Society’s logic is faulty, but its intimation of an enemy is not. Still, the social conflict with society is an incidental obstacle in the artist’s path.
~ Mark Rothko

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Feeling must have a medium in order to function at all; in the same way, thought must have symbols.
~ Mark Rothko

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Drama moves us: conflict is an inherent pattern in reality. Harmony moves us too: faced as we are with ever imminent disorder. It is a powerful idea.
~ Mark Rothko

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One does not paint for design students or historians but for human beings, and the reaction in human terms is the only thing that is really satisfactory to the artist.
~ Mark Rothko

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The activity of the artist makes him less socially conditioned and more humans. It is then that he is disposed to revolution.
~ Mark Rothko

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Society stands against anarchy; the artist stands for the human against society; society therefore threats him as an anarchist.
~ Mark Rothko

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The aesthetic is the sine qua none for art: if a work is not aesthetic, it is not art by definition.
~ Mark Rothko

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It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way—not his way.
~ Mark Rothko

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If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.
~ Mark Rothko

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