Rothko's Colors

Mark Rothko's large paintings often seem composed of extremely simple colored surfaces. Yet several of his works slowly change appearance over time. Certain zones become duller, others brown or lose their original luminosity. The phenomenon comes not only from normal aging of paints: Rothko sometimes used deliberately unstable pigment mixtures to obtain very particular luminous effects.

Mark Rothko developed in the 1950s and 1960s a painting based on large superimposed chromatic zones. Contrary to an impression of immediate simplicity, his works rest on extremely complex layers of pigments, resins, and mediums applied very thinly.

Rothko sought vibrating luminous effects impossible to obtain with standardized industrial paints. To produce certain color depths, he sometimes mixed incompatible or chemically fragile materials. The problem is that several pigments used in the mid-20th century age poorly under the effect of light, humidity, or certain solvents. Reds become brown, violets lose their saturation, and certain transparent layers gradually modify.

Conservators then encounter a particular difficulty: how to restore a work whose visual effect depends precisely on deliberately unstable material? In certain cases, it becomes impossible to find exactly the original appearance. Research conducted on Rothkos today uses spectrometry, multispectral imaging, and chemical analyses to reconstitute invisible or altered layers. These studies show how technically sophisticated the paintings were.

The paradox is that this fragility also participates in the works' intensity. Rothko sought less to produce permanent surfaces than an almost immaterial emotional luminous experience. The pictorial material had to seem to vibrate, float, or partially disappear in the viewer's light.