Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko

In the week I saw two interesting documentaries on these two major figures of American twentieth century art; the first on Andy Warhol was on BBC 4, the second last night on PBS.

In my view Andy Warhol was a genius at self-promotion and marketing, but not as a painter.

Like Rothko, he came from an immigrant family called the Warholas that settled in Pittsburgh.

Andy was the youngest, gay and with some talent as an illustrator.

He went to New York in the 1950s where he was earning $100,000 in advertising. He worked extremely hard and was the “Go to” man to illustrate shoes.

This was his first artistic experience with consumerism, which he then developed and promoted as art with his Campbell soup cans and bottles of Coca Cola.

He subsequently made the transition to screen printings of the famous like Marilyn Monroe and Mao Tse Tung.

These were produced by The Factory.

This was not innovative as Raphael, Titian and Rubens – who had enormous studios – and in the latter’s case his input was sometimes only his signature.

My beef with Warhol is that there is no evidence that he can be termed an artistic genius. Various interviewees interpreted his art, but I remained unconvinced.

Most of all he was adept in creating an image of weirdness.

Mark Rothko too came from an immigrant Jewish family who escaped from the antisemitism of Tsarist Russia and set up home in Portland Oregon.

Rothko might be defined as an abstract  expressionist.

Although the programme never refers to this, the Cold War was also fought culturally.

America had to come up with something to match Russian writers and composers – and abstract expressionism was it.

It is thought that the CI A might have been behind the Museum of Modern Art.

Rothko always suffered from depression.

When Seagram  put up a skyscraper he got the commission for murals for their Four Seasons restaurant in the 1950s for a princely sum of $35,000.

He did the work, became depressed about the direction of his art, returned the money and donated the murals to the Tate where they can be seen – including by me a few months ago.

Whilst I found the Gerhard Richters uplifting, I found the Rothko depressing in colour and content.

Someone on the programme suggested you change in front of a Rothko, but not this one.

When it comes to large canvases give me a Roy Lichtenstein. Rothkos now go for fortunes in the auction rooms and dealers.

Rothko was diagnosed with an aneurysm and the treatment for this drastic reduction of blood pressure sent him into another depression from which he never recovered.

He committed suicide on the day his murals arrived at the Tate.