ed humility, they do not represent any wide diapason of human experience, as is sometimes thought. Rather they possess a single modality of slightly subdued sadness, qualified by an occasional gash of gold or white to suggest, if not hope or joy, then the possibility of hope or joy.
Doubtless Rothko, with his universalizing ambitions, aspired to something timeless in these later works. Yet they are, in one important sense, dated. Theirs is the ancientness of a style in eclipse. No painter working in this ironic decade of ours will hazard the awesome honesty that was Rothko’s hallmark three decades ago. His smoldering, emberous canvases seem, for the time being at least, as ancient as an imploded star. NR
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