Talk:Mark Rothko

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[edit] Article too long

This article's gone mad. It's far too long with no breaks. I'll try and cut it down a bit. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 163.1.160.44 (talk • contribs) .

Please do. You'll see that User:72.197.242.49 added a huge amount of material, a certain amount of it POV and also unreferenced. I didn't revert it, as it seems quite well researched with a lot of useful information, so I felt it was better to leave it for the time being. Tyrenius 00:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, Mark Rothko was born in Daugavpils, Latvia (Vitebsk guberniya, then part of the Russian Empire). Her father Jacob was a pharmacist and an intellectual, who provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious upbringing.

Her father?

[edit] Surname inconsistant

The beginning of the article give his surname as "Rothkowitz," while he and his family are later referred to (several times) as "Rothkovich" or "the Rothkoviches."

[edit] subheadings

I'm trying to break this wodge of material into smaller chunks, but it's hard to find predise points that would take a heading. Any suggestions?Totnesmartin 16:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Converted to Othodox Judaism???

From what? A Jew doesn't convert to Orthodox Judaism...Perhaps what you mean is he joined the Orthodox Jewish community, or that he became a practicing Orthodox Jew.

[edit] How to plan a rewrite

I suggest this article should start with a summary which should aim to be accessible to people who want the 'short version' and could also reference subsequent sections. A summary needs to be weighted towards those aspects which people are most likely to want to know about (i.e. the art).

Here's the link to the Wiki guideline on summary style Cosmopolitancats

I'm not sure chunking it up with a different set of headings is the right approach and I, for one, would certainly hesitate to do this. It's difficult to see where a lot of this has come from and some of it reads to me as if it may have been copied. If there is no attribution as to source (or even who wrote what - there's no comments in this history about this) can it remain after an edit? The guidelines state that encyclopaedic content (which this certainly is) must be verifiable and any content which violates copyright should be deleted. It might be easier to start again with a fresh article which is properly referenced. Cosmopolitancats 23:58, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the article is too long. There are digressions that I think should be deleted (as suggested earlier on - below) but I think it is a credit to the site to have such a thorough article. Let's not forget that he is arguably one of the most prominent artists of the 20th century...Zigzig20s 03:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] inspiration from mythology

It seems to me this could be deleted :

"Ezra Pound used his translations of ancient Asian and Greek and Medieval poetry to comment on the Great War, Picasso used mythological images in his Guernica to create a resonating, timeless statement on war while at the same time specifically addressing the Spanish Civil War, T.S. Eliot borrowed from Grail mythology and Frazer’s Golden Bough in his landmark poem The Waste Land, James Joyce evoked Homer in Ulysses and nearly the whole of mythology in Finnegans Wake, Thomas Mann utilized Christian symbolism to great effect in The Magic Mountain and Joseph and His Brothers, to name some of the more obvious examples"

Interesting as it may be, I don't think we need to read all that. Surely the point put forward here is just that, "Rothko’s use of mythology as a commentary on current history was by no means novel.".Zigzig20s 03:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] influence of Nietzsche

This seems like a digression :

"In it, Nietzsche defined tragedy as the union between the Dionysian ("Art of Music") and Apollonian ("Art of Sculpture") and traced the development from the ecstatic ancient cults (Dionysian) to the later will to form (Apollonian). Whereas Aristotle viewed tragedy as a combination of terror and pity, Joyce’s definition was pornographic didacticism; that is to say, that which excites a feeling in the viewer both of fear and the recognition of the self in the observed subject experiencing life’s horrors. As a result of aesthetic pleasure in the face of these horrors, tragedy provides redemption. Hamlet is tragic therefore not only because Hamlet experiences fear, outrage, inaction and death, but because you yourself are Hamlet and the work successfully evokes from you a pathetic response regardless of whether you want to kill your step-father or not. For Nietzsche, Greek Mythology was the source of modern culture and in Greek tragedy especially found an account of man’s redemption through the tragic act, an act that resonates in the Hellenic sources of Christianity. Nietzsche blamed modern man’s dilemma on "the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb." He observes that "Man today, stripped of myth, stands famished among all his pasts and must dig frantically for roots, be it among the most remove antiquities." This loss of myth results in the loss of art, as "every culture that has lost a myth has lost, by the same token, its natural, healthy creativity." "

The link to Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy" would seem sufficient.Zigzig20s 03:50, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] deleting the digressions

I was waiting for someone to back me up, but since its been days I'll just delete the digressions.Zigzig20s 08:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Suicide" section way too long

The second half of the Suicide section sounds suspiciously plagiarized, and definitely POV--even with all the rhetorical questions. Ninetigerr 19:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)ninetigerr

[edit] NPOV Tag

Sections of this article seem to be either not-neutral or even written from the perspective of a writer or something. I'm not just saying that because I find it disgusting for him to be called an artist. 129.120.244.69 15:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Please quote the sections that seem non-neutral to you, and try to explain why you think so. Surely 'disgusting' is a bit harsh, and unnecessary if I may. Zigzig20s 16:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I've read over the article three or four times and can't find any passages that warrant NPOV. Given that the person also appears to have a bit of a vendetta against the artist, I'm taking it's application with a grain of salt. Removed tag. xanderforsyth 11:07, 12th March 2007 (Atlantic Canada)

[edit] chapel

Is this subsection absolutely necessary? Zigzig20s 17:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where are the references???

I would love to see a good article on Rothko with proper References. When is that going to come?

Also, I do think the chapel is a big issue worth writing about. I agree however that is not synoptic enough. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by IzaakdeM (talk • contribs) 03:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] His father convert to Judaism?

Sounds strange, as far as I can recall, he was born Jewish-might be as secular one, but Jewish-and if so, then he only return to Judaism-even if his parents were secular as well. Only non-Jewish by their birth, i.e, ethnically not Jewish, should convert to Judaism if they want to be Jewish-so, there is no place to say "convert" if he was born as a Jew. Can any body cite any reliable reference that support the idea of Rothko's father converting to Judaism? It is very important. I made a brief review, using few, randomly chosen, Rothko's biographies-and not even one of them claimed that his father converted to Judaism, instead, it was written that Mark Rothko was born to a Jewish family. More, there is a biographical book about Rothkos father which calld "the story of a Baal teshuva" which means that he was born Jewish--Gilisa 05:04, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 23:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)