process of self-expression in the language of art; and secondly, protecting the organic continuity of art in relation to its own laws. For like any organic substance, art must always be in a state of flux, the tempo being slow or fast. But it must move. — Mark Rothko

If I had to reflect on the finest classical male ballet dancers of my time, Vladimir Vasiliev of the Bolshoi and the Danish dancer Eric Bruhn were, I feel, without peer. — Jacques D'Amboise

I am completely open to doing a romantic comedy, but I will never do something just for the sake of doing a specific genre or because it's the time or place to do a different type of movie. I think that would be a huge mistake. — Leonardo DiCaprio

The abstract artist has given material existence to many unseen worlds and tempi. — Mark Rothko

I'm pretty horrible at relationships and haven't been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on - returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy - is what I know; that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different kind of person to stay. — Carrie Brownstein

The artist invites the spectator to take a journey within the realm of the canvas ... Without taking the journey, the spectator has really missed the essential experience of the picture. — Mark Rothko