{"id":735135,"date":"2026-06-30T16:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/735135\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:20:13","slug":"mark-rothkos-color-fields-mirror-the-elements-in-a-weather-to-painting-experiment-colossal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/735135\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Rothko’s Color Fields Mirror the Elements in a ‘Weather-to-Painting Experiment’ \u2014 Colossal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Rothko<\/a> is known for his \u201ccolor field<\/a>\u201d paintings, a genre that was coined in the 1950s to describe his work specifically, along with peers like Barnett Newman<\/a> and Clyfford Still<\/a>. These works are generally characterized by their total abstraction and emphasis on clearly delineated areas, or \u201cfields,\u201d of different hues. One might also think of Josef Albers\u2019 seminal series titled Homage to the Square, which delved into the virtually infinite relationships between colors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For Rothko, canvases were often very large, measuring upwards of 10 feet. The works inside the Rothko Chapel<\/a> in Houston, for example, are architectonic, commanding the viewer\u2019s complete attention and inviting us to slow down and truly immerse ourselves in a contemplative space. Even on social media, a new generation<\/a> is discovering the artist\u2019s meditative works as an antidote to visual and information overload. His oeuvre also forms the basis of a project called Current Rothko<\/a> by New York-based designer and creative director Joonas Virtanen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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On the elegantly simple website, type in any location in the world and the algorithm will produce a Rothko painting representative of the weather there. Currently, the catalogue contains 89 paintings, each of which are tagged with a color register, brightness, temperature, and mood so that the search engine can match them to the conditions of specific places at any moment.<\/p>\n

Virtanen has sourced many of the images from WikiArt and WikiMedia, plus fair-use image databases from major institutions like the National Gallery of Art, MoMA, Tate, and others. Rothko\u2019s work remains copyrighted, as artworks generally enter the public domain after 95 years. Access to high-quality imagery is therefore limited to what Virtanan describes as small \u201ccapped\u201d previews that could never be reproduced at scale.<\/p>\n

While each image is accompanied by the title of work, the designer acknowledges that the platform is a work in progress, and details such as dimensions and medium would enrich the experience. In the meantime, since I began this article, Chicago has transitioned from 77 degrees and clear with \u201cNo. 5\/No. 22\u201d (1950) to a cloudy, humid 81 degrees with a chance of \u201cBlack on Maroon (Seagram V)\u201d (1958).<\/p>\n

For another art historical twist on the weather, check out Virtanen\u2019s Plein Air<\/a> weather visualizer. And you\u2019re in New York City, you might also get a kick out of his subway status tool, Tangled Lines<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Rothko is known for his \u201ccolor field\u201d paintings, a genre that was coined in the 1950s to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5974,228,226,227,2788,229,88,316330,55951,2986],"class_list":["post-735135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art-history","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-data","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-joonas-virtanen","tag-mark-rothko","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}