These Ecrits sur l’art gather the various texts of Mark Rothko from 1934 to 1969 : numerous letters to his friends painters, manifestos, interviews, educational articles, various notes, etc.
Of this composite ensemble, one will remember in particular the letter of Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb to Edward Alden, art critic of the New York Times as well as the typescript of The Portrait and the modern artist, radio program of Radio WYNC of October 1943. Rothko takes in these texts his distances with the notion of abstraction : “My paintings should not be considered as abstract paintings. Their intention is not to create or highlight a formal colour-space layout”. And to affirm – with humour and a sense of paradox – that he “always painted Greek temples without knowing it”*.

*p. 210

Mark Rothko, Ecrits sur l’art, Flammarion, 2005