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A pair of paintings by iconic abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko sold Monday for a whopping $76.5 million, the auction house Sotheby's said. Rothko's "Untitled," a blue and purple oil painting from 1970 sold for $39.9 million. It was estimated to earn up to $20 million.

As Tate Modern unveils its new Rothko Room, Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville reveals the story behind the paintings it contains, and reflects on one of the most compelling experiences to be had in any gallery in the world. In 1959, while travelling in southern Italy with his family and that of magazine editor, John Hurt Fischer, Mark Rothko discovered a surprising classical precursor to his contemporary art… A room full of violence, and the silence of death (Filed: 06/05/2006) As Tate Modern unveils its new Rothko Room, Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville reveals the story behind the paintings it...

It is now time to try to wrap up these small “lectures” on the history of art. Today is the tough day: Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, etc. I have to admit that I did not “get” these works until I was well within graduate school. For Pollock, it took the documentary by Hans Namuth in which I saw him painting. His work is not just a bunch of random splatters; instead, Pollock carefully dances around the canvas, and you can see the evidence of the “dance,” if you will, on the canvas. (This is the same time that Martha Graham...

"...The art of painting, one of the greatest traditions in all of human history has been under a merciless and relentless assault for the last one hundred years. I'm referring to the accumulated knowledge of over 2500 hundred years, spanning from Ancient Greece to the early Renaissance and through to the extraordinary pinnacles of artistic achievement seen in the High Renaissance, 17th century Dutch, and the great 19th century Academies of Europe and America. These traditions, just when they were at their absolute zenith, at a peak of achievement, seemingly unbeatable and unstoppable, hit the twentieth century at full stride,...

ARC Chairman speaks at the Met Good Art / Bad Art - Pulling Back the Curtain, by Fred Ross June 7, 2001 -- Fred Ross, Chairman of the Art Renewal Center, addressed a crowd of over 700 portrait artists, gallery owners and members of the press today at America's premier institution of art, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, at the American Society of Portrait Artists (ASOPA) Conference. Mr Ross was interrupted at least 10 times to thunderous applause or peals of laughter as he blasted Modernism and its chief icons, Picasso, Mattisse and DeKooning, with some of the most...