Mark Rothko

"For me, Still's pictorial dramas are an extension of the Greek Persephone myth. As he himself has expressed it, his paintings are 'of the Earth, the Damned, and of the Recreated'. Every shape becomes …"

"A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience."

"But the most common error among the whole-hearted abstractionists nowadays is to mistake the medium for an end in itself, instead of a means. On the other hand, the surrealists erred in supposing that…"

"One does not paint for design students or historians but for human beings, and the reaction in human terms is the only thing that is really satisfactory to the artist."

"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academism. There is no such thing as good painting about not…"

"I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing, and stretching one's arms again transcen…"

"Since I have a deep sense of responsibility for the life my pictures will lead out in the world, I will with gratitude accept any form of their exposition in which their life and meaning can be mainta…"

"The passions are a kind of thirst, inexorable and intense, for certain feelings or felt states. To find or invent 'objects' whose felt quality satisfies the passions, - that for me is the activity of …"