...
Show More
On the one hand, I was truly grateful for the exhaustiveness of this work. The author did an excellent job of situating Rothko among his contemporaries. He managed to always sort of root for Rothko while not excluding the fine artists he collaborated with. Moreover, the actual art criticism parts were very well-written and could even guide someone who was unfamiliar with Rothko's work. However, the biographical parts often seemed to overreach. The author sometimes played the role of an armchair psychologist, proposing to know the reasons behind Rothko's individual, minor decisions or trying to extract a wide theme from individual, second-hand remarks and stories. This didn't enhance the story; instead, it felt rather forced. The subject himself, Rothko, is indeed fairly fascinating, and I have a great love for his work. But this book also left me with a desire to know more about other artists like Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt. The author did his job and conducted his research, but the self-indulgent afterward, which was almost entirely about his adventures traveling to research the book, was quite unnecessary. It changed the tone so sharply from the writing about the end of Rothko's life and the art he was creating at that time. At best, I just scanned through it.
