From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
       The life and career of Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko   
   is a prototypical Jewish story that encapsulates a range of themes   
   discussed at The Occidental Quarterly. Central to Rothko's story is   
   the political radicalism of Eastern European Jewish migrants arriving   
   in the United States between 1880 and 1920; the reflexive hostility of   
   these migrants and their descendants to the traditional people and   
   culture of their new homeland; and how this hostility was reflected in   
   the artistic and intellectual currents that dominated Western   
   societies during the 20th century. Rothko's story also exemplifies   
   other familiar themes including: the force of Jewish ethnic networking   
   and nepotism in promoting Jewish interests, and the tendency for   
   Jewish "genius" to be constructed by the Jewish intellectual   
   establishment as self-appointed gatekeepers of Western culture.   
      
       With Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko has been accorded a leading   
   place in the ranks of the Abstract Expressionists. If there is such a   
   thing as a cult artist among the liberal Jewish intelligentsia, then   
   Rothko is probably it. Important people stand in grave silence before   
   his empty expanses with looks on their faces that bespeak lofty   
   thoughts. As a critic for The Times noted:   
      
   Rothko evokes all that could be criticized as most pretentious,   
   most clannish, most pseudish about his spectators. They stand   
   there gravely perusing something that to the outsider probably   
   looks more like a patch of half-stripped wallpaper than a picture   
   and then declare themselves profoundly moved. And many out-   
   siders will start to wonder if they are being duped, if this Mod-   
   ernist emperor actually has no clothes on and his fans are just   
   the blind followers of some aesthetic faith.   
      
      For critics like Ottmann, Rothko's genius is indisputable and he   
   possessed an "extraordinary talent" that enabled him to transfer his   
   metaphysical "impulses to the canvas with a power and magnetism   
   that stuns viewers of his work. . . . In fact Rothko's skill in   
   achieving this result-whether intentional or not-perhaps explains why   
   he was once called 'the melancholic rabbi.'"1 For prominent Jewish art   
   historian Simon Schama, Rothko's "big vertical canvasses of   
   contrasting bars of colour, panels of colour stacked up on top of each   
   other" qualify Rothko as "a maker of paintings as powerful and   
   complicated as anything by his two gods-Rembrandt and Turner." For the   
   ethnocentric Schama "these [Rothko's] paintings are equivalent of   
   these old masters.   
      
      After experimenting with Expressionism and Surrealism, Rothko   
   arrived in 1949 at the signature style that would typify his work   
   until his death by suicide in 1970 at the age of 66. This consisted of   
   two or three floating rectangles of colour painted against a   
   monochrome background. A pioneer of "colour-field" painting, Rothko   
   claimed that only abstract painting could express the "full gravity of   
   religious yearnings and the angst of the human condition." His final   
   works became so minimalistic (large black canvasses) as to be almost   
   void of any substance.   
      
      As an educated family and active Zionists, the Rothkowitz family   
   spoke Hebrew in addition to Russian and Yiddish. Whereas the older   
   siblings attended public schools along with many other Jewish chil-   
   dren concentrated in one neighbourhood of Portland, father Rothko-   
   witz decided that Marcus would receive a strict religious education.   
      
      Rothko's parents saw no contradiction in bringing up their son as   
   an Orthodox Jew, a Zionist, and a Communist. This is quite in keeping   
   with Kevin MacDonald's observation that "within [pre-Bolshevik]   
   Russian Jewish communities, the acceptance of radical political ideol-   
   ogy often coexisted with messianic forms of Zionism as well as intense   
   commitment to Jewish nationalism and religious and cultural separa-   
   tism, and many individuals held various and often rapidly changing   
   combinations of these ideas."14   
      
      
     His entire family was in favour of the Russian Revolution, as Rothko   
   later said."15 This was, of course, very typical, with Jewish   
   historian Norman Cantor noting that: "In the first half of the   
   twentieth century, Marxist-Leninist communism ran like an   
   electromagnetic lightning flash through Jewish societies from Moscow   
   to Western Europe, the United States and Canada, gaining the lifelong   
   adherence of brilliant, passionately dedicated Jewish men and wom-   
   en."16   
      
      Rothko excelled academically at Lincoln High School in Portland,   
   and was a passionate debater for the radical cause, and "went to hear   
   the firecracker orator 'Red' Emma Goldman lay into capitalism and   
   sing the praises of the Russian Revolution."19   
      
     Rothko believed that one's means of artistic expression was   
   "unrelated to manual ability or painterly technique, that it is drawn   
   from an inborn feeling for form; the ideal lies in the spontaneity,   
   simplicity and directness of children."32 Such grandiloquent   
   pronouncements from Rothko were not unusual, with Collings noting that   
   "Rothko was outrageously over-fruity and grandiose in his statements   
   about art and religion and the solemn importance of his own art."33   
      
      This tendency on the part of Rothko prompted one writer to de-   
   clare: "What I find amazing . . . is how a painting which is two   
   rectangles of different colors can somehow prompt thousands upon   
   thousands of words on the human condition, Marxist dialectics, and   
   social construction." He suggests that a good rule of thumb is "that   
   the more obtuse terms an artist and his supporters use to describe a   
   work, the less worth the painting has. By this definition Rothko may   
   be the most worthless artist in the history of humanity." Another   
   critic humorously observed that Rothko needed to be fluent in   
   rationalizing his existence and validating himself as a relevant   
   artist to the average idiot who spent tens of thousands of dollars on   
   paintings which could be easily reproduced by anyone with a pulse and   
   a paint brush. Rothko . .. learned to garner attention to his   
   paintings by getting into a frenzied drama-queen state and   
   hysterically claiming that his works were deep, profound statements   
   and not just indiscriminate blobs of color. They were expressions that   
   rejected society's expectation of technical expertise, actual talent   
   and an artist's evolution over time.   
      
      Lasha Darkmoon has noted the tendency of Jewish artists to set   
   about redefining the very nature of artistic excellence to allow for   
   their own technical inadequacies. She observes that: "Whatever Jewish   
   artists were good at, that would be the art of the future. If Jews   
   were no good at drawing, good drawing would no longer be necessary."   
   She cites Israel Shamir who notes that the "preparation of these items   
   [of non-figurative art] places no demand on artistic abilities. They   
   can be done by anybody." Darkmoon elaborates:   
      
   In order to succeed in this difficult profession, the visually chal-   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)