ca. 1953 Amazing to recall, now that he is as permanently enshrined in the pantheon of artist-deities as Matisse or Mondrian, but Rothko, back in the early ’50s, was a…
“ROTHKO IS A WATERCOLORIST.” The typewritten note in Clyfford Still’s unpublished diary, undated but recorded no earlier than 1961, appears as if graven into a largely blank page.1 It is clearly meant as a condemnation: Still had long come to despise his former close friend. No explanation follows, and the painter doubtless believed none was necessary. What other epithet, after all, could more concisely telegraph all that separated them Still, with his vigorous, knife-sculpted impasto and flame-like forms, and Rothko, with his translucent layers and liquid shapes?
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