Mick Hartley

The Mark Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern is getting a lot of attention. Everyone agrees, of course, that he's one of the modern masters. His reputation is such that it's inconceivable that a self-respecting art critic could admit that they didn't "get" him - though Rachel Campbell-Johnston of the Times comes perilously close:

I was nervous about going to this show. Mark Rothko, after all, is an icon of Modernism. If there is such a thing as a cult artist, then he is probably it. Important people make pilgrimages to his chapel in Houston. They come to pay homage to his murals at the Tate. And they stand in grave silence before his empty expanses with looks on their faces that bespeak lofty thoughts.

What if nothing happened when I paid my own visit to a new show of his work at Tate Modern? What if I found that I didn't feel anything? […]

So, does she feel anything? Well…

Rothko is exploring the ways in which the slightest inflections of tone, the subtlest modulations in scale, the smallest changes in proportion, the faintest adjustments of balance, can affect our perception of what we see. His canvases are not messages from their creator. They can't be decoded. Rothko refused explanations. And no wonder. Few works are as open – and as closed – to explanation as these late abstracts. Attempts at description turn to tangles on your tongue. “Silence is so accurate” as the artist said. Perhaps we should see ourselves less as spectators than as participants.

That is why you should not worry about “getting” Rothko. You may at first be aware only of your own body, awkwardly stranded in a difficult place. But this acute consciousness is part of a heightened awareness. By tuning your perceptual processes they help you to see what lies beyond the surface world.

You don't necessarily need Rothko to show you this. But how often in our frenetic modern world do we take the time to consider anything with such careful, scrupulous, meditative intensity? Rothko creates the occasion. His works are a bit like the visual equivalents of Zen koans.

And what if you feel nothing in front of his canvases? Well, that's not nothing because to feel nothing is one of the strongest feelings you can have.

Hmm. I think the answer is, no.

Both Roger Scruton and Waldemar Januszczak try to find something fresh and interesting to say, but it's not easy. Here we have these monumental pictures with slabs of colour melting into each other. What can you say? Is this someone with a very nice eye for the way that browns and purples go together, or is it something much, much more? There are an awful lot of people with a heavy investment in the latter – but how to explain it, put it into words?

Well, there is an all-purpose idea that fills up the void in cases such as this: spirituality. All the critics agree that he's incredibly important as an artist, but no one can quite say why. So…his pictures must be transcendental, religious – or, as this Sunday Times article neatly puts it, "a spiritual consolation in a godless world".

Yes, six "people of faith" offer their considered opinions on the subject of Rothko's paintings. Why? Well, presumably it's because these people are professionals; they're practiced in the business of saying nothing of substance in a deeply portentous way, all the while taking themselves very seriously indeed. This perfectly suits the general flavour of Rothko criticism.

Rukhsana Ahmad is my favourite:

Rothko’s symmetrical squares and straight lines remind me of the geometry and symmetry I was schooled to look for in Islamic art. Muslims believe divinity is exclusive to God. He is separate and different from humankind, at an infinite distance from us, yet equally near. They do not imagine or represent God in any human form; instead, Islamic art uses the abstraction and symmetry of geometry to contemplate divinity and transcend material reality. It is a form of abstraction – just as Rothko uses abstraction.

I find his symmetry pleasing. It speaks to me. Likewise, his use of colour has an emotive force. I am passionate about colour, perhaps because of my eastern side, though, for me, the intensity of Rothko’s colour cuts against the meditative quality that is integral to mystical experience.

Muslims believe divinity is exclusive to God. Ah. Good. That makes sense.

He is separate and different from humankind, at an infinite distance from us, yet equally near. Really? That's absolutely fascinating, Rukhsana. More tea?

The Rev Charles Pickstone isn't bad either:

Rothko was deeply interested in religion and hoped his paintings would enable people to experience a sense of awe. There is, at present, no satisfactory image or analogy for God available to the West after the vaporisation of the whole humanist tradition in the smoke of Hiroshima and the chimneys of Auschwitz. So a whole generation has grown up unchallenged by articulate religious expression. For them, Rothko’s paintings, with their lack of line and consequent terrible dumbness, resonate with a palpable but unnameable sense of presence. For me, though, the paintings are the tablets of stone of Mount Sinai, but with the commandments lost. They are icons of the absence of God. They awaken in us our buried grief for a childhood God.

The vaporisation of the whole humanist tradition in the smoke of Hiroshima and the chimneys of Auschwitz. That's us humanists told. I imagine God made those things happen just to show how empty the whole humanist tradition really is.

Rothko’s paintings…resonate with a palpable but unnameable sense of presence. Indeed they do, Reverend. Indeed they do.

A whole post on writings about Rothko and I've not once mentioned Rorschach inkblot tests. That's self-discipline for you, eh?