Ochre and Red on Red

Stand in front of this painting and you might feel something before you can name it. Mark Rothko stacked warm bands of color here: a soft ochre yellow floating above a glowing orange, all set against a deep red background. The edges are blurry and feathered, so the colors seem to breathe and hover rather than sit flat on the canvas. Rothko painted "Ochre and Red on Red" in 1954, during the years when he had fully settled into the style that made him famous.

Rothko belonged to a group of American artists known as the Abstract Expressionists, who worked in New York around the middle of the twentieth century. He wanted his big color paintings to stir real emotion, and he often hoped people would stand close to them, almost stepping inside the color. Interestingly, he disliked being called a colorist and insisted he was not interested in color for its own sake. For him these glowing rectangles were about deeper human feelings like joy, sadness, and even tragedy. Whether you sense all of that or simply enjoy the warm sunset tones, the painting invites you to slow down and just look.