1 Edward Alden Jewell, “Modern Painters Open Show Today,” New York Times, June 2, 1943, p. 28.
2 Adolph Gottlieb and Marcus Rothko to Edward Alden Jewell, June 7, 1943, “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times, June 13, 1943, sec. 2.9, reprinted in Mark Rothko, 1903-1970 (London: The Tate Gallery, 1987), pp. 77-78.
3 Rothko had one solo museum show prior at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, in 1943.
4 Clyfford Still to Betty Parsons, September 20, 1946, quoted in James E.B. Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 222, note 49.
5 Rothko made some 400 paintings in this style between 1950 and 1970. See David Anfam, Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas: Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
6 See Robert Goldwater, “Reflections on the Rothko Exhibition,” Arts (Vol. 35, No. 6, March 1961), pp. 43-44; and John Gage, “Rothko: Color as Subject,” in Jeffrey Weiss, ed., Mark Rothko (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1998), pp. 247-248.
7 Rothko, quoted in Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists (New York: Capricorn Books, 1961), p. 94.
8 Rothko, quoted in Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists (New York: Capricorn Books, 1961), p. 93.