Retrospective

For the past few days I've been reading up on Mark Rothko, the painter. I'm not really interested in giving a rundown of his biography which is already to be found in great detail in other corners of the internet; I am more interested in asking the question as to why art critiques consistently describe his later paintings as "achieving an expression of transcendent spirituality."

Spirituality? As in non-corporal? I checked the dictionary to be sure. Webster's describes spiritual as "Of or pertaining to the moral feelings or states of the soul, as distinguished from the external actions; reaching and affecting the spirits."

So what's the big deal if someone paints spiritually transcendent paintings? In truth, I'm trying to figure out if art critics are throwing this phrase around as a two-cent word, or are they actually attempting to say that Rothko's paintings have made them aware of an invisible human soul divorced from all physical matter?

Granted, Rothko concedes that his later paintings were meant to bypass our vocabulary of recognizable symbols, but I believe this was an attempt to create a visual counterpart to that of music. Music bypasses visual contexts and reaches the brain through entirely different avenues. Why can't a painting attempt to find alternative routes as well?