Mark Rothko's Psychedelic Art

I hold a great appreciation for the arts. In high school, I enrolled in art classes each year, focusing the majority of my studies on Renaissance, Impressionistic, and Contemporary art. Although I have had previous education in the arts, I, like most Americans, believed 1960’s art was defined by the pop-art of Andy Warhol and the psychedelic era. Contrary to my original beliefs, the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s was more explicitly defined, in the art world, by New York City’s abstract expressionism. Artists such as Mark Rothko, used bold colors and a reductive style to evoked personal expression within their audience. Interestingly, the emotions provoked by Mark Rothko’s Color Field, abstract expressionistic paintings are parallel to those of Mad Men characters, such as Don Draper. Although the artwork produced by the abstract expressionistic movement do not use bright colors with an essence analogous to that of the pop-art and psychedelic art movements, I admire the works of Rothko displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The work features three rectangular shapes placed on a tea-rose orange background. A large red square with a yellow stripe was placed at the top of the painting with an equally sized green rectangle and dark brown rectangle. These rectangular bands of color stretched across the canvas create a vibrant, yet calming emotion for the individual viewer. In the abstract expressionism movement, bands, such as those use by Rothko, were used to define color as a powerful tool for emotional communication. The lushness of the textured brush-strokes encapsulated my