Rothko Twombly

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Sublime and Spiritual in Art: Rothko and Twombly
“The Sublime is Now,” a 1948 text by Barnet Newman marked the beginning of the search for the sublime in the works of art. Hence, instead of continuing the ancient tradition of creating pieces of art closer to rationality, artists such as Mark Rothko and Cy Twombly shied away from these rational conventions, creating pieces that are not meant to be interpreted in a formalist way. Conversely, the artists attempted to create pieces that broke the conventions of the modernist painting, using psychological devices that show a truer interpretation of their work, rather than those of their color, form and dimensions. Likewise, by leaving behind the mold of the shape and structure, Rothko and Twombly set aside these conventions to achieve a higher moral ground with paintings that did not please the senses, but the soul (Marty 1).
With those precepts in mind, we chose two paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA). The first, Untitled (1955) by Cy Twombly and Mark Rothko’s Black on Grey (1969). Moreover, we shall analyze each painting on the grounds of their visual descriptions along with their value as objects of art. However, to understand what lies underneath these pieces we shall use the Nietzschean notion of the Dionysian in the work of art as our conceptual and philosophical framework and approach to the paintings.
Visually, there is not much to say about the pa…