ROTHKO + YOUR LIFE IS A MASTERPIECE

I saw the Mark Rothko exhibit at the Fondation Louis Vuitton on Saturday.

This exhibit brings together Rothko paintings from all over the world under one roof (a Frank Gehry roof, at that).

Here, you can see how Rothko's work transformed from figurative to abstract art until it became what we now recognize simply as Rothko.

I thought how, as a young man, he probably had no idea that he would work and work until all the unnecessary parts fell away, and he was left with the true essence of his work.

And that the unnecessary parts, where he felt like he was failing at his art, were integral to his future mastery.

That he couldn't have done one without the other.

And how some of the apparent details in his earlier work (like the columns in a scene depicting a subway platform in NYC) would expand until they took over the whole canvas, and foreground elements (like the depictions of people) would disappear completely.

He worked at it all his life.

How much courage it must have taken him to be in front of an empty canvas and to start over and over again and again.

What a gift it is to us he didn't give up and found the essence of his work.

And all this made me think of our lives.

How we design our lives every day.

How our failures are often the ingredients of our future successes.

How certain elements in the background of our youth may become the foreground of our lives as we grow older.

How we are editing the unnecessary bits daily.

How we, too, have different "periods" in our lives that can be seen only retrospectively.

How the sum adds up to more than the parts.

How each life is a masterpiece.

How your life is your masterpiece.

Thank you,

Ayse

INSPIRATION

"I'm not interested in colour. It's light I'm after." —Mark Rothko.

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Complement this reflection on Rothko with Giorgia Lupi's extraordinary New York Times opinion piece about her experience with Long Covid: 1,374 DAYS, MY LIFE WITH LONG COVID. Her partner at Pentagram, Michael Beirut, says, "As a feat of poetic data visualization, it's unlike anything I've ever seen." It is very befitting of Rothko in its beauty and courage.

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 "The progression of a painter's work…will be toward clarity; toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer…to achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be understood." –Mark Rothko.

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