![]() However, this group of works is still referred to as the ‘Seagram Murals’. By the time Rothko had completed these works he had developed doubts about the appropriateness of the restaurant setting, which led to his withdrawal from the commission. ![]() Red on Maroon belongs to the third series, in which the blocks of colour within the works had become more defined. In the second and third series Rothko experimented with varying permutations of the floating window frame and moved towards a more sombre colour palette, to counter the perception that his work was decorative. Between 19 Rothko created three series of paintings, but was unsatisfied with the first and sold these paintings as individual panels. Rothko started work on the Seagram commission in a large new studio, which allowed him to simulate the restaurant’s private dining room. He achieved just the kind of feeling I’m after – he makes the viewers feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall. I was much influenced subconsciously by Michelangelo’s walls in the staircase room of the Medicean Library in Florence. He wanted to create an encompassing environment of the sort he had encountered when visiting Michelangelo’s vestibule in the Laurentian Library in Florence in 1950 and again in 1959: Rothko was interested in the possibility of having a lasting setting for his paintings to be seen as a group. In early 1958 Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the exclusive Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. With time this difference has become more pronounced as the pigments fade at varying rates. With broad sweeping gestures Rothko spread the paint onto the canvas surface, muddying the edges between the blocks of colour, creating a sense of movement and depth. The red paint was then added in fast, broken brushstrokes, using a large commercial decorator’s brush. Onto the base Rothko added a second coat that he subsequently scraped away to leave a thin coating of colour. The glue within the paint shrank as it dried, giving the painting’s surface its matt finish. The canvas was primed with a base coat of maroon paint, made from powder pigments mixed into rabbit skin glue. Red on Maroon was painted on a single sheet of tightly stretched cotton duck canvas. The movement was characterised by simplified compositions of unbroken colour, which produced a flat picture plane. He is best known, alongside fellow Americans Barnett Newman and Robert Motherwell, as a pioneer of colour field painting. Red on Maroon was painted by the abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko. ![]() This changing tone gives a sense of depth in an otherwise abstract composition. Different pigments have been used within the maroon, blending shades of crimson and mauve colour. The red paint forms a solid block of colour but the edges seep slightly, blurring into the areas of maroon. As is suggested by the work’s title, this is overlaid with a large red rectangle, which in turn encloses a narrower maroon rectangle, suggesting a window-like structure. ![]() The base colour of the painting is a muted maroon. Red on Maroon is a large unframed oil painting on a vertically orientated rectangular canvas.
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