the vibration of colored strings

White Center

Mark Rothko, 1950

A painting of Mark Rothko can be savored on one level as a canvas with swatches of color – red-orange, orange, brown, white, pink – but there is more to be savored than its colors. To appreciate deeply a painting as Rothko felt and created it, you must see past the colors of the painting. You must look beyond the colors applied to the canvas into the moods that those colors portray. When the creator of the painting put paint in those spaces, he charged it with heightened emotion, emotion captured frozen on the surface of the painting, frozen yet somehow alive. You don't look at a Rothko, you feel it through your eyes. You receive its cosmic broadcast as it echoes into the universe.

See the colors. Feel the colors. Peel the colors away.

Photo: jetheriot

A madonna on one level can be savored as concrete painted with swatches of color – blue, white, blue, sometimes hair, sometimes flesh – but there is more to be savored than its colors. To appreciate deeply a madonna as the painter felt and created it, you must see past the colors of the statue. You must look beyond the colors applied to the concrete into the moods that those colors portray. When the creator of the statue put paint in those spaces, she charged it with heightened emotion, emotion captured frozen on the surface of the statue, frozen yet somehow alive. You don't look at a madonna, you feel it through your eyes. You receive its cosmic broadcast as it echoes into the universe.

See the colors. Feel the colors. Peel the colors away.