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Lot Essay
Painted in 1958, the same year Mark Rothko embarked on what would become the defining project of his career—a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in Manhattan—No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) exemplifies Rothko’s mastery of color and emotional depth. This period marked a crucial evolution in the Abstract Expressionist’s artistic output, characterized by his exploration of saturated hues and an ethereal sense of spirituality. In this luminous work, Rothko achieves an intensity that resonates with the human condition, invoking a sense of presence so powerful that, as he famously stated, “when you turned your back to the painting, you would feel that presence the way you feel the sun on your back” (M. Rothko quoted in J. E. B. Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography, Chicago 1993, p. 275). This effect is unmistakably present in works like No. 31 (Yellow Stripe), where radiant fields of color seem to breathe, casting an almost celestial glow that immerses the viewer in an experience beyond the visual.
During this pivotal phase of his career, Rothko employed high-keyed and luminous colors which he used for a short, but enormously creative, period before evolving toward the more somber preponderance of red, blue, and maroon that emerged from his Seagram murals and would come to mark his later career. No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) exemplifies this earlier creativity with its interplay of deep reds, soft pinks, peach hues, and intense yellows. Here, two fields of shifting color are stacked one on top of another, corralled only by an outer border whose chromatic intensity ultimately possesses the authority to restrain the strength of these two internal fields of color. This sense of internal conflict is further enhanced by the dramatic ‘feathering’ that marks the perimeters of these passages, the result of the constant tussle and painterly incursions that convey the energy of Rothko’s dramatic painterly technique.
However, as Rothko’s reputation began to soar in the mid-1950s, so too did his concern over how his work was being perceived. Once an somewhat misanthropic outsider, he now found himself the subject of critical acclaim, which he met with both appreciation and skepticism. Thomas Hess, reviewing Rothko’s 1955 exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, had declared him “a leader of post-war modern art” (T. Hess, quoted in J. E. B. Breslin, ibid., p. 355). Yet, Rothko was wary of such interpretations, resisting any notion that his paintings were beautiful, harmonious arrangements of color. Rothko sought to convey deeper, more tumultuous emotions—pain, struggle, and existential unrest. “To those who are friendly to my pictures on the basis of their serenity,” he countered, “I would like to say that they have found endurable in human life, the extreme violence that pervades every inch of their surface” (M. Rothko, quoted in T. Crow, "The Marginal Difference in Rothko's Abstraction," in G. Phillips and T. Crow, Seeing Rothko, London, 2005, p. 35).
It is this paradox—serenity coexisting with barely contained energy—that gives works like No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) their extraordinary power. The painting appears suspended between sublime beauty and a latent, almost volcanic intensity. Like a sunset tinged with an underlying turbulence, it radiates warmth while hinting at something deeper, something volatile. Rothko’s colors, glowing with a near-radioactive luminescence, create a tension that feels on the verge of eruption, capturing what he described as "serenity about to explode" (M. Rothko quoted in J. E. B. Breslin, op. cit., p. 355). This unique quality of Rothko’s work had been astutely recognized by Hubert Crehan, one of the earliest critics to comment on his mature style. Writing in Arts Digest in 1954, Crehan likened the “immanent radiance” of Rothko’s paintings to the light emitted by a fission reaction—an observation that Rothko himself deemed “acute.” “We have in our time become aware of the reports of the great billows of colored light that have ripped asunder the calm skies over the atolls of the calmest ocean,” Crehan wrote. “We have heard of the terrible beauty of that light, a light softer, more pacifying than the hues of a rainbow and yet detonated as from some wrathful and diabolical depth. The tension of the color-relationships of some of the Rothko paintings I have seen has been raised to such a shrill pitch that one begins to feel in them that a fission might happen, that they might detonate" (H. Crehan, "Rothko's Wall of Light: A Show of His New Works at Chicago," Arts Digest, no. 29, November 1, 1954, p. 19).
Rothko’s response to Crehan’s insight was uncharacteristically favorable for the often embattled artist. Crehan embraced the notion that Rothko’s paintings were not merely tranquil fields of color but rather sites of profound emotional intensity, where elemental forces of light and darkness, joy and despair, clashed upon the surface. Crehan was—as Rothko would do time and again—pointing to what the artist saw as the primordial and tempestuous nature of his work, what Rothko had once described as “eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas. ...symbols of man's primitive fears and motivations” (A. Gottlieb and M. Rothko, "The Portrait and the Modern Artist," broadcast October 1943, quoted in I. Sandler, Abstract Expressionism and the American Experience, New York, 2009, p. 82).
Amidst the existential unease of the post-World War II era, Rothko sought to create art that spoke to fundamental human truths. As Karl Jaspers observed, the war had forced people to turn not to Goethe but to Shakespeare, the Bible, or Aeschylus—works that directly confronted the raw realities of human existence (K. Jaspers, Unsere Zukunft und Goethe, Zurich, 1948, p. 22). Rothko, too, drew from these epic sources, aspiring to infuse his paintings with the same universal resonance. Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Aeschylus were among his inspirations, guiding him in his quest to forge a visual language that transcended the confines of abstraction.
Rothko’s work was profoundly shaped by his deep engagement with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly The Birth of Tragedy. In this seminal work, Nietzsche argued that the ancient Greeks had found a way to affirm a meaningful existence in an otherwise meaningless world through the invention of tragic drama. Following Nietzsche’s philosophical insights, Rothko’s abstract paintings reflect the innate dualism the German philosopher had identified as Apollonian and Dionysian forces. The Apollonian embodied order, form, and idealized beauty—exemplified in the precision of Ancient Greek sculpture. In contrast, the Dionysian represented unbridled energy, chaos, and raw emotional intensity, akin to the power of music. For Rothko, the noble and the sublime—central themes in Romantic painting—were meaningless unless they held, “to the bursting point, a core of the Wild” (M. Rothko, quoted in Mark Rothko, Retrospektive, exh. cat., Munich, 2008, p. 18). Like Mozart did in music, Rothko employed the radiant hues of his color fields as tonal vibrations, orchestrating them to evoke profound emotional responses. “I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else,” he famously asserted. “I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on—and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted by my pictures shows that I communicate with those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them” (M. Rothko, quoted in Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists, New York, 1957, pp. 93-94).
For Rothko, a painting like No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) was not simply an image but an experience—an encounter with color so intense that it took on an almost physical presence. As he insisted, “pictures must be miraculous...a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need” (M. Rothko, “The Romantics Were Prompted,” Possibilities, no. 1, Winter 1947⁄8). The vast fields of color in this work seem to breathe and shift, their radiance drawing viewers into a realm of heightened perception, where emotions take form in shimmering, weightless hues.
Rothko’s son, Christopher, later reflected on his father’s paintings correlation to the human condition: "In essence, Rothko wanted his paintings to speak of and to the human, and his works are full of touches that remind us of their human creator and the work of his hand" (C. Rothko, in Mark Rothko, New York, 2022, p. 22). This humanity is present across the entire surface of No. 31 (Yellow Stripe), where the glowing surface pulses with life. Through an interplay of light and shadow, Mark Rothko’s artistic legacy continues to resonate. His paintings remain as poignant today as they were in his own time—an enduring testament to his vision, his search for depth beyond form, and his ability to translate human emotion into a transcendent visual experience. The weight and warmth of No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) serve as an invitation into Rothko’s world—one where color is language, and presence is everything.
During this pivotal phase of his career, Rothko employed high-keyed and luminous colors which he used for a short, but enormously creative, period before evolving toward the more somber preponderance of red, blue, and maroon that emerged from his Seagram murals and would come to mark his later career. No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) exemplifies this earlier creativity with its interplay of deep reds, soft pinks, peach hues, and intense yellows. Here, two fields of shifting color are stacked one on top of another, corralled only by an outer border whose chromatic intensity ultimately possesses the authority to restrain the strength of these two internal fields of color. This sense of internal conflict is further enhanced by the dramatic ‘feathering’ that marks the perimeters of these passages, the result of the constant tussle and painterly incursions that convey the energy of Rothko’s dramatic painterly technique.
However, as Rothko’s reputation began to soar in the mid-1950s, so too did his concern over how his work was being perceived. Once an somewhat misanthropic outsider, he now found himself the subject of critical acclaim, which he met with both appreciation and skepticism. Thomas Hess, reviewing Rothko’s 1955 exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, had declared him “a leader of post-war modern art” (T. Hess, quoted in J. E. B. Breslin, ibid., p. 355). Yet, Rothko was wary of such interpretations, resisting any notion that his paintings were beautiful, harmonious arrangements of color. Rothko sought to convey deeper, more tumultuous emotions—pain, struggle, and existential unrest. “To those who are friendly to my pictures on the basis of their serenity,” he countered, “I would like to say that they have found endurable in human life, the extreme violence that pervades every inch of their surface” (M. Rothko, quoted in T. Crow, "The Marginal Difference in Rothko's Abstraction," in G. Phillips and T. Crow, Seeing Rothko, London, 2005, p. 35).
It is this paradox—serenity coexisting with barely contained energy—that gives works like No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) their extraordinary power. The painting appears suspended between sublime beauty and a latent, almost volcanic intensity. Like a sunset tinged with an underlying turbulence, it radiates warmth while hinting at something deeper, something volatile. Rothko’s colors, glowing with a near-radioactive luminescence, create a tension that feels on the verge of eruption, capturing what he described as "serenity about to explode" (M. Rothko quoted in J. E. B. Breslin, op. cit., p. 355). This unique quality of Rothko’s work had been astutely recognized by Hubert Crehan, one of the earliest critics to comment on his mature style. Writing in Arts Digest in 1954, Crehan likened the “immanent radiance” of Rothko’s paintings to the light emitted by a fission reaction—an observation that Rothko himself deemed “acute.” “We have in our time become aware of the reports of the great billows of colored light that have ripped asunder the calm skies over the atolls of the calmest ocean,” Crehan wrote. “We have heard of the terrible beauty of that light, a light softer, more pacifying than the hues of a rainbow and yet detonated as from some wrathful and diabolical depth. The tension of the color-relationships of some of the Rothko paintings I have seen has been raised to such a shrill pitch that one begins to feel in them that a fission might happen, that they might detonate" (H. Crehan, "Rothko's Wall of Light: A Show of His New Works at Chicago," Arts Digest, no. 29, November 1, 1954, p. 19).
Rothko’s response to Crehan’s insight was uncharacteristically favorable for the often embattled artist. Crehan embraced the notion that Rothko’s paintings were not merely tranquil fields of color but rather sites of profound emotional intensity, where elemental forces of light and darkness, joy and despair, clashed upon the surface. Crehan was—as Rothko would do time and again—pointing to what the artist saw as the primordial and tempestuous nature of his work, what Rothko had once described as “eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas. ...symbols of man's primitive fears and motivations” (A. Gottlieb and M. Rothko, "The Portrait and the Modern Artist," broadcast October 1943, quoted in I. Sandler, Abstract Expressionism and the American Experience, New York, 2009, p. 82).
Amidst the existential unease of the post-World War II era, Rothko sought to create art that spoke to fundamental human truths. As Karl Jaspers observed, the war had forced people to turn not to Goethe but to Shakespeare, the Bible, or Aeschylus—works that directly confronted the raw realities of human existence (K. Jaspers, Unsere Zukunft und Goethe, Zurich, 1948, p. 22). Rothko, too, drew from these epic sources, aspiring to infuse his paintings with the same universal resonance. Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Aeschylus were among his inspirations, guiding him in his quest to forge a visual language that transcended the confines of abstraction.
Rothko’s work was profoundly shaped by his deep engagement with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly The Birth of Tragedy. In this seminal work, Nietzsche argued that the ancient Greeks had found a way to affirm a meaningful existence in an otherwise meaningless world through the invention of tragic drama. Following Nietzsche’s philosophical insights, Rothko’s abstract paintings reflect the innate dualism the German philosopher had identified as Apollonian and Dionysian forces. The Apollonian embodied order, form, and idealized beauty—exemplified in the precision of Ancient Greek sculpture. In contrast, the Dionysian represented unbridled energy, chaos, and raw emotional intensity, akin to the power of music. For Rothko, the noble and the sublime—central themes in Romantic painting—were meaningless unless they held, “to the bursting point, a core of the Wild” (M. Rothko, quoted in Mark Rothko, Retrospektive, exh. cat., Munich, 2008, p. 18). Like Mozart did in music, Rothko employed the radiant hues of his color fields as tonal vibrations, orchestrating them to evoke profound emotional responses. “I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else,” he famously asserted. “I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on—and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted by my pictures shows that I communicate with those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them” (M. Rothko, quoted in Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists, New York, 1957, pp. 93-94).
For Rothko, a painting like No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) was not simply an image but an experience—an encounter with color so intense that it took on an almost physical presence. As he insisted, “pictures must be miraculous...a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need” (M. Rothko, “The Romantics Were Prompted,” Possibilities, no. 1, Winter 1947⁄8). The vast fields of color in this work seem to breathe and shift, their radiance drawing viewers into a realm of heightened perception, where emotions take form in shimmering, weightless hues.
Rothko’s son, Christopher, later reflected on his father’s paintings correlation to the human condition: "In essence, Rothko wanted his paintings to speak of and to the human, and his works are full of touches that remind us of their human creator and the work of his hand" (C. Rothko, in Mark Rothko, New York, 2022, p. 22). This humanity is present across the entire surface of No. 31 (Yellow Stripe), where the glowing surface pulses with life. Through an interplay of light and shadow, Mark Rothko’s artistic legacy continues to resonate. His paintings remain as poignant today as they were in his own time—an enduring testament to his vision, his search for depth beyond form, and his ability to translate human emotion into a transcendent visual experience. The weight and warmth of No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) serve as an invitation into Rothko’s world—one where color is language, and presence is everything.