Mark Rothko

“It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.”

“Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.”

“It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again.”

“I also hang the pictures low rather than high, and particularly in the case of the largest ones, often as close to the floor as is feasible, for that is the way they are painted.”

“And last, it may be worthwhile trying to hang something beyond the partial wall because some of the pictures do very well in a confined space.”

“You’ve got sadness in you, I’ve got sadness in me – and my works of art are places where the two sadnesses can meet, and therefore both of us need to feel less sad.”

“This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative; and have been painted in a scale of normal living rather than an institutional scale.”

“I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

“If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom.”

“A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.”

“If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.”

“I would like to say to those who think of my pictures as serene, whether in friendship or mere observation, that I have imprisoned the most utter violence in every inch of their surface.”

“We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.”

“Silence is so accurate.”

“There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.”

“That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.”