I am not an abstractionist. ... I am not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. ... I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point! Conversations with Artists by Selden Rodman, New York Devin-Adair 1957. p. 93.; reprinted as "Notes from a conversation with Selden Rodman, 1956" in Writings on Art : Mark Rothko (2006) edited by Miguel López-Remiro p. 119 books.google
A painting is not about an experience. It is an experience. As quoted in "Mark Rothko" by Dorothy Seiberling in LIFE magazine (16 November 1959), p. 52
Unfinished
paintings are enticing cracks in the facade of art history, lures along
the path to a deeper understanding of artistic processes and impulses.
For all the paintings that artists complete, countless others are left
incomplete for any number of reasons — poverty or war, a change of plan
or vision, the illness or death of the artist. While many of these works
have been destroyed, and others forgotten, some are now recognized as
significant works of art, accorded a special place in history and in an
artist’s body of work, in part because they can bring us closer to
understanding the mysterious process of painting, and, indeed, to
painting’s future. After all, nothing inspires a young artist like a
close look at how an earlier one worked.
