http://kalimac.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] calimac 2007-05-01 04:27 am (UTC)

Re: Rothko

And hi, Jeff.

It's obvious that somebody likes Rothko's work, and not just Morton Feldman, or he wouldn't have the name that he does.

But not me. Some minimalist or abstract art I find moving (not to mention minimalist music, which I thought I'd hate until I heard some), but the first Rothko painting I saw was a big swash of red in SF MOMA that had me thinking "This one is a giant put-on" long before I approached closely enough to see who did it.

I've had the same reaction on subsequent encounters with other work, and am ready to give up.

It's not the monolith. The power of the monolith as art was the context in which it was set. Monolith among the apes: cool. Monolith on the moon: cool. Monolith among the stars: ver cool. Monolith hanging on a wall with a little sign reading, "Monolith, by Stanley Kubrick, 1968": not cool.

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