Thursday, November 10, 2011

Red, A Drama Based on Mark Rothko Comes to Pittsburgh's Public Theater

Seems like the Abstract Expressionists are really in vogue, a major de Kooning retrospective at MOMA; a whole museum dedicated to Clifford Still and shows dedicated to lesser know artist's like Richard Pousette-Dart.

Rothko's more minimal and lyrical work is not always put in this box, but he very much shared their sincere belief in the power and spiritual nature of art.

Seems like this a major subject of the play.

Rothko, who flourished during the abstract expressionist movement, found himself rejecting the arrival of Pop Art in the late 1950s, particularly one of its practitioners.

"You really think Andy Warhol will be hanging in museums in a hundred years?" Rothko asks Ken dismissively.

"Andy Warhol's like the 'great' third [human] character in the play," said Mr. Logan. "He represented a lot of the things Rothko rejected. He felt that artists needed to know where they belonged in the continuum of artists.

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