“The romantics were prompted to seek exotic subjects and to travel to far off places. They failed to realize that, though the transcendental must involve the strange and unfamiliar, not everything strange or unfamiliar is transcendental. The unfriendliness of society to his activity is difficult for the artists to accept. Yet this very hostility can act as a lever for true liberation... Both the sense of community and of security depend on the familiar. Free of them, transcendental experiences become possible.”

—  Mark Rothko

Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, p. 167

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Mark Rothko36
American painter 1903–1970

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