Audio Description

Full Audio Transcript (Expand)

Untitled (Black and Gray)

Mark Rothko’s Untitled acrylic painting of 1969 spans a towering rectangular canvas over six feet wide and almost eight feet tall. At first glance, only the square, all black-painted, upper three-quarters of the painting may capture your attention, while the pale gray-painted, rectangular remainder-beneath may for a moment fail to stand out against the just slightly paler wall behind it. A comparably pale, one-inch margin around the perimeter frames the painting.

Along the bottom of the square black section, a lightening is just noticeable in a few patches, as are the bristle tracks of horizontal strokes with a broad brush. Inspection also reveals that the edge touching the rectangle below is slightly uneven–unlike the edges along the margins. But the size and simplicity of Rothko’s painting seem to ask for a broader assessment; and to leave us very free to ponder it.