76
they did the joke
(hexbear.net)
https://www.reddit.com/r/modernart/comments/1bpaiae/shoot_um_moma_what_is_this/
Rothko's Untitled. I don't like abstract expressionism but he's probably the technical height of it from how much work actually went into that.
So from what I can gather, I'm pretty sure he simply didn't know what The Four Seasons was beforehand. Then he went there and saw it was a bourgeois restaurant for rich businessmen and took his paintings back and refunded the money.
Within the context that he was a self described anarchist (in opposition to the USSR, but still leftist). His family were migrants from Tsarist Russia and he did graduate from Yale on a scholarship.
I think the fact that the pieces he made were donated to galleries helps reinforce the idea that he didn't like bourgeoisie but didn't really have a materialist understanding of why.
Wow, I didn't know Rothko was a self-professed anarchist. I guess that and the fact that he later donated the pieces to galleries indicate that his guiding principle was egalitarianism (everyone should be able to enjoy art, not just rich assholes) rather than elitism (only people with real taste would appreciate my genius). A really nice sentiment, but possibly a bit idealist (now rich assholes in charge of the Tate Modern get to benefit from and control public access to his art).