Starring Mark Rothko

Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko kept banker’s hours. Rain or shine, hot or cold, inspired or not, he went to his New York studio, Monday through Friday at 9:00 o’clock, ready to work. There, during the 1950s and 1960s, he painted large, luminous blocks of color hovering on fields of monochromatic intensity, some 20 canvases a year. In work after work, the artist with the deep voice and the scar on his nose (he said it had been inflicted by a Cossack’s whip) used his everyday discipline to find ways to capture nothing less than “the human drama.”

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