[ARTS 315] The (Spiritual) Crisis of Abstract Expressionism: Mark Rothko – Jon Anderson

20 thoughts on “[ARTS 315] The (Spiritual) Crisis of Abstract Expressionism: Mark Rothko – Jon Anderson”

1. This helped A LOT with my homework.

2. mark rothko was an atheist, the stuff this guy was saying at the end was misleading

3. He is talking about experiences not religion and beliefs and Mark Rothkos art,as well as the art of each artist, is his own religion, created through the whole life process of creation and searching for something greater than ourselves. Searching for the essence. I hope this helps a little bit.

4. Awful lecture! Lecturing on critics opinions??? Not prepared to answer questions or just say you don't know! Geez! Borrrringggg! Students deserve an a just for staying awake! This is painful!

5. An artist's consciousness is his own. If another connects to it, then he finds his audience.

6. "…that yearning, that longing for God to appear…. If you feel yearning when you look at these paintings, and a sense of absence and void, then you’re having the experience that [Rothko] had when he painted them." Nicely put.

7. List of all the video's:
   August 26
   Introduction and In-class lecture
   1. Modern Contexts: Introducing the Avant-Garde
   2. The Canvas as an Arena: Jackson Pollock
   September 2 In-class lecture
   1. The (Spiritual) Crisis of Abstract Expressionism: Mark Rothko
   2. Clement Greenberg and Post-Painterly Abstraction
   September 16 In-class lecture
   1. The Fully Present Object: the Minimalist Project
   2. Duchamp’s Legacy: Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage
   September 23 In-class lecture
   1. Working in the Gap Between Art and Life: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns
   2. Art in an Age of Mass-Media: Andy Warhol
   September 30 In-class lecture
   1. Conceptual Art: New Strategies for Meaning
   2. Postmodern Strategies: Mixed Messages and Undecidability
   October 14 In-class lecture
   1. Working in the Expanded Field, part 1: Site Construction
   2. Working in the Expanded Field, part 2: Marked Sites
   November 4 In-class lecture
   1. Working in the Expanded Field, part 2: Axiomatic Structures
   2. Contemporary Liturgies: Performance Art and Embodied Belief
   November 11 In-class lecture
   1. Bodies of Knowledge: Performance Art and Social Space
   2. Contemporary Laments: An Update on the Human Condition
   December 2 In-class Lecture
   1. Mapping the Contemporary: What is going on Today?, part 1
   2. Mapping the Contemporary: What is going on Today?, part 2

8. Regarding the reference to Ishmael in Moby Dick, Anderson initially responds regarding the obsession to hunt the white whale.  That would pertain to Captain Ahab.  Ishmael is a pilgrim along for the ride observing and recording. Indeed Ishmael laments the role of the artist in Chap 1, para 6:  "Here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco.  What is the chief element he employs?"  Ending the paragraph with "It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all."

9. As a fellow art historian he gets much "factual" information completely wrong.  His exclusions of art and artists is political, as far as I can tell.  He also suppresses so much of the sexuality and gender performance in and around the work.  With AbEx his lecture is completely disappointing.  Again, I say this as an art historian with a PhD from UCLA

10. Please upload subtitles , none of the questions asked by students are audible. Thanks

11. I'm an artist please check my work on facebook under my name Rico Ovadia. I'm a performance artist as well as an art expressionist. I'm a devotee of the main man in modern art Jackson Pollock, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be the next generation modern artist to Pollock, extending his method further as I have using lines in the same method of applying paint to canvas as Pollock I have pushed further the boundaries of letting the instrument that I use make four lines at the same time rather than a stick that Pollock twirls like a conductor. So Jon please don't look down at people who want to go further in modernity by using these fantastic techniques that some of the masters have used before. We are all in the same quest, to much is made of people alive today having to re invent the wheel, when the wheel can be used for many amazing things that are new and also wonderful inventions within the extension. No one can ever replace something that is a first. But we can celebrate it as truth and a tool from there on to also become the next chapter, the next model.

12. Robert Summers, I advise you to re-listen to what he says at 3:50 in light of your cynical remarks. Thanks! He's a wonderful professor, and certainly isn't leaving out anything due to a political or religious agenda…

    There's no 'fear' of outside politics or thought at Biola, one of the reasons it's one of the best places for a truly comparative analysis of the subject you're studying.

13. He keeps calling Rothko powerful. To me he is the ultimate in insipidness. Move along, nothing to see here. Even a stop sign holds more interest. Does a single chord qualify as a song? To me the answer is no. Rothko is why modern art is a scam. If I want fuzzy blocks of color, I want a blanket, not a painting. I see in Rothko a refusal to enter into the struggle against the abyss. Instead, he passively allows it to loom over his life and art, while he waits for it to swallow him, gnaw on his bones and digest him.

    I see more merit in Pollock. Despite the apparent spontaneity and randomness, Pollock still maintains remarkable control over the entire canvas in its uniformity of pattern and coloration. Anyone who's ever splashed paint knows that you don't get uniformly thin threads of color without some deliberateness. Instead you get one or more blobs from which emanates sprays and splatters and drips. Pollock is completely directionless. He flails away in all directions against a foe he knows is out there somewhere, but he keeps fighting to the end nevertheless.

    When one challenges "the abyss" as Rothko and Pollock do, there's always the danger that the abyss will win and swallow you. Pollock is a fly buzzing around the entrance to the black hole until he gets sucked in eventually. Rothko is simply a foot soldier trudging forward relentlessly and blindly over the edge, along with the rest of his army of lemmings. Perhaps that's why he prefers "we" to "I".

14. Jon Anderson does a good job of discussing the issues of modern art through the works of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

15. You don't interpret Pollack…you look for all the really cool little people and faces and living creatures inside. They are always hidden, like gnomes and spirit entities…If you see none then your brain is made jelly at the expanse of the works contemplation and you are reduced to the child you've always been. Just Like contemplating a clear , dark night sky. The stars will make you go mad, if your focus be intent enough. Paint is paint. Canvas is canvas. This guy looks like he's enjoying himself, though. Sometimes, feeling good is good enough….Cheers!

16. So, here I am in the Tate Modern, in the Rothko's room.  One can not see the colors very well, there is very little light in the room. I try to look for that undefined something and yes, two of the pieces displayed troubled me. But then I realize they are wrongly exposed. They are hung with the stripes vertically.  Anyway, thank you very much for uploading these videos and sharing such priceless guide to modern art.

17. The parallels drawn to music were inventive and exciting , thanks for sharing this lecture , great help for my thesis.

18. Rothko was born in Latvia, a country of the USSR – Not Russia. USSR and Russia were two different entities like UK and GB and England. Just thought I'd point that out 🙂

19. Why laugh about World war 1 and 2?

20. Great presentation!. Greenberg was an ideological creep pushing an agenda that had very little to do with art. Want to know what art is about? Why not listen to the artist?

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