Mark Rothko: A Biography [Paperback]

James E. B. Breslin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 1998

A book of heroic dimensions, this is the first full-length biography of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century--a man as fascinating, difficult, and compelling as the paintings he produced. Drawing on exclusive access to Mark Rothko's personal papers and over one hundred interviews with artists, patrons, and dealers, James Breslin tells the story of a life in art--the personal costs and professional triumphs, the convergence of genius and ego, culture and commerce, that defined the New York art scene of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s--the world of Abstract Expressionism, of Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, Klein.

"In Breslin, Rothko has the ideal biographer--thorough but never tedious, a good storyteller with an ear for the spoken word, fond but not fawning, and possessed of a most rare ability to comment on non-representational art without sounding preposterous."--Robert Kiely, Boston Book Review

"Breslin impressively recreates Mark Rothko's troubled nature, his tormented life, and his disturbing canvases. . . . The artist's paintings become almost tangible within Breslin's pages, and Rothko himself emerges as an alarming physical force."--Robert Warde, Hungry Mind Review

"This remains beyond question the finest biography so far devoted to an artist of the New York School."-Arthur C. Danto, Boston Sunday Globe

"Clearly written, full of intelligent insights, and thorough."--Hayden Herrera, Art in America

"Breslin spent seven years working on this book, and he has definitely done his homework."-Nancy M. Barnes, Boston Phoenix

"He's made the tragedy of his subject's life the more poignant."--Eric Gibson, The New Criterion

"Mr. Breslin's book is, in my opinion, the best life of an American painter that has yet been written . . . a biographical classic. It is painstakingly researched, fluently written and unfailingly intelligent in tracing the tragic course of its subject's tormented character."--Hilton Kramer, New York Times Book Review, front page review

James E. B. Breslin (1936-1996) was professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of From Modern to Contemporary: American Poetry, 1945-1965 and William Carlos Williams: An American Artist.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetry." Born Marcus Rothkowitz in a small Russian town, Mark Rothko immigrated to Portland, Oregon, in 1913, when he was 10 years old. "You don't know what it is to be a Jewish kid dressed in a suit that is a Dvinsk, not an American, idea of a suit traveling across America and not able to speak English," he later told fellow abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell. Rothko was a weak child, an abandoned son (his father had gone to America in 1910 and died of cancer just seven months after the family was reunited), a Jew excluded from high school clubs, a Yale freshman on scholarship, and a college dropout determined to become an Artist with a capital A. James Breslin has written an exhaustive biography of the painter. He pulled together all the facts of Rothko's life and carefully examined all the strata of the artist's personality--Rothko's sensitivity, his sense of displacement, his pride and his diffidence, his combativeness, his love for his children, his hatred for Marlborough Gallery director Frank Lloyd, and his difficulties with money. The book is flawed only by Breslin's ticlike use of italics, which give the sense of the author tugging at our sleeve in an unnecessary effort to persuade: "Rothko's last and most severe renunciations were made not to remove obstacles between the observer and the idea but in a gesture of personal withdrawal." But this is a relatively minor trifle that does not unduly detract from this large--and large-spirited--book about a tormented, brilliant Artist. --Peggy Moorman

From Publishers Weekly

A hefty, bear-like man with voracious appetites, an alcoholic who withdrew into isolation and took his own life, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) made paintings that transformed despair into transcendent beauty. Breslin's biography, a splendid achievement, exorcises Rothko's private demons and explores how he invented a modern art which enacted his inner drama. Born Marcus Rothkowitz in Russia, raised in Portland, Oregon, from age 10, the painter launched an iconoclastic underground newspaper at Yale, became a "self-made proletarian" in the Depression, and progressed from expressionist urban moodscapes to surreal mythic pictures to the free-floating stacked rectangles that are his trademark. A melancholy man who never felt fully at home in his adopted country, Rothko festered with indignation as an outsider, but once he achieved fame and insider status, he felt corrupted and doomed by it, according to Breslin, a UC-Berkeley Enlgish professor and biographer of William Carlos Williams. Illustrated.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 707 pages
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press (April 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226074064
• ISBN-13: 978-0226074061
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #636,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Abstract Expressionism

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Rothko, the best a book can do, July 6, 2002

By 

Paul Laub (formerly of San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mark Rothko: A Biography (Paperback)

No book can do Mark Rothko justice. He painted on large
canvases. To know him is to confront his original work
on the wall before you. Find your distance, 10, 15,
maybe 30 feet back. Yet to make sense of his
colored rectangles tearing themselves apart in fission,
as well as his earlier, quite different work, some
background helps.

Breslin's book will become the standard reference, but
not perhaps the starting point. He writes engrossingly,
but the 558 pages of text, I fear, will discourage the
casual reader (who might do well to read Robert
Hughes's paragraphs in American Visions).

Still, for the motivated reader, James Breslin's bio is
awesome. The Latvian Jew, charity student at
antisemitic Yale in the early 20s, uncomfortable and
smarter than most there, comes alive, as does his love
for children and their art, as well as his tormented
first marriage to a wife commercially successful during
the Great Depression making jewelry that sold. Rothko
had higher ambitions: fine art spelled with a capital
"A". As Breslin relates, discomfort never disappeared.
Success and recognition did not go over well with
this self-described anarchist who, as a Portland
teenager, enthusiastically took in lectures by Emma
Goldman. Overall, Breslin provides a biographical and
historical foundation with which to understand Mark
Rothko's painting. I am grateful for that.

Finally, of the many biographies I've read, James EB
Breslin's stands out for another reason: in his
Afterword, he turns from Rothko to himself and
addresses his own motivations and challenges in writing
the biography. Biographies are never "objective", so it
makes sense that a biographer might address his own
motivations. In the descriptions of the dangers of
doing research in Rothko's birthplace of Dvinsk, in
interviewing art historian Clement Greenberg, Rothko
reappears again, this time indirectly, one step
removed. That Breslin can bring Rothko alive in these

different contexts is testament to the enduring value
of this long, challenging biography.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book, August 2, 2007

By 

G. Snowden (DETROIT, MICHIGAN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mark Rothko: A Biography (Paperback)

I am a painter, an art professor, and a reader of biographies. I couldnt put this book down. Breslin did a magnificent job of getting inside the psyche of Rothko as a man, and as an artist. The paragraphs that describe the way in which Rothko created one of his paintings is absolutely inspired....I had goose-bumps reading it, because it seemed as if Breslin,unlike many writers who say they have observed artists, actually understood the process of creation and the passion behind it. I have never written a fan letter to a writer, but I began one to Mr.Breslin. Imagine my distress and sorrow when I read the next day in the paper that he had passed away! But this book lives as a testament to his thorough research and love of the subject. Get this book and read it....if you love art, artists, or scholarship,you will not be disappointed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Heavy going but worth it if you commit yourself to it, March 30, 2009

By 

N. NATALE "artist" (western Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mark Rothko: A Biography (Hardcover)

This bio is long and plodding with too much agonizingly detailed information about Rothko's early life, his parents' lives, his wives, etc., etc.and long, minute examinations and descriptions of early paintings.

HOWEVER, along about 200 pages, it begins to redeem itself and TURNS INTO 4 or 4 1/2 STARS. (I first rated it at 3 but changed my mind although I couldn't change the stars.) It portrays Rothko in enough detail that you get a sense of him as a person and an artist, and it raises some interesting questions; not only questions that Rothko faced, but questions that all artists face. For example, the question of meaning in art, is art basically decoration for rich people, should an artist continue to make art when it becomes just another commodity for investment, should a collector love the individual painting or should you sell him a painting just so he has a "Rothko" (or a Natale)? Should an artist make statements explaining what the work is about or just let it stand (or fall) on its own? How much does an artist owe her/his gallerist or collectors in terms of loyalty? Should an artist explore various formats or just keep repeating something that works?

Breslin has obviously devoted himself to a tremendously in-depth study of Rothko and treasures every detail about him. I have to respect that, but I also want to get another perspective (although Breslin quotes a lot of Rothko's intimates) and so I'm reading another bio by Dore Ashton.