MARK ROTHKO’S RECIPE FOR ART

Thanks to poet Tony Hoagland for sending this wonderful manifesto.

MARK ROTHKO’S RECIPE FOR ART

The recipe for a work of art – its ingredients – how to make it – the formula

1. There must be a clear preoccupation with death – intimations of mortality.  Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death.
2. Sensuality.  Our basis of being concrete about the world.  It is a lustful relationship to things that exist.
3. Tension.  Either conflict or curbed desire.

4. Irony.  This is a modern ingredient – the self-effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else.
5. Wit and play… for the human element.
6. The ephemeral and chance… for the human element.
7. Hope.  10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.

I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture.  It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of these elements.

-Mark Rothko