BOOKS
299
KINDS OF RECALL
ABOUT ROTHKO. By Dore Ashton.
Oxford University Press. $19.95.
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST PAINTING IN AMERICA. By William
Seltz.
Harvard University Press. $60.00.
HERBERT FERBER. By Eugene C. Goossen.
Abbeville Press. $85.00.
For those who lived it, abstract expressionism is close
enough to touch. And for those who still live it, whose values and
whose friendships were built around its artistic vision, abstract ex–
pressionism has not been superseded by recent developments in art,
no matter how rigorously conceived or vociferously championed. In
different ways, each of these three authors recalls abstract expres–
sionism and endeavors to appraise it despite strong personal bias;
each proposes to bring the discernment of time to bear on the fervor
of the moment; finally, each represents a kind of commemoration,
one in writing a deferential critical biography, one in reissuing a
sacred text, and the last in rendering an homage that tacitly serves to
bond the group.
Dore Ashton has set herself the noblest of biographer's tasks:
without neglecting her archival responsibilities of recording the
salient events of Mark Rothko's life (though not its tormented legal
aftermath), she has undertaken, as she says, quoting him, to
penetrate "the meaning of a man's life work." The book describes the
slow, abiding product of Rothko's life work. The uniform, quietest
structure into which his paintings finally settle shows the artist's
great insight into the latent power of structural passivity to free the
eye for the deep and subtle immersion color has to offer. Under the
right viewing conditions, Rothko's sophisticated hues seem like ap–
paritions of felt knowledge, green on top of plum, plum through
black, and ultimately, in Rothko's words, "black over all." To ap–
prehend color under oceanic circumstances is to grow quiet in order
to approach a revelation of unfolding, the unfolding of the human
condition. Ashton's patient unfolding of Rothko's spiritual develop–
ment entailed prolonged grappling with content; indeed, content
rather than form is the subject of Ashton's book. She describes how,
pulling away from his colleagues' anecdotal treatment of social
issues, Rothko , at age forty-six, without abandoning human con–
cern, finally arrived at a definition of painting deeply gratifying to
