"Untitled" (1964)

The smallest of the paintings in this installation, the untitled work from 1964 is also the most square. It features what feels like a compressed or flattened version of the spatial relations governing the other works in the series. It presents a reddish, slightly glossy "form" on a bluish purple matte ground. Several of the other works in the group of seven feature reddish grounds, this is the only work with a reddish "form". Interestingly, "No. 5" from this numbered series, owned by Rothko's son, is almost an exact inversion of the colour relation presented by this work but with more verticality and expansion. The top margin between the edge of the stretcher and the top edge of the form is slightly narrower than at the bottom. As these paintings are illuminated primarily from above it is at the top that the difference of reflectance and hue between form and ground is most "present". Depending on the direction and intensity of the light (and your position in space and hence the angled distance from the work) this difference alters each time the work is seen: in the morning the difference is plain, enough to make you doubt the description of these admittedly dark works as "black" but by the afternoon they have all darkened substantially. 

In effect, through the day they faded away: a long morendo or diminuendo as if they were recoiling from the light that makes them visible, however faintly, in the first place.

I can only imagine what this work in particular would have done to my eyes had I been able to stand in the gallery as the light outside faded: I imagine that as twilight descended you could probably see a crescendo of ever more intense virtual colour as your eyes adjusted to the fading light, making colours that are not properly speaking "there" appear. 

I walked past curator Harry Cooper in the corridor later that afternoon and was filled with the desire to beg him, bribe him or cajole him into letting me see these works after the gallery had shut. I can hardly expect being left alone with paintings that must be worth millions by now. Still I can dream about what they would have done. 

I think that Rothko himself did this, observed the works as the light left them gradually, at the close of the day, after painting in the morning. Their darkness is necessary to make light itself the subject: we are the subject matter of these works, the "void" they present is ourselves confronted by them.

What did he see in them? Did he see what I see? What you might see? How can we know? 

If he saw in his work what I see in it, I can imagine him happy with these works. The idea that their dark colour and sombre tone reflects a depression on his part is a good story but I don't believe it myself. 

If "black" was ever full of life, questioning open life, life exuberant and expansive, it is here.