Sublime

What was more, he expected it to do so at the high tide of American materialism, when all the agreements about doctrine and symbol that had given the religious artists of the past their subjects had been cancelled. Rothko would have needed a miracle to bring this off, and the miracle, naturally enough, did not happen. But his efforts to make it do

achieve this, Rothko looked to communicate on the most elemental level, to appeal to core emotions, to our common, proto-rational understanding of the universe around us and our place in it.