Mark Rothko and the Development of American Modernism 1938-1948 Author(S): Jonathan Harris Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol

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Mark Rothko and the Development of American Modernism 1938-1948 Author(s): Jonathan Harris Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1988), pp. 40-50 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360322 . Accessed: 02/08/2013 13:54

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Rothkoand the Developmentof AmericanModernism 1938-1948

JONATHANHARRIs

C.. . negationis inscribedin thevery practice of mod- Subway(1930s) (Fig. 1), to the adoption of what is ernism,as theform in whichart appears to itselfas a commonlyaccepted as his 'abstract'format, with his value ... thatnegativity does not appear as a prac- painting Multiform(1948) (Fig. 2). This decade ticewhich guarantees meaning or opens out a space contains, then, the works of the 'break', when forfree play and fantasy... but, rather,negation Rothko,as he himselfsaid in 1958,'with the utmost appears as an absolute and all-encompassingfact, reluctance'found that 'the figure could notserve' his somethingwhich once begun is cumulativeand purposes. uncontrollable;a factwhich swallows meaning alto- The 1950s saw the rise of the AbstractExpres- gether ... We have an art in which ambiguity sionistartists to institutionaland criticaldominance becomesinfinite, which is on theverge of proposing in America.This processwill be discussedshortly, and does propose- an Otherwhich is comfor- because Rothkois generallyunderstood both as lone tably ineffable,a vagueness,a mere mysticismof geniusand as exemplary'colour-field' painter. The sight.' elaborationand institutionalisationof Modernist T. J. Clark: 'ClementGreenberg's Theory Of Art', theoryas a criticalorthodoxy occurred during the CriticalInquiry, vol. 9, no. 1, September1982.1 1950s and 1960s and, therefore,in the 1940s the of Rothko's 'Abstractart cannot be disposed of by a simple- enveloping worksand ideas in various formsof minded evasion. Or by negation. We can only Modernistexplanation was stillto occur. disposeof abstract art by assimilatingit, by fighting Indeed, Clement Greenberg,the most influential our way throughit. Where to? I do notknow. Yet it criticcommitted to thesupport of artists likeJackson seemsto me thatthe wish to returnto the imitation Pollock and Morris Louis in the post-warperiod, ofnature in arthas been givenno morejustification can be foundin 1940 vacillatingtowards, but not thanthe desire of certain partisans of abstract art to necessarilyarriving at, an abstractnewer Laocoon.4 legislateit intopermanency.' Althoughit is possible to agree that 'Modernism' a ClementGreenberg: 'Towards A NewerLaocoon', (with capital 'M') has a verybasic genericcon- PartisanReview vol. 7, no. 4, July-August1940.2 sistencyas a clusterof theories, ideas and aphorisms ('art-for-art'ssake', the belief that modern art is 'It was withthe utmostreluctance that I foundthe made forno particularsocial purpose,that it exists figurecould not servemy purposes... But a time and should be judged 'on its own terms'), this came when none of us could use the figurewithout clusteris no monolithor statute:'Modernism' draws mutilatingit.' on a myriadof philosophical bases, withtheoretical Mark Rothko,speaking at thePratt Institute.3

This articleis an attemptto considerand drawatten- tion to an early 'moment' in the career of Mark Rothko, a conjunctureroughly spanning the ten yearsbetween 1938 and 1948,and as such involvesa consciousshifting of scrutiny away fromthe 'classic' or paradigmaticpainting produced in the 1950sand 1960s- the celebrated'floating fields of colour' in suchworks as Untitled(1954) or Orange,Red And Red (1962). I shall arguehere that the basis forRothko's later, characteristicpaintings* can be found by examiningthe historicaland political contextin whichhe foundhimself from the late 1930s to the late 1940sand by consideringthe works of art which he produced duringthose years. In that ten year period it is possible to track the path Rothko followedfrom an (alwaysambivalent) commitment Fig. 1. Mark Rothko Subwa C.1936. Estate of to a pictorialrealism found,for example, in his Mark Rothko.

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Rothko himselfand for many other Modernist criticsand laterhistorians, defined essentially in a negativeway: freedomfrom politics, freedom from havingto representthe world and freedomfrom whatThomas B. Hess has called 'thecollective ethos or style'.9 Apart fromthese two fairlyspecific positions, which shared at least the idea of separatingthe activityof painting from that which was regardedas extraneous,a broader admixture of Modernist writingshas seen Rothko's paintingsas abstract works which raise, embody or imply mystical, metaphysicalor transcendentalthemes: the lifeof humanbeings in relationto questionsof The Infinite (God, Life/Death,etc).10 This is certainlythe more popular articulationof Modernism,elaborated in exhibitioncatalogues, coffee-table monographs and newspaperand televisionprogrammes. Within this plethoraof eulogies, however, it is significantto note thatelements drawn from Greenberg's and Rosen- berg's seminal essay have some place, and again tendto stressthe natureof Rothko's painting as an autonomous process and product. As a teeming pond of ideas, then, Modernism constitutesthe Fig. 2. Mark Rothko: Multiform,1948. Pace dominantmode of understandingmodern art and Gallery. Rothko'swork. Though diverseand in no sense a coherentor intended project,Modernism is the explanatorymodel or paradigm on which most critics,curators and arthistorians draw to describe reflexivityranging from the rhetorically'rigorous' and evaluateRothko's paintings and thoseof other (Greenberg's'Modernist Painting'5) to the rhetori- AbstractExpressionist artists. cally loopy (Hilla Rebay's anticipationof the 'har- This articleis an attemptnot only to locatehistori- monicconvergence' God was a Modernist- in callyand politicallythe conjuncturewhich saw the her article'The Beauty Of Non-Objectivity'6).In developmentof the negativemodels of freedom relation to Abstract Expressionism and Mark impliedin Modernistcriticism, but also to explain Rothko'spaintings, three reasonably distinct forms Rothko'srejection of figuration and his adoptionof of Modernismhave been presentedand stillhold the abstractstyle with which he is now dominantly criticalsway. Clement Greenberg believed that Art associated. It will become clear that these two should developin an almost'scientific' or 'clinical' developmentsare closelyrelated, though I want to way: modernpaintings should examinethemselves stresstheir particularhistorical contiguity rather as material formsand procedures,not produce than any necessaryor a priori theoreticalarticula- 'images' of the world, but referto themselvesas tion. The transcendent,metaphysical and univer- unique and irreducibleforms of material,cultural salisingqualities attributedto Rothko's paintings, and cognitive creation. Greenberg's 'technical', and recentlyeulogised by pastand presentwriters in almostpuritanical disregard for pleasure as a neces- the catalogue forthe Tate GalleryRothko exhibi- sarycomponent of his criticalactivity also debarred tion, must also be seen as the productsof a very anyfanciful concern for the metaphysical or spiritual particularhistorical and social moment in the dimensionof Art.' Harold Rosenberg,in an influen- historyof the Americanavant-garde." That 'tran- tial article firstpublished in 1952, stressedthe scendence',so exaltedby Modernisthistorians and productionprocess of those he called the 'action critics,was thetranscendence of a particularpolitical painters',arguing that as a vital formof creative and ideological conjuncture,where what was at activitythe act of applying paint involvedboth stakewas the possibilityand desirabilityof art and temporaland spatialdimensions and was therefore artistsbeing explicitly and organisationallyengaged intimatelyrelated to the basic existentialconditions in politicalstruggle and debate. The attractionof of human beings. Following Jean-Paul Sartre's thistranscendence to themiddle class has been well philosophicaldirection elaborated withinthe tor- characterisedby T. J.Clark: tuouspages of Being A ndN;othingness, Rosenberg saw the paintingactivity as necessarilyrelated to the The bourgeoisiehas a smallbut considerable interest, I possibilitiesof human creationand hencecentral to believe,in preservinga certainmyth of the aesthetic theweighty concept of freedom.8 As willbe shownin consciousness,one wherea transcendentalego is given what follows,freedom became forRosenberg, for somethingappropriate to contemplatein a situation

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions essentiallydetached from the pressures and deformities of imperative,and yetalso as a happyand unexpected history.That interest is considerablebecause the class in result of the collision of circumstances.Emily questionhas fewother areas (sincethe declineof the Wassermanrepresents this latter emphasis well: sacred) in which its accountof consciousnessand freedomcan be at all compellinglyphrased."2 In theearly 1 900s it would have been farfetched tobelieve thatwithin fifty years a distinctlyAmerican art would be Rothko's career, ratherthan being rehearsedad acceptedand admiredby an internationalaudience.16 nauseamas a triumphantspiritual achievement, can be seenas a retreatfrom the ruins of the Socialist and What was impliedin thisprocess of the acceptance, Communistopposition in Americain thelate 1930s by Europe, of the arrivalof American Abstract and fromthe final victory of corporate capitalism as Expressionistsas the next authenticgeneration of themotor of American social and historicaldevelop- Modernistartists? 'Acceptance' means both'to take ment. The chauvinisticcelebration of 'American willingly' and 'to concede'. The acquiring of AbstractExpressionism' by Modernistcritics and 'consent'can be a messybusiness. The conceptof historiansand of Mark Rothko's location within hegemonydeveloped by the Italian Marxist Antonio that,in the contextof the Cold War and the U.S. Gramsci entailedthe process of securingconsent, economic,political and militarydominance of the throughboth rhetorical persuasion and coercion,for 'Free World',was a directcontradiction of what we a particularidea or end. Laws are proposed as know of Rothko's and JacksonPollock's political reasonable(worthy of respect); yet in theabsence of beliefs,which had been anti-nationalistand hostile compliancethey must be enforced.For Gramsci, to theinterest and dominanceof capitalist society.13 hegemonywas a politicalprocess through which a To attemptto recoverthe specificpolitics of that particularsocial class 'nationalises'itself: when a set 'moment'in the 1940sand to relatethe culture and of specificeconomic, social and ideologicalvalues politicsof the Depressionto thatof the Cold War and beliefsbelonging to a particularclass, whose may enable us to understandthe historicalreasons material intereststhey serve, are generalisedas why the idea and dream of the 'unhistorical',the 'national'or 'universal'interests within a particular 'timeless' and the transcendentalbecame so society.In replacingor dominatingthe values and appealingto a generationof previouslypolitically- beliefsof otherclasses, those that are generalised committedartists in America. become hegemonic:represented and believedto be The so-called 'Triumph of AmericanPainting', 'in the national interest'and constitutingwhat announced by IrvingSandler in 1970 was, in fact, Gramscicalled a 'commonsense'.17 the triumphof the criticaland institutionaldomi- This is what happened to American Abstract nance of Abstract Expressionism,both as an Expressionism,the 'New York School' and Mark 'official','high', ModernistAmerican style and as Rothko's paintings:propagated by MOMA, the thelatest paradigm for a universaland international cataloguesand booksof art historians, the writings of modernart movement. One necessarycondition for critics,the sales pitch of dealer galleries,and, as thiswas the economic,political and militaryascen- recent historicalresearch has shown, the tacit dencyof the United Statesafter the Second World economicsupport of C.I.A. backedagencies like the War,which permitted the inauguration of New York arts magazine Encounterand the more open Cityas the internationalcapital for the avant-garde patronageof the U.S. State Department,Abstract and the hub of modernart's production, economic Expressionismwas representedas the paradigmatic exchange,institutional exhibition and criticallegiti- high Moderniststyle of the 'Free West' afterthe mation.14The dominance of American Abstract Second World War.18Counterposed to the censor- Expressionism,produced through such crucial shipand stylisticbanality of Soviet Socialist Realism facilitatingagencies as the Museum of Modern Art enforcedby Stalin after 1934, the paintingsof (MOMA), the Guggenheim Museum and the Rothko,Pollock, de Kooningand Newmanbecame dealing galleriesof BettyParsons, Sam Kootz and 'weapons of the Cold War', vehiclesfor cultural SidneyJanis(who all handledRothko's work during diplomacyand signsof 'culturaldemocracy'.19 The the 1940sand 1950s)involved what might appear to involvementof the C.I.A. is discussedin detail by be a paradox. On the one hand, AbstractExpres- David and Cecile Shapiro: sionismwas hailed as a distinctlyAmerican art, broughtabout by theterminal 'decline of cubism'15 AbstractExpressionism became the stylemost heavily and thereforeof European artists.On the other dispensedby our [the U.S.] government,forreasons that hand,it was also celebratedas thedevelopment of a werein partexplained by Thomas W. Bradenin a 1967 Moderniststyle and sensibilityindependent of any article'that appeared under the title 'I'm GladThe C.I.A. It was seen both as the glorious is Immoral' in the SaturdayEvening Post . .. Braden, particularnation. executivesecretary of the Museum Of ModernArt for a floweringof an indigenoustradition of American shortperiod in thelate 1940s, joined the Central Intelli- Modernistartists and as the latestinstantiation of genceAgency as supervisorof cultural activities in 1951, the trans-nationalavant-garde. Paradoxical also is and remainedas directorof this branchuntil 1954. thepresentation of the Triumph of American Paint- Recognisingthat congressional approval of many of their ing both as an undeniable Zeitgeis1, a teleological projectswas as likely'as theJohn Birch society's approv-

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ingMedicare', he becameinvolved with such organisa- Rothko's case in particular,the 'mystery'of his tions as the Instituteof Labour Researchand the paintings.23Rothko's paintings seem to exlude NationalCouncil of Churches as frontsin theAmerican polysemy,their ontological and epistemological Cold War against communism here and abroad ... significanceineffable: where have theycome from? Braden,possibly taking his aestheticcue fromhis What does theirdense opacityrepresent? Rothko's Museumof Modem Art years, supported the export of post-warpaintings, read through the prisms of either Abstract Expressionismin the propaganda war ... Harold Rosenberg's existentialistaesthetic or Backedby money available to theC.I.A. and supportive of AbstractExpressionism, Braden's branch became a Clement Greenberg's rigorous formalism still meansof circumventingCongress and sendingabroad remain - to most - mysteriousand unyielding: art-as-propagandawithout federal intervention.20 meaningful and meaningless; profound and vacuous; activeand immobile;an opening and a closure.Rothko's well-known reluctance to showhis In this respect the paintingsand individualistic paintings,partly because he thoughtcritics, through statementsof the Abstract Expressionists were made theirwritings, tried to 'fix' and close theirsignifi- to formpart of the U.S. 'culturalMarshall plan', an cance, can be explained more adequately by ideological offensivedesigned to complementthe examining the political and historical context industrialand financialintervention which the U.S. whereinRothko (and otherAbstract Expressionists) orchestratedto propup and eventuallydynamise the opted for, were propelled toward and came to capitalistnations of WesternEurope against the 'accept' the typeof abstract painting with which he threats (and promises) of Soviet communism.21 and theyare now identified.In the contextof New Representedas the'universal Free Style of the West', York between1938 and 1948 can be identifiedthe the large agitatedcanvasses of Jackson Pollock or circumstanceswhich led Rothko to say, in his Rothko'sfloating fields of colour became emblems statement entitled 'The Romantics Were ofthe freedomof liberal American society: beacons Prompted': of individualism,unfettered activity and creative The familiaridentity of thingshas to be pulverisedin risk,proposed as possibleonly in a truedemocracy. orderto destroythe finiteassociations with which our That the U.S. Governmentinvolved itselfin societyenshrouds every aspect of our environment.24 variousopen or tacitways withthe rise to institutional and criticaldominance of AbstractExpres- What were the finiteassociations and the familiar sionism is now relativelywell-known - this identityof things which Rothko wished to see revisionistperiod in the historiographyof Abstract pulverised?Are theyto be understoodas comfor- Expressionismwas largelyconfined to the mid- tablyunspecific, an abstractrejection of an abstract 1970s. The New rorkTimes art critic Hilton Kramer, social and historicalworld, or as minutelytangible also predictably,launched an attackon the writers and relatedto be situationartists had foundthem- who addressed the relationshipbetween the U. S. selvesin fromthe mid-1930s onwards? State and AbstractExpressionist artists and on the The existentialist'freedom' and 'risk',celebrated editorialboard of Artforummagazine, where Max by Harold Rosenberg, had been grasped more Kozloff and Eve Cockcroft'sarticles appeared. accuratelyby ClementGreenberg as a situationof Kramer's riposte, entitled 'Muddled Marxism alienation.Writing in 1948,Greenberg argued that replacesArt Criticism at Artforum',though predict- 'isolation,alienation, naked and revealedto itself,is able, was too vociferousa polemic.22A handfulof thecondition under which the true reality of our age articlesin an artsmagazine, and even the publica- is experienced... Isolation is, so to speak, the tion of Serge Guilbaut's lengthybook in 1983,was naturalcondition of high art in America.'25This was unlikely to destabilize critical and institutional a positionclose to the one Rothkoalso adopted in orthodoxy- as theTate Gallery'srecent exhibition 1948: and catalogue demonstrates.And in any case, the revisionistargument left intact the leitmotifof The unfriendlinessofsociety to hisactivity is difficult for AbstractExpressionist and Modernistcritical ortho- theartist to accept. Yet this very hostility can act as a lever doxy in general:the beliefthat the value of these fortrue liberation. Freed from a falsesense of security and worksof art can be establishedabsolutely indepen- community,the artist can abandon his plastic bank book, dentlyof the circumstanceswithin which they were justas he has abandonedother forms of security.26 producedand gainedcritical support and acclaim.If value (or 'quality') is, within Modernist terms, 'Society'meant for Rothko two specificthings. The logicallyunrelated to social or historicalexplanation twosenses indicate what could be called thedouble -save with a formalistgenealogy which links a alienationwhich he feltin the period 1938 to 1948 Rothkopainting with a Mondrianor a Matissefrom (and after).In the late 1930s,Rothko, employed on earliergenerations of artists who are seen as consti- theNew Deal FederalArt project, an activemember tutingthe Modernist pantheon -then addinga few of the Artists'Union and the American Artists' (perhaps) surprisingdeterminations involving the Congress against Racism and Fascism, holding C.I.A. or the State Departmentunsettled not one socialist-anarchistbeliefs, was involvedin a pro- iota thecertainty of the recognition of quality and in longed argumentwith and against the organised

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Left's advocacy of socialistrealism as the proper stylisticvehicle for revolutionarypainting, as dictated by the Comintem and representedin Americaby the editorialposition of ArtFront, the newspaperof the Artists' Union. Withinthis radical politicaland artistic'society' of left-wing groups and affiliations,Rothko found himself, along withother artists,profoundly at odds with Stalinistpolitical > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~iO and culturalorthodoxy.27 Ten yearslater, in 1948, along withPollock, Newman and Gottlieb,Rothko was apparentlytransfixed by the threatof world- wide nuclear annihilationand by the gathering momentumof anti-subversive hysteria in America.28 The verypossibility of speech, of painting- of adequate referentialcommunication at all, in this context- was felt to be jeopardized. Pollock's Fig. 3. Mark Rothko:Antigone. Private collection. drawing War (1946 or 1947) was one of the last works beforehis celebrated 'drip' period, which containedany recognisableimagery or conventional spatialcomposition. Between about June 1947 and exploration'.32 The senseof immobility, constriction April 1948 Rothkopainted Number 18, de Kooning and mutenesswhich Rothko and othersfelt was Paintingand PollockNumber 26A, 1948,paintings in being presentedby d'Harnoncourtand later by whichthe referential or iconiccontent of representa- many othercritics, curators and historians,as an tion was expunged.In 1947 the U.S. State Depart- indexof the health , vitalityand optimismof the now ment'sOffice of Education had announcedits 'Zeal most powerfulnation-state on earth.It is no coin- For AmericanDemocracy' programme; in August cidence that the hegemony of high American the American Federation of Teachers produced modernism and its internationalisingcritical pamphletsshowing how to understandand counter doctrine celebrating the fecund creativityof 'the strategyand tacticsof world communism'.29 At U.S. democracywas accompanied by the simul- about the same time J. Edgar Hoover and Tom taneoushegemony of Arthur Schlesinger's political- Clark,the U.S. Attorney-General,organised the so- liberalismand the structural-functionalistsociology called 'Freedom Train', a patrioticmuseum-on- of Talcott Parsons, which extolled the virtuesof wheels touringthe nation, to coincide with the integrationand harmony, with the American coming election in 1948. The day that Congress nation-stateagain representedas theculmination of debated the implementationof the Truman world historyand civilisation.33D'Harnoncourt's Marshall Plan, the National Guard conducted a article perhaps representsthe firstinstitutional practicebombing raid on Washington,a 'lobbying' validationof modernism'scritical hegemony in the techniquedesigned to makethe military's viewpoint UnitedStates, the validation which was to empower on the matterof U.S. securityobvious. Guilbaut materially- throughthe dealing and curatorial argues that althoughRothko's and Pollock's work practicesof museumsand art galleries- the belief was non-figurative,it was intendedto be expressive thatAbstract Art Freedom. Donderoevowed tohwec equalledaeemny orgnstoifg Aeitcad of a subjectivestate: anxiety about the stateof the If the of Moderism with American anmommunistscouplingamongt intsemembers,levengciftheyl worldin the nuclearage.30 Loathing the groupsof nationalismthrough the vehicle of Abstract Expres- artistswho had moved towardsa totallyuncritical are.sionismundentified' representswand a hecoplannedparadoxical to state 'clea of upmtheaffairs, supportfor the U.S. Governmentduring the Second giventhe avant-garde's historical claims to neutrality WorldWar and the nationalchauvinism mounting andeniefieald,t even openincluding hostilitythihejr to national system'.35chauvinism, thevru.s.o the afterthe war in America,Rothko's resort to the use situationwas furtherconfused by thefact that while of titlesreferring to ancientmyths for his paintings d'Harnoncourtwas Abstract Govceernms epeent's formalrs celebratinginvstigationaolCmuns Expres- fromAntigone (Fig. 3), in 1941,was partof a strategy sionism's essential 'democratic' nature, other forattempting to transcendthe oppressivecontem- membersof the government,such as Congressman porarypolitical and ideologicalcontext.31 Rothko's George Dondero, were condemningabstract art as sense ofpersonal oppression was expressedin what 'shackledto communism'.34The idea thatmodern amounts to a plea in 'The Romantics Were art was alien and thereforesubversive had been a Prompted':'It reallyis a matterof ending this silence beliefheld consistently by art critics and artistsgoing and solitude,of breathing and stretchingone's arms back to thefirst showings of European modernism in again.' At about the same time as Rothko wrotethis, Rene d'Harnoncourt,curator at the Museum of Modern Art,announced thathe regardedmodern artas theforemost symbol of American Democracy -a symbol of 'infinitevariety' and 'ceaseless

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions activityin America,which had startedwith the Fish This freedom,which the artistwas supposed to Committeein 1931,had alwaysbeen intimatelytied experienceas the authenticcondition for the pro- to the investigationof culturalorganisations. The ductionof Great Art and whichis stillcelebrated as Dies Committee,which became the House Un- the conditionenabling Rothko to paint, was an American ActivitiesCommittee after the Second extremelyhistorical and relativesort of freedom.It World War, investigatedcommunists who were meantthe releasing of artists from the constraints of reportedlyactive in the New Deal Federal Music, the Federal ArtProject, the AmericanArtists Con- Theatre,Writing and ArtProjects in the late 1930s, gress and the American CommunistParty. This and became especiallyactive after the signingof the 'release' was intendedto returnthe artistto the so- Nazi-SovietPact in August 1939. Those investiga- called 'freemarket'; in otherwords, to thepatronage tionsand 'publicidentifications' (prosecutions being ofthe corporations and entrepreneurs.This was the impossible,as being a memberof the Communist situationRothko found himself in after1940. Partywas nevermade illegal) of supposed subver- Rothko'spolitical beliefs and affiliationsin thelate sives withinthe Federal Art Project - of which 1930s and early 1940s are still relativelyterra in- Rothkowas an employee- eventuallycontributed cognita,though it is commonfor writers to referto to the discreditingand abolitionof the Projectin him as an 'anarchist'and even more common for 1942, although it was effectivelydestroyed as committedmodernist historians to point out his nationalscheme in 1940.36 oppositionto socialistrealism.' It is knownthat he The eventsin New York around the Federal Art was an activemember of the Artists' Union, thathe Project,the Museum of Modem Art,the Artists' attendedmonthly meetings and agitatedalong with Union, the American Artists'Congress and the JacksonPollock for the City of New York to build a newspaperArt Front in the late 1930s providethe municipalart gallery to showthe worksof federally othercontext for understanding Rothko's social and employedartists. Rothko also attackedthe news- politicalalienation. With the end ofthe FederalArt paper ArtFront because ofwhat he saw as itsslavish Project,most of Roosevelt's New Deal policieswere devotionto Stalinistcultural dogma. He was partof superceded by national productionfor the war a dissidentgroup within the American Artists' Con- effort.It was emphaticallythis re-energisationof gresswhich called fora greaterdiversity of debate on privatecorporate capitalism (especially weapons and both political and artisticissues. Led by Meyer munitionsproduction, subcontracted by the U.S. Schapiro,the Trotskyiteart historian then teaching Government), rather than Roosevelt's State- at Columbia Universityin New York, the group interventionist'New Deal' policies,deployed during includedother artists such as MiltonAvery, Adolph the 1930s,which led to the economicrecovery and Gottlieb,Jose de Creft,Ilya Bolotowskyand the then supremacyof the USA afterthe war.37The writerLewis Mumford.On 4 April1940 the Ameri- AmericanArtists' Congress, of which Rothko was a can Artists'Congress passed a motionsupporting member,had attemptedto supportboth the Federal the U.S.S.R.'s invasionof Finland. Large groupsof Art Project and what it regardedas the socialist artistsand writers,both in and outsidethe American 'state-managerial'aspects of the New Deal, whileat CommunistParty, resigned from the Congressand thesame timecoming to termswith the dominance Avery,Bolotowsky, Gottlieb and Rothkocalled for of Stalinismboth in the Soviet Union and in the thecreation of a neworganisation. Two monthslater communistparties of western Europe and America. the Federationof Modern Paintersand Sculptors WithRoosevelt's de facto capitulation to the power was createdand, in an inauguralstatement, con- and interestsof corporatecapitalism and to the demned any artisticnationalism as detrimentalto right-wing'smordant attacks on the New Deal's the developmentof modernart.41 The splitin the welfare programmes- and especially on the Congress was to some degree engineered and fundingof cultural activity through the Federal Art encouraged by Peyton Boswell, the editor of Art Project - the American Artists'Congress was Digestmagazine, who forsome monthshad been slammed as a Stalinistcoterie and in 1940 split pressuringthose he regardedas the 'trueliberals' to internallyover the issue of supportfor the Soviet takecontrol from those he called the'art politicians'. invasionof Finland,the signingof the Nazi-Soviet Boswell singled out the artistsStuart Davis and Pact, the Moscow show-trialsof 'the LeftOpposi- JeromeKlein as 'Stalinists'and he claimedthat the tion', and a host of otherissues with rocked the AmericanArtists' Congress, under their leadership, organisedAmerican Left.38 The supportfor Soviet comparedwith the Ku Klux Klan. Boswell linked socialistrealist painting in Americaalso came under togetherthe production of 'experimental'and attack: the politicaland artisticorthodoxy estab- 'progressive'- by which he meant abstract- lishedby the Comintern,controlled from Moscow, artistswith their need fora 'liberalorganisation' to was assailed both by the rightwing and by the look aftertheir interests. This 'experimental'paint- followersof Trotsky in America.There were strident ing was definedas authenticart precisely because it calls forthe 'returnto the aesthetic',for the end of excludedpolitical reference. Boswell claimed: whatwas called 'social painting'and forthe artist to createwithout constraining reference or adherence The 'socialdemocratic' paintings shown by the American to politics,ideology, nationalism or anythingelse.39 Artists'Congress at theirlast exhibitionmight be just

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions that,but are theyArt? ... They may be everso democ- sionism,'Good Art' was not identifiedin termsof ratic,but are they Art?42 stylisticregularities, formal devices or gestural predelictions.'Good Art' was considered to be This was probablya positionsimilar to thatheld by definedin termsof the presenceof skilland tech- Rothko at about the same time, but Rothko's nique and could be identifiedin any style.Forbes committment,like that of Jackson Pollock and Watson,the editorof TheAmerican Magazine of Art, BarnettNewman, was to a non-doctrinal,non- arguedin 1939: realistpainting, intended by the artiststo be em- blematic of an anti-State capitalist and The pureabstractionist, the bitter urban commentator, anti-totalitarianpolitics. It is likelythat Rothko sup- theman who goes back to thefarm, may all be equally portedthe argumentsin the 1938 manifestocalled goodand equally bad as artists.47 'Towards a Free, RevolutionaryArt', writtenby Leon Trotskyand Andre Breton, aided by the Nathaniel Pousette-Dart,writing in the magazine Mexican artistand communistDiego Rivera.43A Artand Artistsof Todayin June 1940, said thatthe year later, in August 1939, Clement Greenberg choiceof any one stylewould reduce America to the theorisedthis politico-aesthetic position from a neo- conditionof Germany or theSoviet Union: Trotskyiteperspective, in his influentialessay 'Avant-Gardeand Kitsch'.44In thishe argued that Americais at themoment in a veryhealthy condition for abstractart and the avant-gardeprovided the only thevery reason that it has no one individualor group criticaland progressiveelement in a world threa- dominatingit.In America,the artists still have freedom of tenedby the triple poisons of capitalist mass culture, expressionand it is theone thing we must fight to retain48 GermanFascism and SovietStalinist Communism. Rothko'scontempt for cultural orthodoxy, however, Two yearslater, the CityArt Museum in St Louis, was not uniquely directed at doctrinalsocialist Missouri,organised an exhibitioncalled Trendsin aesthetics,although Modernist writerstend to AmericanPainting of Today.The catalogue author presentit thisway. As co-chairmanof the Cultural claimed to be able to identifyno less than seven Committeeof the Federationof Modern Painters differentstyles in AmericanArt: 'realism','roman- and Sculptors,Rothko and AdolphGottlieb wrote to ticism', 'expressionism', 'fantasy', 'surrealism', theNew rork Times in June 1943: 'abstraction'and 'primitivism'.This diversitywas proclaimedas the definingfeature of American art, We assertthat the subject is crucialand only that subject an 'inescapabletruth about theAmerican painting', matteris valid which is tragicand timeless... Conse- relatingdirectly to the 'individuality'of the artist. quentlyif our work embodies those beliefs it must insult Only monthsafter the abolitionof the Federal Art anyonewho is spirituallyattuned to interiordecoration, Project,we hear thatthe artist'creates for his own picturesof the home, pictures over the mantle, pictures of sake and forthose who followhim, but he does not theAmerican Scene, social pictures, purity-in-art, prize- winningpotboilers, the National Academy, the Whitney paintfor society's sake'.49 Academy,the Corn-Belt Academy, buckeyes, trite tripe, There is, then,in the early 1940s in America,a etc.45 criticaldiscourse which oscillates between coupling and uncouplingpolitical liberalism with abstract The liberalismof Boswell,and laterthat of d'Har- art:how a democracyshould represent itself (to both noncourtand Schlesinger,was of a differentorder its own citizensand to the outsideworld) is, fora from Rothko's comprehensiverejection of both while,indeterminate. Opposed to doctrinalsocialist nationalistand regionalistaesthetics and politics. realism,abstract art can be representedas a symbol Similarly,Rothko also rejected and scorned the of freedomand choice. But at the same time,the artistscommitted to whathe regardedas 'aesthetic articulationof U.S. democracywith abstraction is formalism',those belonging to the American temperedby its linkingwith a diverse'equality' of AbstractArtists group, formed in 1936. differentstyles of representation.The resistanceto The institutionalacceptance and criticalvalida- stylisticorthodoxy in Americahad also been a tradi- tion of Rothko's post-warpaintings was no auto- tional resistanceto the developmentof an indige- maticprocess, though it is oftenpresented as suchin nous Modernism:what Thomas Hart Bentonhad standardhistories of American art.46 The declineof called 'Ellis Island Art'.50American high culture in 'social painting' and the appearance and then themid- 1 940s is thuspulled two ways - back to the dominance of abstractart has been presentedin 'New Deal' and America'sparochial, domestic self- Modernistretrospect as an inevitability.Yet whatin examinationand forwardto the 'Great Society'of fact characterisedcritical discourse in America the 1950s and America'srepresentation of itselfas duringand evenafter the Second WorldWar was a the signof the Free World. strongbelief in what can be called 'democratic The Museum ofModern Artitself, the pantheon eclecticism': a resistanceto stylisticprescription of of European 'Moderns' in the 1930s,was not sure any sort,seen as the particularevil of totalitarian about the possibilityof an authenticmodern art societies.For a period betweenthe dominanceof emergingin America.Along with socialist organisa- 1930s 'social painting'and 1950s AbstractExpres- tionslike the AmericanArtists' Congress, MOMA

46 THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL- 11:1 1988

This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions supported the continuationof the Federal Art been formedin 1936,Rothko had helpedto organise Projectand believedits abolition would be a serious anothergroup called 'The Ten' in theprevious year. blowto Americanculture.5" It can be argued,in fact, This included de Kooning, Gorky,Pollock and that MOMA actively ignored and discouraged Gottlieb.Known also as the 'Whitneydissenters', Americanmodernist artists in the 1930s.Excluding theTen gainedthe reputation of being revolutionary any indigeneousartists from the CubismAnd Abstract outcasts,despising both the art establishmentand Artshow in 1935and leavingout theabstract paint- the social realistleft orthodoxy alike. Rothko'sown ings and designs submittedby federalartists 1930s canvases - those that survivedthe massive includingsome laterAbstract Expressionists - for destructionof Federal Art Project work - show theNew Horizons In AmericanArt show the following murky,rather indeterminate interiors and studiesof year,the Museum's attitudeprovoked the American attenuatedfigures, done in a loosely'expressionist' AbstractArtists group to picketand leafletthe insti- mode and resembling, in mood, the urban- tutionin 1940.In theprevious year, MOMA's Artin alienationscenes of Edward Hopper and the Soyer Our Time exhibitionhad presented nineteenth- Brothers.A recurrentand populartheme at thetime centuryAmerican artists, and a fewfrom the early withNew Yorkartists was thesubway scene (Fig. 4), twentieth,along with works by Picasso, Braque, showingalienated figures moving past or standingin Leger and otherEuropean artists.As late as 1948 doorwaysor stationplatforms. Like Interior(1932) mostcritics preferred what was called a 'moderate' (Fig. 5), theyare as sombre and rectilinearas his formof modern art - comfortably'School ofParis'; post-warabstractions. Along with the artistsBal- Emily Wasserman's Best of Art index, which combeGreene and GeorgeMcNeil, Rothko had agi- publishedselected works from among 50,000 con- tatedfor Art Front to confrontaesthetic debates more sidered,included not one fromRothko, Newman or openly and especiallyto consider the issues sur- Gottlieb.Artists who are now firmlylocated as roundingabstract art. According to Dore Ashton: primarily'pre-war', such as Philip Evergood and StuartDavis, wereincluded instead.52 Rothko loathed everythingthat smacked of social While the AmericanAbstract Artists group had realism;fulminated against such favoured figures as Joe

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions anotherposition as a 'content'which denied a range of possiblefigurations. Backed into a corner,away fromthe dead ends of socialistrealism and the dominant cultural forms of American capitalist societyRothko's consent to and acceptanceof what became his classicabstract painting, such as Orange Andrellow (1956), can be seen as theconsequence of a radical negation of other, arid alternatives:'a strategyof negation and refusal... not an un- reasonable response to bourgeois civilisation'.57 With the decline in 'democratic eclecticism'in painting and criticismin America during the period 1938 to 1948 and the later institutional empowerment of a de-politicised 'aesthetic discourse',Abstract Expressionism and Rothko's paintings achieved dominance and paradigm status.Modernist theory, not as a formalistpurism developedby ClementGreenberg in the 1960s,but as a heterogeneous,aphoristic, tautological, rambl- ing, metaphysical,eulogistic hagiography achieved thelevel of a 'commonsense': conventional,uncon- tentiouscritical and humanistwisdom, as deep- seated as our convictionthat the earth rotates around the sun. By 1939 Boswell was arguingthat Europe had 'tossedthe torchof creativeexperiment to the long Fig. 5. Mark Rothko: Interior.Estate of Mark extendedhand ofAmerican artists'. In Februaryof Rothko. the followingyear he announced'the returnto aesthetics':'that old IvoryTower did have itspoints'.58 Artwas to be forthe Left, the Right and theMiddle, Jonesand WilliamGropper, whom he regardedas little and themiddle class had thebest taste in Art.More- betterthan cartoonists.53 over,it had the buyingpower. National ArtWeek replacedthe Federal Art Project in 1940and in 1941 Boswell,from Art Digest magazine, also argued,in ThomasJ. Watson,the president of I.B.M. corpora- December 1939, that the so-called 'proletarian tion, took over as chairman.The artistElizabeth school'was misled.In thepursuit of a properunder- Olds, speakingin an interviewin 1973,said thatit standingof Rothko's rejection of realism the danger was around thistime that artists began to 'smudge to avoid is thatof collapsing his oppositioninto the outany part of their picture that represented a recog- politicalliberalism propagated by Boswelland later nisable object. That would be illustration,they by generationsof modernistcritics and historians. said.'59As early as 1938 Chaning Pollock,the art Rothko's political position at this time can be criticfor The American declared: describedas an anti-capitalistlibertarianism, anti- statistand involvinga rejectionof Soviet Com- The trueartist doesn't want to be encouraged.He is an munism,German Fascism and Americancorporate internalcombustion engine. For everygreat artist capitalism.54 producedby spoon feeding, I'll showyou 500 who found Rothko'sadoption of abstractionin his painting theirown nourishment.60 from 1948 onwards was not equivalent to the abandoningof 'content'.As he argued in the New In 1941, Rothko's Antigone,the firstof the Greek rorkTimes: myth paintings,arguably began the flightfrom realistrepresentation and sethim on theroad to the Thereis no suchthing as a goodpainting about nothing classiccolour-field paintings, the transcendent pools ... This is the essenceof academicism.55 oflight he was to paintuntil his deathin 1970.From archetypetitles - OmenOf TheEagle, SynranBull Five years later, in 'The Romantics Were Rothko's progressiveexpulsion of representational Prompted',he said thatalthough his formsin paint specificitywas indexed throughthe designation 'haveno directassociation with any particular visible Untitledand thenby serialnumbers and colours. experience,in themone recognisesthe principle and A timehad come,Rothko said, when 'none ofus passion of organisms'.56What can be called could use the figurewithout mutilating it'.61 The Rothko's'aesthetic vitalism', which is supportedby passingof the Federal Art Project and thepassing of the popular 'modernistmetaphysic' through which figurationin the workof Rothkoand otherAmeri- his paintingsare understood,can be seen from can artistsin the 1940s constituteda somewhat

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ambiguous and empty 'triumph',both for thou- 21. See ChristopherLasch's article,'The CulturalCold War: A Short sandsof artists who lostall economicsecurity and for Historyof the Congress For CulturalFreedom', in theanthology edited the AbstractExpressionists, those one-timedissi- byBartonJ. Bernstein: Towards A NeewPast: Dissenting Essays in American dents,soon to be installedand History,Vintage, New York,1969, pp. 322-359. institutionalisedas 22. Publishedin TheNew rorkTimes, 21 December 1975. theofficial, high-cultural producers of the ascendant 23. The relationshipbetween the works of Rothko and otherAbstract AmericanEmpire. Expressionistartists and the involvementof the C.I.A. is not a simple causal one. Attackson the attemptsto link the two have usually consistedin accusingthose who asserta definiterelationship of holding to a 'conspiracytheory' whereby the C.I.A. 'planned' or even commis- Notes sioned artiststo produce abstractpaintings for covert use by the U.S. State.This is damaginglyto caricaturethe accounts and argumentsput forwardby Cockcroftand others.For a difficultthough enlightening 1. Clark's articleand the debate that followedbetween him and discussionof the problem of causation in relationto works of art, see Art Michael Fried is includedin the anthologyPollock e After:The Critical & Language: 'PortraitOf V. I. Lenin', in the anthologyModernism, Debate, edited by Francis Frascina, Harper & Row, London, 1985 Criticism,Realism, edited by CharlesHarrison and Fred Orton,Harper pp. 47-88. & Row, London, 1984,pp. 145-169. 2. Also publishedin theabove anthology,pp. 35-46. 24. FromRothko's statement in 1947,republished in theTate Gallery 3. Firstpublished in an articleby Dore Ashtonin TheNew York Times, catalogue,pp. 83-4. 31 October 1958.This and otherstatements by Rothkoare includedin 25. From 'The SituationAt The Moment', PartisanReview vol. 15, theTate Gallerycatalogue Mark Rothko, London, 1987,pp. 76-89. no. 1;January1948, pp. 81-84. 4. See note2. 26. From'The RomanticsWere Prompted', op cit. 5. Firstpublished in ArtsYearbook, no. 4, 1961.This is includedin the 27. For an informativeaccount of Rothko's activities in the 1930s,see anthologyModern Art & Modernmsm,edited by Charles Harrisonand Dore Ashton'sAbout Rothko, Oxford University Press, New York,1983. FrancisFrascina, Harper & Row, London, 1982,pp. 5-10. 28. See, in particular,the first three chapters of Serge Guilbaut's How 6. First published as an exhibitioncatalogue forthe Solomon R. New YorkStole the Idea ofModern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom & the Guggenheimcollection of non-objectivepaintings, 1937. This is also Cold War. includedin theanthology Modern Art & Modernzsm,pp. 145-148. 29. ibid.,pp. 146-147. 7. Greenbergwas littleinterested in the subjectivityof the artistshe 30. Max Kozloffoffers a similaranalysis in his article'American regardedas significant.This is perhapsillustrated by his statement at the PaintingDuring the Cold War', in Pollocke After:The CriticalDebate, end of the Open University'Modern Art & Modernism' television pp. 107-123. interviewwhen he observedthat 'Pollock was fullof shit, like everyone 31. Such a group of patriotswas the Artists'Council forVictory, else.' establishedin 1942who, according to theirown claims,were 'alive with 8. Rosenberg's article,'The American Action Painters' was first patriotismwhich stirs their souls to producetheir best works'. publishedin ArtNeews, vol. 51, December 1952. This is reprintedin 32. Fromd'Harnoncourt's article 'Challenge & Promise:Modern Art Harold Rosenberg:The Traditionof the New, Horizon, New York,1959. & Society',Art News, November 1949, quoted in SergeGuilbaut's How 9. In De Kooning,George Braziller, New York, 1959,p. 36. New YorkStole the Idea ofModern Art, p. 189. 10. One ofthe more interesting accounts within this rubric is Robert 33. See ArthurSchlesinger's The VitalCenter: The Politics of Freedom, Rosenblum's TheNorthern Romantic Tradztion: From Friedrich To Rothko, RiversidePress, Boston, 1962 and AnthonyGiddens discussion of Thames and Hudson, London, 1975. Americanstructural-functionalist sociology in TheConstitution ofSoczety, 11. Arguably,the Tate Gallery'sreproduction of criticalarticles by PolityPress, Cambridge, 1984. This is also discussedin Culture,Media, RobertGoldwater and David Silvester,written in 1961,demonstrates Language,edited by StuartHall, DorothyHobson, AndrewLowe and thatnot onlyRothko's paintings but also their'proper' sensitive inter- Paul Willis,Hutchinson, London, 1981: 'This was the period - the pretationand evaluationare regardedas 'timeless'and unchanging. 1950s- of ... massivedependence on Americantheories and models. 12. T.J. Clark: 'ArgumentsAbout Modernism: A ReplyTo Michael ButAmerican sociology. . . was systematicallyfunctionalist and integra- Fried',first published in ThePolztzcs of Interpretation, edited by W. J. T. tive in perspective.It had abolished the categoryof contradiction: Mitchell,University of Chicago Press,Chicago and London, 1983.This instead,it spoke of "dysfunctions"and of "tensionmanagement". It articlein also included in the anthologyPollock e After:The Critical claimed the mantleof a science.But its premisesand predispositions Debate,pp. 81-88. werehighly ideological', (p. 20). 13. As Pollock said in 1947: 'The idea of an isolated American 34. Dondero's speech in the U.S. Congressis republishedin H. B. painting,so popularin thiscountry during the 1930s,seems absurdto Chipp's Theoriesof Modern Art, pp. 496-497. mejust as theidea ofcreating a purelyAmerican mathematics or physics 35. Dondero was particularlyinterested in investigatingthe newly wouldseem absurd. . . thebasic problemsof contemporary painting are establishedArtists Equity League and the artistsDavid Fredenthal, independentof any country'; included in theanthology edited by H. B. WilliamHayter and MitchellSiporin - all ofwhom had been involved Chipp: Theorzesof ModernArt: A SourceBook by Artzstse Critics, withthe Left in Americaduring the 1930s. Universityof California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles,1968, p. 546. 36. See R. D. McKinzie's account of the decline in supportfor the 14. See SergeGuilbaut's lengthy study of this process, How New York FederalArt Project in his TheNew Deal ForArtists, Princeton University Stolethe Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom e theCold War, Press, Princeton,1973, chapter9, 'ReliefArt on the Defense 1938- Universityof Chicago Press,Chicago & London, 1983. 1943'. 15. This was thetitle of Clement Greenberg's 1948 article, published 37. See Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy's account of thisin Monopoly in PartzsanReview vol. 15,no. 3, March 1948. Capital:An Essay on theAmerzcan Economzc and Social Order,Modern 16. Emily Wasserman: The AmericanScene: Early TwentzethCentury, Reader,New York, 1968,'The Absorptionof Surplus:Militarism and Lamplight,New York,1975, p. 1. Imperialism',pp. 178-217. 17. For a seriesof interesting and differentaccounts of the work and 38. For an account of this,see Daniel Aaron: Writerson theLeft, significanceof Gramsci'sideas, see Chantal Mouffe(ed.): Gramscie OxfordUniversity Press, New York,1977. MarxzstTheory, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1979. 39. See PeytonBoswell, editorial, Art Digest, May 1940,'Shelving the 18. A collectionof articlesdealing withthis processis included in AmericanScene'. Pollocke After:The Critical Debate, pp. 89-183. 40. See Dore Ashton:About Rothko. 19. See Eva Cockcroft'sarticle 'Abstract Expressionism, Weapon Of 41. Their statementreads: 'We condemnartistic nationalism which The Cold War', in theabove anthology,pp. 125-133. negatesthe world traditions of art as thebase ofmodern art movements.' 20. David and Cecile Shapiro 'AbstractExpressionism: The Politics 42. ArtDigest, editorial, May 1940. of ApoliticalPainting', first published in Prospects3, edited by Jack 43. See the extractfrom this in H. B. Chipp: Theorzesof Modern Art, Salzman, 1977,and includedin theabove anthology. pp. 483-486: 'The aim of thisappeal is to finda commonground on

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This content downloaded from 192.215.101.254 on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 13:54:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions whichmay be reunitedall revolutionarywriters and artists,the better to Goodyear,to HolgerCahill, director of the Federal Art Project, in early servethe revolution by their art and to defendthe liberty of that art itself 1939. against the usurpers of the revolution.We believe that aesthetic, 52. See Serge Guilbaut's How New YorkStole the Idea ofModern Art, philosophical,and politicaltendencies of the mostvaried sort can find p. 183. here a common ground. Marxistscan march hand in hand with 53. AboutRothko, p. 31. anarchists,provided both partiesuncompromisingly reject the reac- 54. There is no reasonto suppose thatthis position changed in the tionarypolice-patrol spirit represented by Joseph Stalin . . .', p. 486. 1950sor 1960s.Along with Pollock and otherartists who had adopted BarnettNewman's anti-capitalistposition was expressedin a short oppositionalstances in the 1930s,Rothko's post-war art can be seen as a statementin Artin America, 1962, when he said: 'Almostfifteen years ago continuationof his negationof political and social realities. [i.e. 1947]Harold Rosenbergchallenged me to explainwhat one ofmy 55. In theTate Gallerycatalogue, p. 78. paintingscould possiblymean to the world.My answerwas thatif he 56. Ibid.,p. 84. and otherscould read it properlyit would mean the end of all state 57. T. J. Clark: 'ArgumentsAbout Modernism:A Replyto Michael capitalismand totalitarianism.That answerstill goes.' Fried',in ThePolitics of Interpretation, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell,1983 44. First published in PartisanReview vol.6, no. 5, Fall 1939. and in the anthologyPollock & After:The CriticalDebate, p. 82. At this Reprintedin Pollock& After:The Critical Debate, pp. 21-33. pointit is prudentto saythat my account of Rothko's painti- in no way 45. Reprintedin theTate Gallerycatalogue Mark Rothko, pp. 77-78. presentsitself as 'full' or 'complete' in termsof tP cors which 46. For instance,see BarbaraRose: AmericanPainting in theTwentieth 'influenced'his workor the rangeof ideas whichhe c,ew on - either Century,Skira, London, 1980,chapter three. beforeor afterthe war. It has examinedRothko's work as a seriesof 47. AmericanMagazine of Art, December 1938. negationsand refusalspartly in order to counterthe banalitiesof 48. 'FreedomOf Expression',Art & Artistsof Today, June-July 1940. criticismand praise which stresshis work as an incessantparade of 49. 'Trends In AmericanPainting Of Today', CityArt Museum, St positivities. Louis, 1942,written by PerryT. Rathbone. 58. ArtDigest, May 1940. 50. Benton had rejectedParisian modernismsometime during the 59. Interviewrecorded in the BereniceAbbott archive, Archives of period 1916-1920 and, along withGrant Wood and J. S. Curry,had AmericanArt, New YorkCity. formedwhat became knownas theRegionalist movement in American 60. In The American,c.1938, clipping found in the Archivesof painting,specialising in thesort of scenes which Rothko abhored. AmericanArt, New YorkCity. 51. In a letterwritten by the presidentof MOMA, A. Conger 61. In theTate Gallerycatalogue, p. 86.

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