This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative; and have been painted in a scale of normal living rather than an institutional scale.

Mark Rothko

Been Decorative Distortion Institutional Intense Intimate Living Meaning Normal Opposite Painted Pictures Rather Scale Since Than Would

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I also hang the pictures low rather than high, and particularly in the case of the largest ones, often as close to the floor as is feasible, for that is the way they are painted.

— Mark Rothko

I also hang the largest pictures so that they must be first encountered at close quarters, so that the first experience is to be within the picture.

— Mark Rothko

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Since my pictures are large, colorful, and unframed, and since museum walls are usually immense and formidable, there is the danger that the pictures relate themselves as decorative areas to the walls.

— Mark Rothko

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Small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels; large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way.

— Mark Rothko

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If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.

— Cynthia Kenyon

MutantNormalRather