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I use colors that have already been experienced through the light of day and through the state of mind of the total man. In other words, my colors are not colors that are laboratory tools which are isolated from all accidentals or impurities so that they have a specified identity or purity.

— Mark Rothko Posthumous sources (1970)

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More quotes by Mark Rothko

I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room.

A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.

It is Cézanne's feeling that determined the form of his pictorial structure. It is his pictorial structure that gives off his feeling. If all his pictorial structures were to disappear from the world, so would a certain feeling.

Beyond the Aesthetics (1946)

With us the disguise must be complete. The familiar identity of things has to be pulverized in order to destroy the finite associations with which our society increasingly enshrouds every aspect of our environment.

Posthumous sources (1970)

It's a risky business to send a picture out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent who could extend their affliction universally!

Conversations with Artists (1957)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Rothko (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.