Leonardo da Vinci and "Patchy Walls"

Leonardo da Vinci, that omniscient artist, once remarked, “I have seen shapes in clouds and on patchy walls which have given rise to beautiful inventions.”

We have all seen wonderful shapes in clouds as they sailed above our heads – that is a gift that one should never lose.

Patchy walls – that is another affair in today’s world.

Most cities are now more characterized by glass and steel and other slick-surfaced materials that don’t often inspire the imagination in the way that Leonardo meant. Yet, when we visit the older towns and villages of the world, particularly in areas where stone and wood have been the predominant building materials down the ages, the imagination can again take flight.

In Caylus, France, the walls of the medieval houses are a history of generations of people building, adapting and shaping the stones and bricks of their abodes. The abstract patterns and wonderful shapes delight and interest.

In fact, the whole region rewards the imaginative eye. See what you think.

Oak beam end (artist's photograph)

Caylus (artist's photograph)

Caylus (artist's photograph)

Caylus (artist's photograph)

Caylus' history in the walls (artist's photograph)

Another version of a patchy wall (artist's photograph)

Leonardo da Vinci would have been delighted in southern France. The walls lend themselves to all sorts of flights of fancy.  Just what an artist needs and wants!

Mingling Gothic Architecture and Contemporary Art

One of the delights of finding kindred spirits is that when they suggest a place to visit, you know that there is a very good chance that you too will find the place to be special.

This happened again to me the other day, during my artist-in-residence stay at DRAWinternational in Caylus, France.

John and Grete McNorton, who established DRAWinternational as a centre for artistic investigation, research and practice, are two very special people, along with their lovely daughter, with whom I rapidly felt deliciously at home. They told me of the Abbey of Beaulieu, a Cistercian abbey decommissioned during the French Revolution and now a National Monument and contemporary art centre.

Nestled in a green winding, wooded valley just north of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, in Ginals, in the Tarn et Garonne Department, this is indeed a magical place to visit.

Abbaye de Beaulieu (artist's photograph)

Originally founded as an abbey in 1144, the church was destroyed during the religious wars against the Cathars at the beginning of the 13th century. It was rebuilt from 1275 onwards, but was destroyed and rebuilt during the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in the second half of the 16th century. From then on, until the French Revolution, the Cistercians had a difficult time surviving as their abbots were appointed directly by the King, as opposed to the Cistercian way of selecting an abbot.

Politics seem to enter every facet of life!

Then absurd hubris nearly destroyed the building as the new owners, after the Revolution, from the town of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val; they wanted to move the whole structure, stone by stone, to their town. Luckily, the noted Prosper Merimee, one of the first Inspectors of National Monuments, stepped in and the building was saved by being classified a National Monument in 1875.

Rightly so, because after a joint restoration by the State and two enlightened citizens, Pierre Brache and Genevieve Bonnefoi, the abbey became a Centre for Contemporary Art, with the couple’s art collection left to the State as well. It is a wonderful, soaring, light-filled space in which to show art.

The day I visited, there was an exhibition of paintings and “boxes” by Montauban artist, Odile Cariteau, “Deambulations”. “Deambulation” in French means a strolling or a wandering, in this case a symbolic movement in time and space, linking an artistic and a monastic way of life.

Both modes of existence encompass realities other than the visible, experienced in solitude. Prayer and an artistic practice both dictate a particular way of life in their gentle unfolding of activity.

Interior of Abbaye de Beaulieu, with  Odile Cariteau's work displayed (artist's photograph)

The big black and white acrylic canvases held up well, if repetitively, in the high Gothic-arched, quite narrow simple nave, transept and choir. Niches were filled with boxes, “Interior Spaces” filled with divers material, alluding to alchemy. A little too claustrophobic for my taste, but interesting. Perhaps the most arresting were the “Primordial Walking Sticks”, complex ensembles of wooden twisted branches adorned with ceramic beads and threads.

In the cool 13th century Gothic cellar, apparently intact since it was constructed (a comment on French priorities when it comes to wine and wine-making!), Cariteau had echoed, to a degree, the convoluted forms of these walking sticks in huge kakemono paintings hung in staggered rows. “Writings from Afar”, some were elegant.

Vine outside Gothic Cellar, Abbaye de Beaulieu (artist's photograph)

The Abbey ensemble itself was far more compelling. The grassy lawn demarcated where the cloister had once been, and off it was the wonderful small Chapter House, with early 13th century, still polychromed massive arches and a feeling of great antiquity. It was a delight simply to sit quietly in the cool of this House and draw, somehow connecting with the monks of yore in their strict observance of an orderly, simple life.

Chapter House, Abbaye de Beaulieu (artist's photograph)

There is also a current exhibition of modern art in the upstairs former dormitory, a beautiful wooden structure with high, high ceilings. “Supports/Surfaces et Apres” examines this movement that started in the 60s and 70s in France, when artists wanted to break with painting as pure painting. Whatever the art exhibition currently on at the Abbey of Beaulieu, it is well worth a visit to this peaceful remnant of another way of life, still timeless and serene in feel.

Around, the grounds still offer beautiful walks, with flowers to gladden the heart and magnificent giant trees to shade one’s path.

A special place indeed.

25,000 years - What a Heritage as an Artist!

Visiting Pech-Merle Cave in France has been on my wish list for a long time, and this week, I achieved the wish.

What an amazing place and what a heritage we artists have in these cave drawings that early man created on the rock walls!

Location Map of Pech-Merle Cave, France

There is an astonishing mixture of the most beautiful stalagmites in columns, fans and banks with these seemingly smooth rock faces where those distant artists left their marks.

Enormous chambers, still dripping with moisture and forming more beauty in the limestone, have a sense of the spiritual, despite the fact that visitors are in groups, shepherded along by a guide.

Pech-Merle Cave

There is almost too much to see and absorb, too many shapes and formations to encompass; one longs to be able to slow down and linger. Alas, that is impossible because there is a limit of 700 visitors a day to try and conserve the freshness of the art work.

The cave was blocked by rock falls for many thousands of years, which helped conserve the drawings better than in other caves. Thus there is the obvious concern to keep them in a good state of conservation.

Those early, few artists were determined people. It is hard to imagine the effort it must have required before they even traced the first line on a rock face. Cro-Magnon man lived in the fertile Lot river valley far below. There, the artist must have first had to prepare charcoal in stick form or grind red ochre into powder, fine enough to be blown through a small tube. Then he (judging from the content of the Pech-Merle drawings, it had to be a “he”!) had to climb up the steep hills to gain entrance to the cave. Before scrambling into the cave down narrow, tortuous openings, he had to ensure he had enough, reliable light from his flickering, open flame torches. Then, once inside the chambers, he had to select a rock face he could reach, that was not too damp and that lent itself to the images he planned to draw.

Even the rock surface was rough, not an easy surface for mark-making. One of the remarkable aspects of cave art is that there are layers upon layers of work. Art was executed on the same surface with thousands and thousands of years in between. In Pech-Merle, the first frieze of black drawings – bison, mammoths, horses of extraordinary vigour and freedom, probably all done by the same artist – has red iron oxide dotted markings beneath that are thought to be done some 8000 years previously.

Early Blown  Pigment Hand Outline, Pech-Merle Cave

Mammoths and Horses - Black Frieze, Pech-Merle Cave

Young Mammoth, detail of Plack Frieze, Pech-Merle

The most famous of Pech-Merle’s rock paintings, the Dotted Horse Panel, is vast and breath-taking. I was lucky enough to happen on it a few minutes before the rest of our group, and being alone to contemplate this extraordinary complex work allowed a dazzling connection with those long-ago artists.

Dotted Horse Panel, Pech-Merle Cave

Hand outlined by blown pigment, detail of Dotted Horse Panel, Pech-Merle

There was an early, early depiction of a long, spotted fish in red ochre, half obscured by the later drawings of the horses. The artist who conceived of and drew the horses used the configuration of the rocks themselves to incorporate them into the drawing. The outline of the rock suggests the horse’s head and neck, and the drawings flow from there. All the marks were blown stencils of fingers, thumbs and hands – all used to further the depiction of these two stylized horses with their powerful bodies and diminutive legs with dots big and small. The work bespoke of a clarity of vision and execution that would defy most people today with far, far better working conditions. Remember, flaming torches only have a finite time to burn, for example.

What also fascinated me in Pech-Merle was that those early, early artists not only celebrated the animals of their world, but they also made abstract drawings – triangles, strange symbols… - as well as very stylized depictions of women, even bison-women.There is also a poignant stylized man, lying mortally wounded with spears traversing his body, near a geometrical symbol.Interestingly, it is thought that artist travelled some 40 kilometers to another cave to draw the same type of wounded man, with a similar symbol, but not directly adjacent to the man as it is in Pech-Merle.

Wounded Man and Geometral Sign, Pech-Merle Cave

I suspect that every visitor to Pech-Merle emerges into the light of day dazzled and enthralled.

The mind-stretching sense of time and connectedness to those astonishing artists left me humbled and yet almost exalted at the thought of the heritage we artists share with those mark-makers working some 25,000 years ago.

Thoughts on Ingres as a Source of Art

The other day, I attended an artist’s talk for an exhibition opening at the Ingres Museum in Montauban, a delightful small town in South France.

It was thought-provoking, albeit not perhaps quite as the artist intended.

Flyer for the Ingres Museum show on Vincent Carpet

Vincent Carpet is a French artist, born in Paris in 1958, who came to art because there seemed nothing else viable for him to do.

His career really took off, apparently, when he exhibited with two other artists in a very controversial show, Masculin-Féminin, le sexe de l’art, at the Centre GeorgesPompidou Paris. Since then, he has increasingly specialized in using an artist’s work to develop his own version of that work, often with what seems to be a very ironic eye.

It was in this context that he is now exhibiting his work in the Ingres Museum Montauban is Ingres’ home town and the museum owns a huge number of Ingres’ drawings and many important paintings. So Vincent Corpet was invited to select a number of Ingres’ works, paintings and drawings, and develop his own reactive work, to be hung alongside the original work. The show is called Vincent Corpet vit au long d'Ingres.

His talk at the Museum, given to a very small number of people, was ironic, rich in facile remarks and occasional honest moments, such as when he admitted getting totally bored with trying to find what else to do and say when faced with all the multitude of Ingres’ portraits.

Another such moment was when he said he couldn’t paint hands or feet, so he simply stuck his hand or foot in paint and walked on the canvas to leave the imprint. His method of work, apparently, is to make a black and white, quick and dirty copy of the original painting, with the canvas on the floor, as one personage.

He then changes to being another person, in his mind, and selects out things to emphasise and reinterpret, mostly with fantasy animals, upside down, sideways or whatever. He then changes again to another person and covers the rest of the canvas in some simple colour, painted on rather as one would paint a wall, it appeared. Only when the three stages are completed is the canvas placed upright.

Vincent Corpet at work

His drawings were simpler and more painterly, but very repetitive, with sexual forms predominating, with a lot of smudging, erasing the black with spirits to get tonal changes.

He had also made the selection of Ingres’ drawings to go with his drawings, but alas, many of them were so faint that they were almost invisible. He had apparently made a very quick selection on the web of these drawings, not seeing them in the original, which was perhaps sometimes unfortunate.

The overall impression on was left with after this talk was that this was an artist who had perfected the game of parleying his skills into a career in the official art world. Derivative and shallow art is apparently quite acceptable, as long as there is shock value. To me, his talk was short on depth of thought, and thus on impact.

Tackling a take-off of Ingres, himself very much a product of the 19th century traditional art world and not so hot on accurate drawing of the human body, for instance, is not an easy task. Nonetheless, the “translation” done by Vincent Corpet into 21st century idiom simply reminded me of the existence of a potentially shallow, transitory and basically ugly sector of today’s art world. 

In essence, the talk became a reminder to me personally as an artist that one needs to try to dig as deeply and thoughtfully as possible inside one’s own world, not to copy and not to be facile.

Not easy!

Diary of an Artist

Sometimes there are amazing obstacles thrown in the way of being an artist, I have decided.

I met one or two of them just recently as I set off on a trip to an art residency at DRAWinternational in Caylus, France.

Bell Tower of Saint Jean Baptiste church and houses in medieval town

I checked in to Vueling airlines for a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Toulouse, via Barcelona. All went predictably until I reached Barcelona. There, Vueling had blandly cancelled the flight to Toulouse, a flight for which a boarding pass had been issued to me not two hours previously!

No reason, no apology, no help from the extremely lackadaisical staff in the departure lounges.

Welcome to Vueling, the company that claims, "For us, flying is a true pleasure".

Some four and a half muddled hours later, I am boarding a bus for a nearly six-hour drive from Barcelona to Toulouse, courtesy of Vueling. The options offered had been a two-day wait for the next flight to Toulouse, or this bus ride – some choice!

A 3 a.m. arrival at the almost totally deserted and closed Toulouse airport enabled the bus/Vueling simply to dump us on the pavement.

Good luck, passengers, we hope you enjoyed your flight on Vueling.

I revived somewhat after some sleep and some strong coffee, enough then to pick up a delayed car rental and head off for Caylus.

I was perhaps lucky that the obstacles were not worse and that I could forget about the “invraisemblable” (unbelievable) trip as I was greeted at the delightful home of Grete and John McNorton, hosts of DRAWinternational.

The magic of the French countryside, the brilliant sunshine and cascading roses, the eloquent stone walls of a medieval small town that has seen much history in the Lot et Garonne, the indefinable savoir vivre that I so love in France. Despite Vueling’s nonsense and obstacles, I am conscious that it is delicious to be an artist again.

Art and Individuality

I think everyone responds to the glowing, liquid beauty of glass, with its essence of light playing through it in magical ways.  I have always felt that, for instance, one of the most amazingly rapturous places for stained glass in the world is Chartres Cathedral.

North Rose Window, The Glorification of the Virgin, Chartres Cathedral

South Rose Window, The Glorification of  Christ, Chartres Cathedral

My introduction to Chartres was walking into the Cathedral, cleared of all pews, as part of a student pilgrimage on foot from Paris.  The afternoon sun was streaming in, blue, scarlet, gold, but it was the overall impression of the blue that I remember.  It was the most magical serious introduction to stained glass, all the more amazing because most of it dates from the early 13th century.

Lower Window, Signs of the Zodiac, detail - Libra, Chartres Cathedral. c. 1235

Later, back in Paris, I learnt to love Sainte Chapelle's windows equally, but there, the slenderness of the stone structure adds to the extraordinary magic of the stained glass.  Despite its almost secular feel today, the stained glass takes one back to times when this was the chapel built by King Louis IX in the 1230-40s to house his scared relics, including Christ's Crown of Thorns.  Only the most wondrous of structures was worthy of such sacred objects.

Upper Chapel, Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

I was recently reminded of the magical sensations that these stained glass windows engendered in me while I was reading a truly beautiful book, Stained and Art Glass. A Unique History of Glass Design and Making, by Judith Neiswander and Caroline Swash.  The depth and breadth of the contents are impressive and of course fascinating, taking the reader from the earliest glass making up to 2004, (the book was published in 2005), in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

As the use of glass in architecture and in objets d'art increased in the last century, with new materials, techniques and a hugely increased interest in the beauty and properties of glass, so there has also been a divide that has grown up between individuality and more anonymous approaches to glass making.  This amazing medieval art form - stained glass - was a group creation, with very few windows ever signed.  Church windows told the illiterate faithful about the Scriptures through narrative or symbolism; there were just a few books written on the subject of glass manufacture itself.  By the last century, however, glass had become an art form where individuals can become like Dale Chilhuly, often described as the rock star of glass.

Dale Chilhuly, Collection at the Morean Arts Center, Florida

Dale Chihuly, Seaform Detail, Tacoma

In this Neiswander/Swash book, there is an interesting quote by Patrick Reyntiens, a noted British glass artist who translated John Piper's designs into stained glass for Coventry Cathedral, for example. In 1990, writing in The Beauty of Stained Glass, he remarked, "On the one hand, 'art' is the triumph of the individual, the prophetic side of man - the liberation of people's aspirations.  It is the guarantee of individuality and personal worth.  On the other, 'design' is the expression of the sinews of society, of those activities that hold the whole of the fabric of society together"

I think that this is a really perspicacious remark - it also pertains to every single creative discipline. Every artist endeavours to further his or her individuality, basically in order to survive and succeed in that creative field.  We all seek to have our own voice ring out, our own optic and means of expression.  Of course, every artist suffers serious pangs of self-doubt and angst, but also learns to follow doggedly that star, that small inner voice that one has to trust.  "Aspirations", the "prophetic side of man" - they are the pathways to artistic individuality.

Reyntiens is correct about design being "the sinews of society".  One only has to think of the astonishing architecture of our times, the urban planning and design of our burgeoning cities, even the intricacies of  software or Web design...  There may be individuals who stand out in the design world, but their creations tend more to the impersonal, the machine-made, the anonymous, made on a far larger scale than any artistic creation every could be. In essence, made for the underpinnings of our society.

Glass, stained, etched, blown, cast or shaped, is one of the most perfect media to demonstrate this dichotomy in the world of creativity. It allows artists to excel as individuals, while lending itself to wonderful old and new enhancements to societal life.

Gratitude and Art

There was a wonderful quote at the bottom of an art site that I saw recently: "The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude."  The wise man who said this was Friedrich Nietzsche, author and originator of countless bons mots.

It is true.  Think of how you feel as you come out of a wonderful art gallery or museum, where you have feasted your eyes on wonders and stretched your mind in new directions.

When you encounter a portrait or a self portrait of someone who inspires and humbles, it makes one grateful. Take Rembrandt, for example, with his unflinching self-portraits, that tell one of life's experiences, the highs and the lows.  They give one perspective for one's own life.

Self-Portrait, 1669.  Rembrandt van Rijn's last self-portrait (Image courtesy of the National Gallery, London)

I am always delighted when one feels a connection to past artists, a sense that there is a marvellous heritage to inspire one's own artistic endeavours.  As a silverpoint artist, I love it that Rogier van der Weyden recorded Saint Luke drawing the Virgin in silverpoint.

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, c. 1435–40, Rogier van der Weyden (Image courtesy of  The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Think of the way Paul Cézanne can take one to expansive, simplified yet oh so powerful places, thanks to his obsessive staring as he painted his beloved landscapes around Aix-en-Provence. His watercolours of Mont Sainte-Victoire  take one to magical worlds.

Château Noir devant la montagne Sainte-Victoire 1890-1895, Paul Cézanne ,watercolour, and pencil on white paper, (Image courtesy of Albertina, Vienna) 

Nietzsche  was right about the gratitude.  He also remarked, "Art is the proper task of life".

Definitely a coherent man in his thoughts about art and artists.

The Journey that is Creating Art

As any artist quickly finds out, creating is a journey fulls of twists and turns.  No matter how clearly the artist envisages the work ahead of time, things never work out exactly as planned.  Perhaps that is the addictive, enriching part, or maybe the maddening, humbling part!

There is always the wise advice of doing quick - or detailed - preparatory sketches, whatever the medium in which the artist is working.  That is fine, but I personally find that nothing ever quite correlates in the finished work, even if you go to the lengths of griding out the preparatory drawing, or even tracing the outlines. Something, somewhere, changes, even subtly, and so you are dealing, in essence, with a different creation. It does not seem to matter, either, that you might have done something very similar before.  Each time, you will create something unique, because you have altered a little or a lot, the time and circumstances are different and thus the creative journey is changed. ("Don't bother trying to look for something new: you won't find novelty in the subject matter, but in the way you express it", counselled Pissarro in a letter to his son, Lucien.)

Flexibility, serendipity and a blind confidence that the work will turn out alright in the end seem to be necessary ingredients in creating art.  The journey can be an anguishing one, full of hiccups, misgivings and general doubts.  Or else, like any journey to another land or a new city, you can view the whole process as a challenge full of interesting wrinkles, a learning process and an opportunity to do something new and exciting that could enrich not only your own life, but also, In sha'Allah, that of someone else.

I was reminded of this aspect of an uncertain journey in art-making when I read of Louisa Gillie's approach to creating beautiful works of art in glass. This young English glass artist was featured in a 2006 book on Fifty Distinguished Contemporary Artists in Glass, with examples of her kiln-cast glass that are then polished and textured.  As she works with the glass sculpture, the process becomes her inspiration.  I quote: "Nothing is ever straightforward with glass and it is this unpredictability that she loves. She never quite knows how a piece will look until it is totally finished.  The titles of many of the pieces often refer to the journey it has taken from drawing and original idea to finished piece."

Cosmos, Louisa Gillie, glass, (Image courtesy of the artist)

Labyrinth, Louisa Gillie, glass (Image courtesy of the artist)

Andrew Lambirth, the wonderful art critic in The Spectator, wrote an interesting comment about the Tate Modern exhibition in July 2012, Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye".  He remarked, "But painting is not just about ideas - unless it be that poor relation, conceptual art - it is also about the materials: the canvas and the coloured mud and the marks made with them." To me, that remark is a way of saying that the creative journey is full of twists and turns.  How you  conceive of a work, how the actual execution of it turns out when you are dealing with the materials, your sureness of  hand-eye coordination, your state of mind – so many factors that enter into the creative equation.

Ultimately, nonetheless, as artist all know, that journey, however challenging, is addictive - we all go on trying to create more art!

Finding Time to Create Art

I have recently been feeling that I have little time nor energy to create art  - care-giving has rather taken over life for a while.  However I got a timely jolt yesterday as I watched the PBS documentary that Rick Meyer created,The Ghost Army.

The Ghost Army insignia

The documentary chronicled the deceptions practised by a total of 1,100 creative G.I.s, who formed the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops to mislead the Germans about troop movements and points of attack as the Allies advanced towards the Rhine after D-Day, 1944.  Using camouflage, inflatable tanks and other war materiel, acoustics and phony radio traffic, these inventive men created such convincing "information" that the Germans were frequently mistaken in their assessments of where the Allies were advancing, where they were planning to attack, how many troops were in the area, etc.  Most of the G.I.s involved came from artistic backgrounds - many straight from art or architecture school - and after the war, many of them would have successful careers in fashion, photography or art.  Among them were fashion designer Bill Blass, painter Ellsworth Kelly and photographer Art Kane.

What impressed me as I watched the fascinating programme was that here were artists in the thick of war, under orders and often in very complicated and stressful circumstances.  And yet, and yet, they were still passionate artists. They took with them to France and beyond small painting blocs, drawing paper, watercolours, pen and ink, pencils – whatever they could. Whenever they could snatch a few moments, they drew and painted.  No excuses for weariness, stress, lack of time. They kept on drawing and painting, in the French villages, during a brief time in liberated Paris, during operations.

A photograph of  some of the men painting, and  one of the watercolours, Church at Trevières (Image courtesy of Ghost Army. org)

Small French Town, 1944, watercolour, Tony Young

A Village in Germany, Bill Sayles: Portrait of Ray Hartford, Victor Dowd

Resting Soldiers, (Image courtesy of Ghost Army.org)

Lookout by the Water, (Image courtesy of Ghost Army.org)

Bill Blass

, as recorded by Jack Masey

Artist Victor Dowd at work

French Cyclists, Victor Dowd

Doris, Victor Dowd

"The Americans are very strong", Arthur Shilstone

This last wonderful painting was done later, by artist Arthur Shilstone.  He recounted that somehow two Frenchmen had penetrated the guarded area and saw, to their dumbfounded amazement, a seemingly normal, 40-ton tank being lifted bodily by  the four American soldiers!  Shilstone simply remarked that Americans are very strong.

Just the small selection of work above is the perfect demonstration that every artist can manage to create art, given the will, even under very trying and taxing circumstances.  A wonderful reminder for me.

When is a Work of Art "Finished"?

Listening to an interview with author Khaled Hosseini the other day on NPR about his new novel,And the Mountains Echoed, I was interested in a remark he made about his books.  Talking about this book and his two previous best-selling books on Afghanistan, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns,  he said, in essence, that he would like to be able to go back and alter things, rewrite things and generally revisit the books.  In other words, in his view, his work is not really ever finished, despite being hugely successful in the market place.

I think that most creative people must feel this about their work. I know that personally, when I have tried to finish a painting or drawing to the best of my ability, I am sure that I will later look at it again and see things that need to be changed, if possible.  With silverpoint drawings, however, that is often a difficult proposition, and even with watercolours, changes are often complicated to make.

There is also another dimension to this question of when a work is "finished".  Mark Rothko, for instance, was very conscious of the fact that he needed to achieve a communion with his public in each painting, to reach out to the viewer and establish a bond.  Without that dialogue, the work would never be completed.  Rothko himself might have applied the last brush strokes, but that was merely the beginning, not the end of the creative act, for him.  The viewer had to play his or her part in the creative act, becoming an active partner in the painting.

Responding to Rothko at the Tate Modern

Responding to Rothko

Responding to Rothko

Responding to Rothko

Hardly surprising that amid the many reproductions on the Web of wonderful glowing Rothko paintings from the late 1940s onwards, there are many images of people communing with his works in the museum galleries.  Rothko himself said,  "Silence is so accurate".  This open-endedness about defining his work and its stage of completion allowed each viewer to expand and clarify the painting.

Every artist, writer, musician or creator becomes aware that while a work may seemingly be "finished", it seldom is. But there comes a point when the work has to be cast off into the world to stand on its own feet, at least for a while.