“Entrance to the Subway” is an oil painting on canvas, by Mark Rothko, an American painter of Russian-Jewish descent. This painting is part of series of street scenes and subway pictures made in the 1930’s by Mark Rothko (National Gallery of Art). This painting serves as an example of depression-era paintings, a time of poverty and unemployment. The main purpose of this painting is to portray the loneliness of city life.
The youngest of four children Mark Rothko was born Marcus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz on the 25th of September 1903 in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Governorate, in the Russian Empire. Rothko later moved to Portland, Oregon in the winter of 1913 after which he received a scholarship from Yale. His initial intention was to become an engineer or an attorney, but he dropped out at the end of his sophomore year, and moved to New York City (Breslin). One of his Yale classmates recalled that Rothko sketched a good deal in college but noted that he had many other interests as well. It was not until he moved to …show more content…
In this eerie ghost like painting, the subway becomes a place of alienation, of homelessness. This painting minimizes the influence of people and eliminates details in order to map out the space as an abstract structure of empty rectangle planes. Modern city dwellers on the move, these faceless people go about their business with silent indifference, held within an elaborate grid of vertical and horizontal rectangle entrance/exit ways (Baal-Teshuva 30). The green door on the left, cream and green steel posts, ceiling beams, blank walls and a jail like pattern of blue iron bars gives this painting an eerie feeling. The architecture is made to dominate the people. The station is labeled with N’s, but most of the people are painted expressionless and faceless (Baal-Teshuva
The youngest of four children Mark Rothko was born Marcus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz on the 25th of September 1903 in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Governorate, in the Russian Empire. Rothko later moved to Portland, Oregon in the winter of 1913 after which he received a scholarship from Yale. His initial intention was to become an engineer or an attorney, but he dropped out at the end of his sophomore year, and moved to New York City (Breslin). One of his Yale classmates recalled that Rothko sketched a good deal in college but noted that he had many other interests as well. It was not until he moved to …show more content…
In this eerie ghost like painting, the subway becomes a place of alienation, of homelessness. This painting minimizes the influence of people and eliminates details in order to map out the space as an abstract structure of empty rectangle planes. Modern city dwellers on the move, these faceless people go about their business with silent indifference, held within an elaborate grid of vertical and horizontal rectangle entrance/exit ways (Baal-Teshuva 30). The green door on the left, cream and green steel posts, ceiling beams, blank walls and a jail like pattern of blue iron bars gives this painting an eerie feeling. The architecture is made to dominate the people. The station is labeled with N’s, but most of the people are painted expressionless and faceless (Baal-Teshuva