HARRY SHANNON
A friend recently saw a show by the artist Mark Rothko. If you don’t know his work, you can find it online. You might find a piece entitled “No. 16.” In fact, Rothko produced several different paintings with that title. As my wife noted, that raises questions on whether he could count any higher.
But back to our friend. She thinks that Rothko is a con. (Cue puns about con artists or jokes about putting the con in contemporary art.) It reminded me of a column I read years ago in the Globe and Mail. The writer snootily complained that he was fed up going to modern art shows and hearing people saying: “My kid could do that.”
I wrote a letter to the paper. It wasn’t published but you can read it:
I was disappointed that your Visual Arts Critic, John Bentley Mays (Hopping mad and not going to take it anymore – August 7) considers me and other philistines as unworthy, or perhaps incapable, of being educated about art such as Mark Rothko’s No. 16. It is true that I thought the Emperor had no clothes, but as I read his article I began to see the light. My new understanding is illustrated by this critique of the enclosed work of art.
The viewer is immediately struck by the stark minimalism of the drawing, enhanced by the dramatic use of a single primary colour, red. The bold design, superficially naïve in conception, presents us with an enigma. In some critics’ minds, ‘X’ marks the spot – but which spot? By using a blank white background, the artist is suggesting that it is anywhere and everywhere. We live our lives wherever we find ourselves.
An alternative explanation, which I favour, stems from the symbolism of ‘X’ for things wrong. The work is telling us that all is not well in the world of art. Its genius lies in its paradoxical use of the very style it condemns.
[Sadly, the paper did not return my artwork, so the image above is only an approximation to the original, which was roughly 8 cm x 12 cm. Maybe I would be justified in calling both of them “No. 1.”]