We are often asked what we can tell from the paintings we see. No matter how difficult and complex the painting occurs to be, the depiction of objects can nevertheless give us traces of something for the viewer to interpret. However, little does the viewer have any clue when s/he encounters Rothko's painting. Since it presents nothing other than color fields——we could not see anything. Before Rothko's painting, we are all bind.
However, this is the goal that Rothko ultimately intends to achieve through these paintings——to deprive the viewer of sight.
In the book memories of the blind, Derrida addresses the significance of artworks in the light of blindness. Blindness not only refers to the necessary "perception" for drawing but to the content of drawings. For Derrida, the production of art is essentially a destructive act, though its purpose is transmitting insight. The ruse by which Odysseus blinds the cyclops corresponds to the strategy by which an artist's skill exerts control on the raw material of the subject and reveals its tracé. Through the tracé, every drawing participates in the signification of every other drawing in a remarkable confluence of profound blindness and blazing insight. Every drawing is correspondingly a ruin, signifying that which is not apparent in the tracé as well as that which is explicit.
Echoing Derrida, Rothko's painting is centered around elimination and responds to the idea of tracé. He aims to eliminate everything we perceive and take for granted in this world. This idea of elimination resonates with the process of his creation when he combines the technique of watercolor with the oil painting. The repetitive process of painting and covering responds to Derrida's "remarkable confluence of profound blindness and blazing insight." As he covers the first layer with the second one, the first layer becomes a ruin that manifests on the second layer in the form of traces. Hence, the course of covering and overlapping is producing and decomposing traces that retain the implicit meaning of the inner world. As though he was trying to erase every likelihood of secularity and bring a contemplative image into the light.
Rather than supposing us to tell what we see in paintings, Rothko intends to evoke a telling of what we cannot see. Indeed, Rothko's painting renders us blind in contrast to most painters whose purpose on paintings is "opening your eyes". Those paintings are often rich in content and dedicated to telling a grand narrative reflecting the outside world. Rothko's paintings, in this case, seem to be secluded from the world of secularity.
This is where we embrace the emotionally provocative paintings in Rothko's chapel. The space contains 14 murals created by artist Rothko. Like many of his other works of art, Rothko places those large-scale paintings in a secluded room, the space solely for the viewer and those paintings. The interaction between space and those paintings coincides with the one that flows between the viewer and them. Here, the idea of elimination is well-represented. Rather than depicting the outside world, Rothko is at pains to use the brush to eliminate the "shape of the world" and recuperates the world of spirituality. In this sense, instead of enabling the viewers to recognize the secularity of themselves in the world, his paintings bring light to the inner world that we hardly notice with the hustle and bustle of the secular world. As he says: "The elimination of content is a removal of all obstacles between the painter and the idea and between the idea and the observer."
The avoidance of the content is only the avoidance of the references of the outside world. Rothko wants to draw our attention to the world of ideas, or precisely the world of emotions. This is why often we see people standing in front of his paintings with tears streaming down on their cheeks. There is something hidden in those contentless paintings that touches these viewers from within. The surface of those paintings does not tell anything but leaves the work of storytelling to the sentiment. The most touchable words in this world are perhaps the words of silence; the most touching shape perhaps is shapeless. The words that can only be uttered by wordless expressions----the dialogue that is transpiring between two hearts.
Once, Rothko was taking an interview with New York Times magazine when he was asked what he was trying to do with his art. He said:
"My work of art is a place where two sadness can meet, and both of us need to feel less sad."
This is where Rothko's painting goes to be great. The deprivation of sight, namely the secular sight is, in fact, the restoration of the sight, essentially, the spiritual sight, through which we perceive a wider world that incorporates the consciousness of our inner world. As Derrida says: "Blindness becomes the sacrifice for seeing." In Rothko's chapel, alone with many other his paintings, we come to our true selves in contemplation and through baptism with tears.
This is why the tears account for an important factor in Rothko's idea of painting. Resembling a course of religious renewal, the response we have to Rothko's paintings sanctifies us into new selves. It is through this sanctification that we are able to retrieve our sight and conceive the idea of who we are. The implicate tear reflects on Augustine's numerous references to weeping and tears, symbolic of clouded vision and acquired insight.
Paralleling Augustine's tears that signify a moment of recognition as well as an articulation of "inexpressible groanings," of sentiments that are too profound to be expressed in human words (Rm 8:26), Rothko renders tear necessary for expressing emotions. The tear is a sign of the interaction between viewers and the work of art. It is a physical act that reflects what Rothko himself calls "the human condition". Crying is the most striking manifestation of Rothko's painting. In the wake of crying comes the profound recognition of one's true self. Things in Rothko's painting bring us notes that are resonating, stirred. Therefore, tear connects not to the sadness but cognitive experience, namely, the encounter with ourselves in the realm of spirit.