From my point of view, there is no meaningful distinction between art and design. Sure, fine art is mostly hidden away in museums while much of graphic design is plastered everywhere — from the walls of your local bistro to within your browser. And I know there are some cultural elitists for whom graphic design is a busy intersection between art and commerce. But there are worse sins.

When asked by college students how to choose between a fine art or graphic design major, I often challenge them to consider their personal aspirations. If they feel, for instance, a yearning to create something in their own voice, as opposed to helping showcase someone else’s message, then I tend to push them toward fine art. But even that line gets blurred when you consider how graphic design has become a kind of celebrity phenomena in recent years, enabling the design elite to climb atop their own soapboxes.

“The progression of a painter’s work as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity — toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea — and the idea and the observer. To achieve this clarity is inevitably to be understood.”
MARK ROTHKO

Although I have mixed feelings about this, I am persuaded that both fine art and graphic design want much the same thing: to help challenge and shape culture. And that’s what really gets my attention.

Introducing Mark Rothko

This story, then, is about Mark Rothko, the enigmatic painter of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Many regard Rothko as the representative of high modernism — aesthetic purity at its apex — who sought to reduce form to basic emotion. He once said: “I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom. … ”

Rothko feared his work would be perceived as mere decorative explorations of color and shape, but he was passionate about startling his viewers into a new way of seeing. He created paintings that were roughly the same height as humans, and he preferred they be viewed in low light and as close as 18 inches from the canvas. He wanted viewers to be enveloped by the color and space — to experience what could not be uttered, that we might see what he could not say.

But what was he trying to say?

The Seagram Murals

In the years following the horror of World War II, Mark Rothko was living in New York City, and he became increasingly frustrated by the numbing distractions of urban life. How could people move on with their lives, oblivious to what he called “the tragedy of mankind?”

Some years later, after becoming an established leader in the Abstract Expressionist movement, Rothko was commissioned to furnish the brand new Seagram Building on Park Avenue¹  — a masterpiece of architectural modernism — with wall paintings.

The room Rothko was to “decorate” was that of the Four Seasons restaurant, foreseen as an imperial eatery for the elite and affluent. This was the first time Rothko would create a series of related paintings and the first time his work would adorn a public space.

During the first year of the project, Rothko painted gigantic murals, as well as sketches and studies — about 40 works in all. But after a year’s work, he decided to take a break and travel with his family to Europe. While traveling, he met the editor of Harper’s Magazine²  and expressed his hope of “painting something that will ruin the appetite of everyone who ever eats in that room. If the restaurant would refuse to put up my murals, that would be the ultimate compliment. But they won’t. People can stand anything these days.”

But when Rothko returned from Europe, he took his wife to the Four Seasons for dinner. He was so incensed at the pretentious ambience that he decided to give up the project on the spot — or so goes the legend. The murals were never to grace the walls of the Four Seasons.

In the 1960’s Rothko gave nine of his Seagram Murals to the Tate Modern in London, where they now reside in this permanent and exclusive room. The museum director at the time, Norman Reid, declared the gift a “princely gesture.”

What did the murals look like?

Rothko used a warm palette of dark red and brown tones, breaking the normative horizontal structure of his pictures by creating vertical planes of color. In this way he created a body of work that would relate directly to the architecture of the room. The surfaces of color recall architectural elements — columns, doors, windows — creating an eerie feeling of confinement and yet suggesting some unreachable world beyond.

As these murals gathered dust during the 1960s, Rothko saw the popularity of his work decline, as the rise of pop art eclipsed and even undermined the Abstract Expressionist movement. His work drifted, at times becoming insufferably dark, until on February 25th, 1970, Mark Rothko took his life. He was 66 years old.

What do we make of him?

There is much to affirm in Rothko’s work. His paintings are filled with solemnity and beauty, but also the subversive power to challenge our assumptions. Though he ultimately succumbed to disillusionment, he once had hope in the power of art to awaken us from our stupor that we might confront the terror of the everyday world.

As a designer, I am challenged by Rothko. His paintings are at once startling and subtle, and precisely what I think a work of graphic design should be. Because his work is startling, there is a boldness that provokes immediate response — demanding our attention. And because his work is subtle, there is a quiet beauty that draws us in — rewarding our contemplation.

Likewise, good design demands and rewards attention. The first responsibility of design is to make the case for participation, to draw viewers into the content. But design also has the power to provide substantive engagement — stimulating viewers to make new connections and consider the world from a different point of view. Isn’t that what all artists and designers hope to do?