The Second Reduction
Mark Rothko knows form. He has studied it, practiced it, mastered it. And then, in the late 1940s, he lets it go. Not because he fails – but because he thinks further.
Malevich had left representation behind. Rothko asks the next question: Why does color need a form at all? Why must the square be sharply bounded? Why must the edge be clear? Rothko begins to dissolve the edges. The rectangles in his color field paintings no longer have fixed borders – they float, they breathe, they vibrate.
This liberation from form is a deliberate choice for the imprecise. Rothko does not want to construct – he wants to touch. He wants the viewer not to stand before the painting, but within it. Not to analyze, but to feel. His paintings are not objects – they are thresholds.
The second reduction is the reduction of form to pure experience. Rothko surrenders control to gain something greater: direct contact between color and consciousness, without the mediation of geometry. A farewell to precision – in favor of the truth of feeling.
"I paint large pictures because I want to be intimate. A small picture is outside your experience. A large picture takes you in." – Mark Rothko
— Mark Rothko
Key Points
- •Deliberate liberation from geometric form
- •Color as direct experience – without mediation
- •Viewer stands not before, but within the painting
- •Second reduction: farewell to precision