rothko nothingness

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Mark Rothko.

Untitled,

1952. Oil on

canvas.

95

x

81 n.

(243.2

x 208

cm).

Private

collection.©

2005 Kate

Rothko

Prizel

and

Christopher RothkolArtists

Rights

Society

(ARS)

NewYork.

Photograph:

Bob Kolbrener.

The word

nothingness

frequently

appears in

writings

about

twentieth-century

art.Yet

how

can

we perceive

nothingness

or

know

what

it is?

Everywhere

we

look

we can

see, feel,

or think

something.

If

we

shut

our

eyes

and

ears,

we can

always

sense

our

heartbeat;

no

matter

how

much

we

try not

to

think

about

any-

thing

at all,

we

will still

be

aware

of

our

own

existence.

It

appears

to us

that

there is

no

such

thing

as nothingness;

hence,

to associate

an

artwork,

which

Natalie

Kosoi

Nothingness

Made

Visible:

The

Case

of

Rothko s

Paintings

I.

James

E. B.

Breslin, Mark

Rothko:

A

Biography

(Chicago:

University

of Chicago

Press,

1993),

7.

2.

Barbara

Novak and

Brian O'Doherty,

Rothko's

Dark

Paintings:

Tragedy and

Void,

inMark

Rothko,

ed.

Jeffery

Weiss,

exh.

cat.

(Washington,

DC: National

Gallery

of Art;

New

Haven:

Yale

University

Press,

1998),

281.

3. Robert

Rosenblum,

Modem Painting

and

the

Northern

Romantic

Tradition:

Ffiedrich

to

Rothko

(London:

Thames

and

Hudson,

1975),

10 .

4.

Jean-Paul

Sartre,

Being

andNothingness

trans.

H. E. Barnes

(New

York. Washington

Square

Press,

1992),

42.

is

always

something,

with

nothingness

seems

absurd.

In the

following,

I

will

show

that

such

a

relation

is possible and

not

absurd.

By

considering

two

philosophers

who

pondered

the notion

of nothingness,

Jean-Paul

Sartre

and Martin

Heidegger,

I

will first

address

the

problem

of how

we can

understand

nothingness

and

then

show

how

the works

of

Mark

Rothko

represent

it.

Respectively,

Sartre's

and

Heidegger's

concepts

of noth-

ingness

exemplify

two major

and

conflicting

approaches.

For Sartre,

nothingness

is

a nonbeing,

a negation

of all

the entities

in the world,

which

comes into

existence

through

human

consciousness.

Heidegger,

how-

ever,

assumes

the

existence

of nothingness

from

the outset,

arguing

that although

we cannot

grasp

or

know

nothingness,

we

nonetheless,

when

anxious,

have

an

experience

of

it.

He

argues

that because

any

being

is

finite,

nothingness

forms

beings

and

as such is

a prerequisite

of

everything

that is.

Many

commentators

on

Rothko

invoke

the word

nothing

in describing

his

paintings.

James

E.

B.Breslin,

in his

biography

of

Rothko,

writes,

Rothko's

artistic

enterprise

was after

all, a

something

that

was

dangerously

close

to

nothing. '

Barbara

Novak

and

Brian

O'Doherty,

in

their

essay

Rothko's

Dark

Paintings:

Tragedy

and Void,

also

assert

that

Rothko's

work

is

very close

to

nothing

and

that

nothing

is

indeed

its

very content.

Robert

Rosenblum

described

Rothko's

paintings

as

images

of

something

near

to

nothingness.

3

These are only

a

few examples

among

many.

The

common

characteristic

of these

writings,

although

not

always

explicitly

stated, is

that

Rothko's

paintings-because

of his

reduction

of

painterly

means

(figure,

line,

space,

and

eventually

even

color),

which

resulted

in

almost

mono-

chrome

paintings-are

on

the verge

of nothing.

As

such,

they

reflect

the way

in

which

we are

accustomed

to

think

about nothingness,

as

the negation

and

absence

of

entities,

and

thus

correspond

much

more

closely

to Sartre's

notion

of

nothing-

ness

than to

Heidegger's.

In

the

following,

examining

the works

of

the 195ps,

I

will

argue that

Rothko's

paintings

are not

only

on

the

verge

of being

nothing

but

that they

also

represent

nothingness,

which

corresponds

to

Heidegger's

concept.

Jeffery

Weiss,

in

his essay

Rothko's

Unknown

Space,

particularly

associates

Rothko's

paintings

with

Sartre's

thinking,

using

the

story

of

Pierre

from

Being and

Nothingness

to

interpret

Rothko's

paintings.

4

In

this story

Sartre

arrives

at a

caf6

to

meet

Pierre,

but

the

latter is not

there. The

caf6

with

all its

people

and activity

is

fullness

of

being,

but while

Sartre is

looking

for

Pierre

it

becomes

the

ground.

Each

figure

or thing

in

it gains

a

moment

of Sartre's

attention

(is this

Pierre?),

isolated

and standing

out

against

the

background,

and shortly

after

sinks

again

into

the background

(it

is

not

Pierre).

Sartre

calls

the successive

disappearance

of

these

objects

into

the

background

original

nihilation.

On

the surface

of

this original

nihilation

another

nihilation

occurs.

Since

Pierre

is

nowhere

to be

21 rt

journal



5.

Jeffery

Weiss,

Rothko's Unknown

Space, in

Mark

Rothko

(National Gallery

of Art), 323 refers

to Sartre's

Being

and

Nothingness

42.

6. Weiss, 323.

found,

his absence haunts the caf. Thus, Pierre

presents himself as nothingness

on the

ground of

the

nihilation of

the

caf6

the

nothingness which slips as a

nothing to the surface of the ground. s

Sartre

calls

Pierre's

perpetual absence

from

the

caf6 double nihilation.

Weiss

writes:

Certainly

Rothko's almost ineffably subtle manipulations of figure

and

ground (or

the

center

and the

edge)

can

be

characterized in

Sartrean

terms

as

a

double

nihilation

whereby the

absent figure

is

experienced as pres-

ence, or the apprehension

of

nothingness,

and plenitude

is

experienced

as

ground.

6

Although

Sartre argues that nothingness

is

the origin of negation and

not

the result

of it it

is

nonetheless a nonbeing, a negation

of being, and depends

on being,

an entity,

in order

to

negate it.

This

is precisely what the story of Pierre

illustrates: that

a

negative

judgment, X

is

not, stems

from nothingness as a

nonbeing, and

not

vice

versa,

and

that

nonbeing

(that

of

Pierre)

depends

on

(Pierre's) being.That is,

a

nonbeing

cannot exist apart from

being, as it

depends on

our expectation of

finding

something or

someone

in particular

(Pierre) that is

not there, and thus on our consciousness of the existence

ofa

thing or

a

person.

Certainly, if nothingness is represented

in Rothko's painting,

the comparison

to

Sartre's story

is not without

foundation, for

nothingness

is also

absence and

nonbeing. However,

Sartre

thinks

of nothingness as a nonbeing that comes to

be through

human

consciousness

and our expectations

of

finding

something

particular.The application of

Sartre's

theory of

nothingness

to Rothko's

paintings

therefore

seems

to me

problematic, as

it poses the question: what in

particular do

we expect

to

find

in Rothko's paintings, or

any

other

painting?

This

question

remains

unanswered

inWeiss's

text.

I believe

that

a perception of nothingness

as that

which constitutes beings, one closer to Heidegger's

than Sartre's,

corre-

sponds

to

nothingness

as

represented

in

Rothko's

paintings and

might

indeed

relate

to

how

he

himself thought of

it.

Sartre

and H eidegger

both

agree that nothingness is the origin

of negation,

but

they

disagree

as to its

nature: for

Sartre

it

is merely a nonbeing,

which

stems

from human consciousness,

while for

Heidegger,

nothingness is also

an affirma-

tion

of beings as it is

the

limit imposed on all beings.

Heidegger

maintains

that

everything in this

world,

including ourselves,

is

finite, and hence nothingness

constitutes

the

being of all

that

exists, and as such

forms

everything in the wa y

that

it is.Without

it,

entities could not

be.Yet it is even more

acute in the

case

of

human beings, since humans die,

while according

to

Heidegger other beings,

such as animals,

plants,

and objects,

simply dissipate into

nothingness

and

per-

ish.

He

maintains

that death,

our

own

impending nothingness,

is not

simply

something

that

happens

at

the end

of life.

Our

awareness that we

might

die

at

any moment pervades and shapes our

life.

Thus, because

death-the

possible

impossibility of being-is

what constitutes our being in

this world

and

also

what negates it, our being in its essence is anxious

being.We

repress

our funda-

mental anxiety

by

engaging ourselves in the

world and its affairs.

In

rare

moments

during

our existence, however,

anxiety

floats

to the surface and

reveals

to

us

what we in our

everyday life are

trying to repress,

namely,

that it

is

nothingness

that

constitutes

our being.

SUMM R

5



7.

Martin Heidegger,

What

IsMetaphysics?

in

Bask

Writings

ed. D.

Farrel

Krell

(London:

Routledge,

1996),

102.

8. Martin

Heidegger,

Being

andTime

trans.

J.Macquarrie

and

E.Robinson

(London:

Blackwell,

1996),

356.

9.

Mark

Rothko,

Pratt

Lecture

quoted

in

Irving

Sandier.

Mark

Rothko

(InMemory

of

Robert

Goldwater),

inMark

Rothko

Paintings

1948-

1969,

exh.

cat.

(New

York.

Pace

Gallery,

April

1983),

II.

10.

Martin Heidegger,

What Are

Poets

For?

in

oetrey

Language

Thought

trans.

A. Hofstadter

(New

York:

Harper

and

Row,

1971), 125.

II.

Maurice

Blanchot,

The

Space

of

Literature,

trans.

A. Smock

(Lincoln:

University

of

Nebraska

Press,

1955),

94.

12.

Ibid.,

95.

The

difference

between

anxiety

and fear is

that

we

fear

a particular

and

determinable

being,

whereas

anxiety lacks

a determinable

object.

If a

person

is

asked

what

he

or

she is

anxious

about,

the

answer,

according

to Heidegger,

will

be:

nothing.

Nothingness

is revealed

through

anxiety

neither

as a

being

nor

as

an object,

nor

as a

negation

of beings.

Rather,

in

anxiety

nothingness

is

known

with

beings

and in

beings

expressly

as a

slipping

away

of

the whole.

7

By

the

whole

Heidegger

means

all

entities,

whose

meaning

for

us

and

our relation

to

which

compose

our world.

Because we are

anxious about

our

being,

which

is

a being-toward-death,

we flee

from

ourselves

and

from

facing

this fact,

toward

these

entities

that supply

our world

with

meaning

and

thus enable

us

to forget

that

our

being

is

being-toward-death.

In anxiety,

when

all beings

slip

away

from

our

grasp,

we

face

our

own

mortality,

since

the world

and

its

entities

can

no

longer

impart

any

meaning

to

our

existence.

He

writes

that

the 'nothing'

with

which

anxiety

brings

us face

to face,

unveils

the

nullity

by

which

Dasein

in

its

very

basis

is

defined;

and this

basis itself

is as

thrownness

into

death.

8

It

is well

known,

and

often

repeated,

that

Rothko

thought

that

art

should

deal with

the human

drama

or tragedy

and

should

intimate

mortality.

9

Such

intentions

correspond

to the role

that Heidegger-who

thought

of

poetry

as

the

highest

form of

art-assigns

to

poets.

In What

Are Poets

For?

Heidegger

maintains

that

the role

of

the

poet is

to present

the whole

sphere

of

being,

including

death,

the side

of being

that,

like

the

dark side

of

the

moon,

is

hidden

from

us,

invisible

to

us in

our everyday

life.

Heidegger

explains,

This

affirma-

tion,

however,

does

not

mean

to turn

the No

into

aYes; it

means

to

acknowledge

the

positive

as

what is

already

before

us and

present.

What is

present

to us

is

what

we

are

certain

of

and what

is

more

certain

than

death?

10

We

might

ask:

Is it

plausible

to argue

that art can

present

something

we

have

only

a vague

experience

of and

know

nothing

about?

And

if

art is

indeed

able

to

present

our

mortality

to us,

then how

can

we

recognize

it?

Maurice

Blanchot,

in

The Space of

Literature

like

Heidegger maintains

that

writing

has

a

fun-

damental

relation

to death

and

nothingness,

since it

draws

from

it as from

its

origin.

But,

contrary

to

Heidegger,

he believes

that art

attempts

not

to present

death but

rather

to negate

it.

He

argues

that it is

a

generally

accepted

idea

that

art

stems

from

the

desire not

to

die;

as

an example

he

quotes

Andr6

Gide,

who

wrote

in his

journals

(July

27,

1922)

that his

reason

for writing

is

to

shelter

something

from

death.

However,

we

cannot

hold

death

at

a distance,

if death

is not

possible

and Blanchot

contrary

to

Heidegger

maintains

that

death

is

impossible.

Obviously

we

all

know

that we will

die.Yet

we

cannot

know

it

for

certain:

What

makes

me

disappear

from

the

world cannot

find

its guarantee

there;

and

thus in

a

way

having

no

guarantee

it

is not

certain.

This

explains

why

no

one

is

linked

to death

by

real certitude.

No

one is

sure

of dying.

No

one

doubts

death

but

no

one can

think

of certain

death except

doubtfully.

For

to

think

death

is

to introduce

into thought

the

supremely

doubtful

the

brittleness

of

the unsure.

It

is

as if

in order

to think

authentically

upon

the certainty

of

death

we had

to let thought

sink into

doubt

and inauthen-

ticity

or yet

again as if

we

strive

to think

on

death

more

than

our

brain-

the very

substance

and

truth

of thought

itself-were

bound

to crumble.

12

23 art

journal



Caravaggio.

Death

of

the Virgin 1605-06.

Oil

on canvas.

145SY 96 4

n. 369

x 245 cm).

Mus6e

du Louvre, Paris. Photograph:

Erich

Lessing/Art

Resource,

NY .

In other words, we

cannot

think or

understand death.

Nonetheless,

writing,

at

least

writing that is

worth reading,

according to

Blanchot, must

endeavor

to

make

death

possible. By this

he means

that writing

must

attempt

to grasp

death

in

its incomprehensibility

and,

therefore,

it hovers

between

death

as

the possi-

bility

of understanding and

death as

the horror

of

impossibility. '3

The writer,

he

argues,

is like

Orpheus

descending

into

death

to

bring

his Eurydice

into the light

of day. And like

Orpheus the

writer

neces-

sarily

fails

in

his

or

her

task

as

he

or

she

succeeds

in

capturing not the certainty

of

death

but

the

eternal torments of Dying.

4

Visual

Representation

of

Nothingness

Although

both

Heidegger and

Blanchot

find a fundamental

relation between

death

and writing, they

disagree

as to

its ability to

render death and

nothingness.

Both

discuss

mainly literature

and

poetry,

but the ques-

tion

of whether

art can

present

mortality

to

us can

also

be

extended to the

visual arts.

Indeed,

references

to

death can be found

in

abundance in the

tradition

of

Western

painting.

Does

it succeed

in presenting the

other side

or does

it merely

render

the

eternal

torments

of

Dying ?

In

the

follow-

ing

examination of

two possible

ways

of

representing

death

visually,

I bear

in mind

that

there

is

a

fundamental

difference

between visual

and

conceptual

experience:

we can know

what

we

see

but

not

necessar-

ily understand

it,

while

conceptual

experi-

ence

must first

be

understood

in order to

be

known.

The

most

obvious way

to render

death

in

a

painting, and

the

one

that

has

been

most commonly

employed,

is

by the

repre-

sentation

of

a

corpse.

In The Death

of

theVirgin

for

example,

Caravaggio based

his represen-

tation

of

the body

of

Mary

on

an actual

corpse-that

of

a woman drowned

in the

Tiber. Jean-Luc

Nancy in

his book

The Muses

observes that

this

painting situates

us

on

the

threshold

before

death. He

finds

three such

thresholds.

We, the dying

creatures,

are the

first

one. The

second is

represented

by

the

virgin's

corpse-dead,

but

still existing as

a thing-and the

last

by

the

group of

people depicted

as disappearing

into the darkness

of

the

background.

Discussing

the

representation

of

the

Virgin

in this

painting, Nancy,

recalling

Blanchot's

argument

about

the impossibility

of death,

asks, And

what

24 SUMME?fR

S



13.

Ibid.,

244.

14.

Ibid., 119.

I5.Jean-Luc

Nancy, The

Muses

trans.

P. Kamuf

(Stanford:

Stanford

University Press, 1996),

59.

16. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting

trans.

Geoff Bennington and

an

McLeod

(Chicago:

University of

Chicago Press, 1987), 19

if

that

were the subject of this painting:

there is

never death

'itself

but only

a

threshold before

death.'I

It

might

be

argued that this painting in

fact

represents

death only as

it

was

perceived

by a religious

society, that is, as

a

threshold

between

worldly

and

oth-

erworldly

life.

Because

a

corpse

is always

something,

no

matter

how

realistically

it is

represented

in a

painting, it

does

not

present

death

as

absolute

nothingness

in the

way

that

it is

commonly

perceived

today. Indeed, Heidegger argues,

when

someone dies we experience loss,

but loss

is

a

feeling

on the part

of those who

remain.

Nevertheless,

even in this painting the anxiety

that there

might

be

noth-

ing

beyond resonates. The group

of

the

disciples

situated behind

the V irgin's

bed

seems

to

be

disappearing

into

the darkness of the

background. This

disappearing,

the slipping away

of the figures

from

the grasp of our perception, as I will

show,

will become the

subject matter of Rothko's

paintings.

A similar

yet subtly different

attempt

to

represent

death may be found

in Gerard Titus-Carmel's

work

The

Pocket

Size Tlingit Coffin

which

is discussed

in

Jacques Derrida's

book The Truth in Painting.

The

most

salient feature

of

this

minia-

ture coffin

is

the

mirror

placed

at

its

bottom, so

when

one looks inside

the bo x

one

sees

one's own

reflection

in it

and thus

sees

oneself

lying

in

the coffim.The

way this

work

renders death resembles the traditional

way of representing

it-

that is, it

shows

us someone in a

coffin who may

be

interpreted as a corpse.

The

difference

lies in the

fact

that in this

case we see ourselves in

the coffin and

not

someone

else.

Seeing

ourselves

lying in a coffin, though,

is

still far from

experiencing our own

death as

nothingness, because, as

was

mentioned

earlier,

a

corpse is something

and

not

nothing. In addition,

as Derrida observes, the sight

is

intended

to

induce

a

feeling

of

calming

one's own

terror, of dealing

with

alterity,

of thus

wearing

down

alterity,

a feeling

that

is

enhanced by

the

small

size

of

the

coffin.'

6

Hence,

instead of making us

face our

mortality,

it

negates

it.

Rothko s

Representation of Nothingness

The

apprehension

of death

and

nothingness

must

be distinguished

from the sub-

lime, as Rothko's

paintings, in particular,

were often associated

with

the

tradition

of the sublime

painting. Both nothingness

and

the

sublime relate to finitude and

both evoke a similar

feeling. Nothingness evokes

anxiety and the

sublime horror

mixed

with pleasure. However, there

is a fundamental difference between the

two.

The sublime,

whether

it is

a quality of an object (in

Edmund

Burke's sense

of the word) or a

feeling in Immanuel

Kant's sense), is contingent on

nothing-

ness, as

it is

the

apprehension of our finitude

and fragility, of

the fact

that there

are forces

in

nature that

can

destroy

us. At the same time, the

sublime is

also a

withdrawal

from

such

a

realization,

because

we know

that

there

is no real or

immediate threat

to our

existence, according

to Burke, or because

we

discover

our superiority

over our finite nature,

according

to

Kant. The encounter

with

nothingness

offers

us

no such redemption. On the contrary, it

points to

the

impossibility

of any

salvation,

as our impending

nothingness is

also

what con-

stitutes

us.

In

their

book Arts of Impoverishment

Leo Bersani

and

Ulysse

Dutoit argue that

Rothko

began to subvert the readability

of forms depicted

in his

painting

already

in

the

i95os, and

this

tendency reached its peak

in the fourteen

Rothko

Chapel

5

art

iournal



17.

Leo Bersani

and Ulysse Dutoit, Arts

Impoverishment

Beckett,

Rothko, Resnais

(Cambridge,

MA:

Harvard University

Press,

1993).

142.

18.

Ibid.,

121.

19.

Jean-Franqois

Lyotard, The

Sublime and the

Avant-Garde,

inThe Inhuman:

Reflection

on Time,

trans.

Geoff Bennington

and R.Bowlby

(Stanford:

Stanford

University

Press, 1991 .

20. Rosenblum,

Modem

Painting,199;

Weiss,

Rothko's

Unknown Space,

305; Robert

Goldwater,

Reflections on

the

Rothko

Exhibition,

and Peter Selz,

Mark Rothko,

in

Mark

Rothko,

exh.

cat. (Basel: Kunsthalle

Basel,

1982), n.p.

21. Mark Rothko,

quoted

inJohn

Fischer.

Mark

Rothko: Portrait

of

the

Artist

as

an

Angry

Man,

Harper s

Magazine,July 1970,

16, quoted in

Weiss,

Rothko's Unknown

Space,

32

paintings

at

St.

Thomas University,

Houston, in which

the differences between

forms,

background,

and

even

the paintings

themselves are

almost completely

obliterated. They

argue

that

the sameness of

the paintings in

the

Rothko

Chapel

has a twofold

effect.

First,

it renders visibility

unnecessary,

as

there

is

nothing

to

see,

and

therefore it

induces a

kind of

blindness.

Second, by obliterating

the

forms in

the chapel

paintings,

Rothko creates

an

example of what

Friedrich

Nietzsche called

Dionysian

art,

in

which

one's

individuality

is lost

as

the

borders

that

constitute

the

individual

by

differentiating

it from

its

environment

collapse.

They

maintain

that

the

chapel

encourages

the viewers

to remember

and

repeat

the experience

of primary

narcissism,

which

they

define as

the experience

of

a

pleasurable shattered

consciousness

having become

aware

of itself

as the

object

of

its

desire. '

7

We

can

experience

again

such

a

shattering

of

the self's coherence

only in death

and, to a

lesser degree,

in sex.

Yet all

of this can

be said

about almost any

monochrome

painting.Yves

Klein's

blue

monochromes

and

Ad Reinhardt's

black

paintings

offer just two

examples. Furthermore,

the

moment

of blindness is much

more prominent

in

Robert

Ryman's white

paintings.

In these,

the brushstrokes

create

forms,

bu t

their

white

color makes

it

difficult

to discern

the

paintings

from

the

wall.

Their

uncertain

visibility induces

a blindness

that

shatters

the

self

much more

power-

fully than any

other monochrome

painting.

About Rothko's

paintings of the

195os

Bersani

and Dutoit write:

Rothko's

work

is

retrogressive: it returns us

to the moment

of

looking we

have

always

skipped,

to

an

effort to establish boundaries

that a certain

econ-

omy in human evolution

may

have

succeeded

in sparing

us. What

we have

been spared,

however, is

the

very

work of

being,

the

renewed

possibility

that

presence

might

not

take

place.'

8

Thinking

of

Rothko's

paintings

in this way

associates

them with

the notion

of

the sublime rather than

with

nothingness.

In his

essay

The Sublime

and

the

Avant-Garde,

Jean-Franýois

Lyotard

relates

the sublime

to the

horror

that

noth-

ing

will happen

and

the

relief

that it

is

happening.'

9

If

this

interpretation

is

cor-

rect,

viewing Rothko's

paintings should

produce

a feeling of

delight,

since

this

is a feeling related

to the sublime.

However,

I believe

that any

observer cannot

fail

to notice

that these paintings

induce anxiety

rather

than delight.

Indeed,

many

critics

have

mentioned,

although

not

always

expressly

using

the

word,

that

Rothko's

paintings

have this effect.

Robert Rosenblum,

for

example,

describes Rothko's

paintings

as awe-inspiring ;

Jeffery Weiss

describes

them

as objects of

emotional

or

spiritual

awe ; while Robert

Goldwater

writes,

It

is

significant

that at

the

entrance

to this room

one pauses, hesitating

to

enter.

Its

space

seems

both

occupied

and

empty ;

and Peter

Selz writes,

The

spectator

contemplates

an

atmosphere of

alarm

. 2There is

evidence

to suggest

that

Rothko himself

wanted his

paintings to

evoke anxiety. Rothko

said

to

a

reporter

that in

the

Houston

chapel

he

wanted

to achieve

the same atmosphere

that

Michelangelo generated

in his Laurentian

Library

in

S.

Lorenzo,

Florence, which,

according

to Rothko, makes

the

viewer

feel

that they are trapped

in

a room

where

all the doors and

windows

are

bricked

up, so that all

they can do is

to

butt

their heads forever

against

the

wall.

2

In what

follows

I

will

demonstrate

how

Rothko's way of

intimating mortality

6

SUMM R oo



in his works-namely,

by undermining our ability to

read

the colors

of

the

forms depicted

in his paintings as well as

the

space in which they are situated-

is

reminiscent of Heidegger's description of

the

encounter

with nothingness:

the

slipping away of

the

whole. When things slip

away from

us, they do no t

disappear and, contrary to what

Bersani

and Dutoit argue, the difference between

us and

the

world

is

not

obliterated

and we

do

not become one with it.

Instead,

the world and its entities, to

which

we

escape

in order to

avoid facing

up to ou r

being,

remain, while

our connection

to

them

is

severed, leaving

us

with only

ourselves and our being, which is being-toward-death. It

is

not a state

in which

we are absorbed

in the world,

nor is it one of either

self-forgetfulness

or a shut-

tered consciousness, as

suggested by Bersani

and Dutoit. It is rather

a state

in

which we touch the deepest

core of

ourselves, the finitude that constitutes

us.

Space

From about 195o

Rothko

concentrated on producing rectangular forms floating

on a surface. The floating sensation was created as Rothko eliminated from his

paintings depth and

space

in

the conventional sense, features

regarded

as

neces-

sary for rendering

things as existing.

There

are several

conventional

ways

to

devise

an illusory three-dimensional

space.

One

is by means of a

perspectival

representation where figures become

gradually smaller according to their

distance

from the observer. A

second, an

aerial

perspective,

involves

a

blurring of the

forms as

they recede

into the back-

ground, thus causing them

to appear

further away from

the observer. Another

way

is

partial

concealment:

when one form

partially

conceals another, it is per-

ceived as nearer

to the

observer than

the concealed

one. Afourth method is

the

gradual modification of light and shadow, which reproduces the look of a three-

dimensional form. Another is a juxtaposition of colors: some

colors

have

the

quality

of

appearing to

approach

the -viewer

(such

as

red) or

to recede (blue).

Thus,

if

a

blue

form

is

depicted next

to

a red one,

the

red

is

perceived

as nearer

to

the

observer than

the blue.

Rothko

used none of these methods in his paintings-or, more precisely,

by

manipulating some of them he

subverted

our reading of space.

Untitled

from

19S2,

for example, is made

up of a

large, red,

rectangular

form

on

top, separated

by a dark

green,

almost black

stripe from

a

somewhat smaller, green, rectangular

form below it, all painted on a background

whose color changes from orange-

brown on top

to

light green in

the

middle

and grayish-green

at

the

bottom. The

red rectangle is prominent and its edges

are clearly

distinguished

from

the back-

ground.

The emphasis on the edges produces

a

sensation of a floating

form over

the background, which

is also emphasized

by the dark

green stripe underneath

it,which

could be perceived as

a

shadow

cast by

the red

form. This

floating

sensation is

amplified by the

gradation

of

the background color, which changes

from orange-brown at the top to light green in the middle, giving the impres-

sion

that the

upper part of

the

red form is closer

to the

background than its

lower part.

But

a daub of dark green color on top of the lower edge of the red

form

makes

it

look

as

if

the

dark green stripe is

in front

of the

red. As the

green

form's edges

are blurred

and

dissolve into

the background, the

form withdraws

from

the viewer.

However, a narrow stripe of green covering a small area of

the

27 art

journal



dark green stripe

above

the green

form

makes it look as if the green

form

is

nearer to the viewer

than the

dark

green. The

red form

looks

as

if

it

advances

toward

the viewer and

the

green as

if it withdraws.

Simultaneously,

since the

green

is

also

in front of

the dark green

stripe and the red behind it, it cannot

be

decided what is

in front

and

what

is

behind.

The moment

one thinks

oneself

oriented

in the

pictorial

space, one

perceives at

the

same

time the contradictions

in

what

is near

and

what is far.

This renders the pictorial

space ambiguous,

unperceivable, fluctuating,

neither

deep

nor

flat.

The conventional reading

of pictorial space is

deliberately

confused in

this

and

many

others of

Rothko s

paintings.

The ability

to measure distances

between

forms in

the

pictorial

space,

to distinguish between

what

is

distant

and

what

is

near,

between depth and flatness, all

these are rendered dubious.

Rothko,

then,

was

not

interested

in representing spatial illusion

in his paintings.

On the con-

trary, it

is evident in many

of his paintings

that

he strove

to

undermine

any

attempt at a

conventional reading of space

and to

eliminate any

coherent spatial

sensation from

his paintings.

Color

As

he subverted our reading of

space

Rothko

also

undermined our

ability to

read

colors.

His paintings blur the

differences between

the colors and

their

boundaries,

a difference

that disappears

almost completely in his dark

and

almost

monochrome

paintings.

In

No. 27 Light

Band)

from

1954,

Rothko

depicts

three

main rectangular

forms

over a

mainly

blue background. Each

of

these

forms

contains

more

rectangles, as if echoing

the

main

form, which are distinguished

from it by

gray, sometimes almost

black, contours. As

the color of

the contour

is not

uniformly

applied, being sometimes

thicker or thinner, sometimes

wider

or

narrower,

even

disappearing,

the edges

of

these forms are blurred,

making

it

impossible

to be sure

how many rectangular forms

each

of

the

main

forms

con-

tains. In addition

to

the blurred boundaries

of the contained forms, the

edges

of

the

main

forms are blurred

as well, making them

seem as if

they

are

dissolving

into

the

background.

This sensation is

enhanced by

the

similarity

of

the

form s

color

to that

of

the

background,

dark blue

at the top,

turning

lighter and gradu-

ally becoming darker,

somewhat

purple, toward the

bottom. The rectangular

form

nearest

to the

top is

mainly blue daubed with

gray. It turns

darker

at

the

edges,

nmaking it

almost blend into

the background in

particular on

the

right

side). The

same is

true

of

the central

and

lower

rectangles. The

color of the middle

form is

mainly

white with

daubs of

yellow. It

is

lighter in the

center, turning

blue and

darker

toward the edges,

and the one at

the

bottom is gray-lighter

in the

center

and darker,

almost

black, mixed with

the

purple

color of the background

edge.

In

this

case,

as in many other

Rothko paintings,

the readability of the colors

is

deliberately

confused.The

first problem the observer

encounters when stand-

ing before

Rothko s paintings is

the

impossibility

of

locating

the

precise contours

of the

form,

making

it

difficult, if not impossible,

to

discern

where precisely

it

begins

and the background

ends. This problem

entails another: the

number

of

forms actually

depicted in the

paintings is uncertain.

Thus,

the forms

depicted on

the

canvas

evade the grasp

of our perception

and

create

the impression

that they

are slipping

away from us.

8

SUMMER 9



Mark

Rothko. No. 27 Light Band , 1954.

Oil

on

canvas. 81 x

86

n. (205.7 x 220 cm .

Private

collection.©2005

Kate Rothko

Prizel

and Christopher

Rothko/Artists

Right

Society

(ARS) NewYork.

Photograph: Michael

Bodycomb.

29 art journal



22. Heidegger, What Is Metaphysics?

102.

23. Werner Haftmann, quoted

in

Anna

C.

Chave,

Mark Rothko: Subjects in

Abstraction

(New Haven:

Yale

University Press,

1989),

193.

24.

Many

critics, as well as

Rothko

himself,

noted

the

paintings gave the sensation

of being and

presence.

Inhis

Pratt lecture, when describing

the

difference

between

himself

and Ad Reinhardt,

Rothko

said,

The

difference

between

me

and

Reinhardt is

hat

he's

a

mystic. By

that

I

mean

that

his paintings

are immaterial. Mine are here.

Materially. The surfaces,

the

work

of

the

brush

and

so

on.

His

are

untouchable ; quoted inDore

Ashton, About

Rothko (New York.

Oxford

University Press, 1983),

179.

25

Heidegger,

What

Is Metaphysics?

103.

There is no evidence

to suggest that Rothko had read Heidegger. Neverthe-

less,

Heidegger's

account

of the encounter with nothingness and in particular

his

notion of

the

slipping

away of

the

whole perfectly describes Rothko's

paint-

ings. As

already noted, for Heidegger, anxiety reveals nothingness, which is

expe-

rienced

with

beings

and

in

beings

expressly

as a

slipping

away

of

the

whole,

22

meaning that in anxiety

the

entities

in the

world

recede from us and

we

cannot

get hold

of them, leaving us

with

only our

own being,

which is

being-toward-

death. Rothko's way

of

representing the

human

drama,

which

for

him

was

con-

stituted by the

fact that we are born

to

die,

resembles Heidegger's thinking

of

nothingness.

He

intimated mortality by rendering

the things represented on

his

canvas

as escaping

the

grasp ofour gaze.

The

forms are there, but

we

cannot

really perceive or

be certain that

we accurately

perceive

what exactly

is there. In

other

words, by

blurring

the readability of space and colors,

Rothko reenacted

and represented in his paintings what according

to Heidegger we

experience

when

we encounter nothingness.

Some

reservations must

be

added

regarding the

existence ofnothingness:

since

it

is

not a thing

among

things,

so

that

we

can

say that it

is

this or that, its

existence cannot

be

scientifically proved

but only

assumed.

Ifwe, however,

assume that there

is

something that

we

call nothingness, and

that

we

encounter

it

when

anxious,

we

can

also

assume

that

nothingness

is

what Rothko's paintings

show us. Although

it might be that it is

not

experienced by all,

such an

experi-

ence nonetheless

is

shared

by many. In

any case,

the

fact

that Rothko wanted

to

intimate mortality and the way he

chose to do it by

depicting

forms on a back-

ground

that do

not entirely

submit

to

our grasp-as

well as his

paintings'

invo-

cation

of anxiety point

to

a congruence

in Rothko's and Heidegger's thinking, at

least insofar as it concerns nothingness.

Covering Nothingness

Rothko

not

only

wanted his paintings

to intimate mortality, our impending

nothingness, but as

he told

Werner

Haftmann, he also wished his

paintings to

cover

up

something

similar

to

this

'nothingness. '

2

3 Indeed,

Rothko

covered

his

canvases

with

colors. He

put layers

of

color one on top

of

another,

concealing

and

revealing

the

colors underneath, making

the process of covering transparent.

With no

other content represented in his paintings,

the

covering

becomes the

sole

content

of his

art.

Rothko's paintings cover nothingness

in another sense as

well,

one

that

is

close

to Heidegger's

notion

of nothingness.

By

eliminating

most of the com-

ponents

that

used

to constitute painting, except

the framed

surface

and

color,

Rothko,

as

many

other

abstract artists, and

as

many

critics

have

commented,

pointed to

nothingness

as

a

negation

and absence. This

negation, though,

emphasizes

the

presence of

the

paintings,

2 4

as

it

draws our

attention to the

fact

that

they

simply

are, that

they are something rather

than nothing, and in

this

sense they conceal nothingness. Paradoxically,

this concealing

is

also a revealing,

first,

because for Heidegger, nothingness

is

what

makes

it

possible for us to be

aware

that

something

is n the

first

place, and second, because

it

draws our

atten-

tion to the

fact

that there

could be

nothingness instead.

Nothingness, H eidegger

argues, discloses these beings

in

their full bu t

3 SUNIMER

O



26.

Heidegger,

The Origin

of

the Work

of

Art,

inBasic

Writings 19

27. Derrida,

in the last

part of The

Truth in Painting

(378),

similarly argues

that for Heidegger

to say

about

something

that it

is,we

first

must

have the

experience

of

nothingness: That

which

is, s the

being

of the existent,

is not

(the existent). A

cer-

tain thinking,

a certain experience

of

nothingness

(of

the

nonexistent)

is

required

for

access

to this

question of the

being

of the existent,

likewise

to

the difference

between being

and the existent.

Therefore,

it could be

said

that any painting,

because

it

is,by its very

existence points

to noth-

ingness.

However,

this does

not

indicate

how

nothingness

can be (re)presented

ina painting.

28.

Novak

and O'Doherty,

Rothko's

Dark

Paintings,

274.

29. For

one

of the

possible

effects that facing

our

mortality

and accepting

it might have

on

us,

see

William

Haver's most

enlightening

essay Really

Bad Infinities: Queer's

Honour and the

Pornographic

life, Parallax

,

no.

4 (1999).

heretofore concealed strangeness as

what

is radically other-with

respect to

the

nothing. That is,

nothingness

reveals

beings

because

they are

beings

and

not

nothing,

2 5

and

the

more

we

are aware

of the

presence of a

thing,

the

more

we

are

made

aware

of its radical

other:

nothingness.

Among

all

the things

in

the

world

it

is

the presence of

an artwork

that we are

most aware

of.

Because

a work

of art, no

matter

what

kind, is,simply

by reason of its

presence and

continuing

endurance,

even

when

we

no

longer are,

it stands

against nothingness

as its

radi-

cal

other.

And this,

for Heidegger,

is the difference

between

artworks

and other

human

products,

which

disappear

in use,

sinking

into the

nothingness

from

which they

came,

while

the work

of art

is

preserved.

The

less

that is depicted

in

a work

of

art, the

less our

attention is

distracted

from its bare presence,

the

stronger our

realization that

this

work is,and

the greater

our

realization that

there

could be nothing

instead.

Heidegger

writes:

The more

solitary

the

work,

fixed in

the figure, stands

on

its own

and the

more cleanly

it

seems

to

cut

all ties

to human

beings,

the more

simply does

the thrust

come into

the open

that

such

a

work is....

the more simply

does

it

transport us

into this

openness

and thus at

the

same

time

transport

us out

of

the

realm

of

the

ordinary.

To

submit

to this

displacement means

to trans-

form

our

accustomed ties

to world

and earth

and henceforth

to restrain

all

usual doing

and

prizing, knowing

and

looking,

in

order to stay within

the

truth

that

is

happening

in

the

work.1

6

The

word nothingness

is not

mentioned

here,

but

the citation

nonetheless

manifests

the relation

of

the artwork

to

nothingness.

Because

for

Heidegger it

is

the encounter with

nothingness

in

anxiety

that severs our

ties

to

all beings

and

our

world,

it

is

also nothingness

that

gives

us

access to

beings and

makes us

aware

of their

presence,

that each thing

is,

27

and

again,

it is the

encounter

with

nothingness

that

transports

us out

of our

ordinary everyday

life

and

makes us

reevaluate

our

situation in

the

world,

facing the fact that we are

going

to die and

that

we

might

die

at

any

moment. This

nothingness,

which

the existence

of

the

work

points

to, is not

an absence

but

something

perceived

as

the

origin

of

every-

thing,

but whose

existence

cannot

be

logically proven.

In his

essay

What Is

Metaphysics?

Heidegger points

out

that we can

only surmise

that there is

such nothingness.

Novak

and O'Doherty

write,

Rothko's method

in these

works could

also

be

seen

as

masking

and

unmasking...

.What is behind

the

mask?

Another

mask, a

fallible

human

presence-or

nothing? 2

Rothko's

paintings are

masks indeed,

but

masks that

show what

they hide:

that it is

nothingness

that

lies behind

them.

This nothingness,

which Rothko's

paintings conjure

up is

not

only

a

negation

and

an absence

but also what

designates

the limit

of human

existence,

and as

such, it is also

what

defines

and constitutes it.

In

other

words, Rothko's

paintings

simulate what

we experience

when encountering

nothingness

and thus

make us

face what

we normally

try

to

repress:

that it

is

the certainty of

death that makes

us

the way we are.

29

Natalie

Kosoi

teaches aesthetics

at the Shenkar School

of

Design and

Art History

in the Open University

in

Israel.

Her PhD dissertation

is

tided

'Nothingness

inArt Mark

Rothko,

Robert Ryman,

Anish Kapoor,

and

Eva

Hesse.

31

artjournal



COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Nothingness Made Visible: The Case of Rothko’s

Paintings

SOURCE: Art J 64 no2 Summ 2005

WN: 0519704400002

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it

is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in

violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:

http://www.collegeart.org/

Copyright 1982-2005 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.

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