The Rothko murals at Tate Modern are lovely in their oppression, erotic in their cruelty. These are paintings that seem to exist on the skin inside an eyelid. They are what you imagine might be the last lights, the final flickers of colour that register in a mind closing down. Or at the end of the world. "Apocalyptic wallpaper" was a phrase thrown at Rothko's kind of painting as an insult. It is simply a description; the apocalypse is readable in these paintings like a pattern in wallpaper - abstract, pleasurable horror.
The specification says:Art appears
inseparable from emotion, but whose emotions are
we engaging with when we appreciate the emotional
content of a work of art? (our own or the artists?)
Use the story of Rothko's life and work to attempt to answer this question.
