{"id":607822,"date":"2026-07-28T07:33:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T07:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/607822\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T07:33:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T07:33:17","slug":"art-historian-explains-why-truly-reading-mark-rothkos-abstract-paintings-makes-people-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/607822\/","title":{"rendered":"Art historian explains why truly ‘reading’ Mark Rothko’s abstract paintings makes people cry"},"content":{"rendered":"

You walk into a museum<\/a>, turn a corner, and there it is: a giant canvas with two or three fuzzy blocks of color and nothing else. A Mark Rothko painting. There are no people depicted. No beautiful, rolling landscapes<\/a>. You have neither myth<\/a>, story, nor historical context<\/a> to latch onto. And nearby, bewilderingly, another viewer is wiping away tears<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Green,<\/a>
\nMark Rothko \u2013 Green, Red, Blue (1955). Credit: @mzn37 on Flickr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If your first thought is \u201cI could\u2019ve painted that,\u201d you\u2019re in good company. Plenty of smart, curious people walk past a Rothko feeling a little dumb, a little suspicious, and secretly certain the whole thing is a bluff. \u201cCertainly, no one\u00a0likes\u00a0these paintings,\u201d you might think to yourself. \u201cAnd they definitely don\u2019t understand what\u2019s going on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where an\u00a0art historian on TikTok<\/a>\u00a0comes in. The secret to unlocking a Rothko painting, according to her? A little space and perspective, plus an open mind.<\/p>\n

The video turning skeptics into believers<\/p>\n

Art historian and content creator Tatyana Kalaydjian Serraino<\/a> (@tatyanaaboutart<\/a>) has built a massive following by doing one deceptively simple thing: taking famous paintings and revealing the raw human emotion inside them.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0Caravaggio<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Goya<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Edward Hopper<\/a>, Tatyana expertly decodes canonical artworks, sharing vital historical context and pointing out subtle details you might have missed. Her emotionally charged, deeply researched art history explainers feel like a key into a previously unexplored world as she surfaces the tragedy, obsession, and drama embedded within each paint stroke.<\/p>\n

Her clip on how to read a Rothko is warm, fast, and hands you something most museum wall labels seem to miss: a reason to slow down and actually feel it. Here\u2019s the method.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Resist the urge to say \u201cI could paint that\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could probably paint rectangles,\u201d declares Tatyana. \u201cBut I\u2019m pretty sure you couldn\u2019t paint a Rothko.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a>
\nMark Rothko \u2013 Untitled [1952]. Credit:\u00a0Gandalf\u2019s Gallery on Flickr<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the exact objection someone raised in a\u00a0Reddit thread<\/a> thirteen years ago, arguing Rothko\u2019s canvases looked like \u201conly a bunch of different colored rectangles, overlaid\u201d and that his signature style \u201cdoes not seem like it required much effort.\u201d Commenters quickly set them straight. Rothko built these paintings from many thin, translucent layers of paint (a technique sometimes called\u00a0scumbling<\/a>) so every subtle shift of color is stacked, hand-layered depth. They certainly weren\u2019t easy to make.<\/p>\n

Tatyana echoes this in her video, explaining, \u201cRothko experimented with complex paint mixtures and painstaking layering to create colors with extraordinary depth, saturation, and luminosity. The paintings may look simple, but they absolutely aren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Step one is humility. Let yourself be surprised.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Get uncomfortably close<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe appreciation of art is a true marriage of minds.\u201d
\u2013Mark Rothko<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Most of us view art from a polite distance, hands behind our back. Rothko hated that. \u201cMy art is not abstract, it lives and breathes,\u201d he\u00a0once said<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGet nice and close,\u201d says Tatyana, invitingly. \u201cRothko\u2019s paintings are huge and that\u2019s completely intentional.\u201d She reveals that the Latvian-born American artist made his canvases enormous on purpose because he wanted people to stand about\u00a018 inches away<\/a>\u2014close enough that the color\u00a0fills your entire field of vision<\/a>. You\u2019re not supposed to look at a Rothko. You\u2019re supposed to feel swallowed by it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the step Tatyana says people skip, and it\u2019s why the comment section lit up in that Reddit thread<\/a>. The skeptics who insisted they felt nothing in front of a Rothko had mostly seen them only as digital thumbnails or from across a room. The ones who\u2019d stood right in front of one described being emotionally overwhelmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"No.<\/a>
\nNo. 14, 1960 by Mark Rothko. Credit: @hyperion327 on Flickr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One recalled seeing\u00a0No. 14 at SFMOMA<\/a>\u2014a nearly nine-foot-tall intersection of sun and sea; a large swath of bright, fiery orange that rests upon a smaller, brooding and deep cobalt blue rectangle below\u2014and walking away with a newfound appreciation for the artist. \u201cI know this sounds crazy, but being near it was emotionally overwhelming and made me feel uneasy,\u201d they wrote. \u201c^Rothko instantly became one of my favorite artists after seeing one of his pieces in person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Step 3: Give it time<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve glanced at a Rothko for 30 seconds, you haven\u2019t really seen one.<\/p>\n

Stand there for a few minutes. Let your eyes settle, and notice your mood start to move\u2014almost like the color is doing something to you without asking permission. That\u2019s not entirely your imagination. More than a\u00a0century of research<\/a>\u00a0finds that\u00a0hue<\/a>, brightness, and saturation are\u00a0reliably linked<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0how we feel<\/a>,\u00a0apart from any subject matter<\/a>. Rothko was chasing exactly that. He was painting feelings.<\/p>\n

\u201cColors hold immense power over our mood, and that was Rothko\u2019s intention with these paintings,\u201d Tatyana says. \u201cNot to depict something, but to evoke a feeling, a mood\u2026 Rothko truly believed his paintings were about the biggest experiences of being human.\u201d She goes on to quote the artist, who\u00a0once said<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIf you\u2026are moved only by the color relationships, then you miss the point.\u201d
\u2013Mark Rothko<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why \u201cjust colored rectangles\u201d make people cry<\/p>\n

The crying is real, and it\u2019s well-documented.<\/p>\n

Take Emily Crews, executive director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Chicago. The first time she stood before a Rothko, she\u00a0wrote<\/a>, she was \u201cutterly overwhelmed with emotion,\u201d feeling \u201cengulfed in a way that was at once comforting and startling, intimate and yet immense.\u201d She only realized she was crying when a stranger stopped to ask if she was okay.<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a>
\nNo. 16 (Red, Brown, and Black) with viewer. Credit:\u00a0@profzucker on Flickr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rothko would not have been surprised. He was blunt about his aim: \u201cI\u2019m interested only in expressing basic human emotions\u2014tragedy, ecstasy, doom,\u201d he\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0critic Selden Rodman, adding that people breaking down in front of his work proved he was \u201ccommunicating those basic human emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s\u00a0a theory<\/a>\u00a0for why these vibrant, soft-edged rectangles resonate so deeply. Because a Rothko gives you almost nothing to identify or analyze, your mind stops hunting for objects and turns inward. The painting becomes a kind of mirror. You\u2019re not just seeing color. In a way, you\u2019re meeting yourself.<\/p>\n

Permission to feel\u00a0<\/p>\n

Learning to stand still in front of a Rothko is really practice for paying attention anywhere: to a person, a view, a moment you\u2019d normally rush past. Don\u2019t believe the Reddit skeptics\u2014Rothko\u2019s paintings were never \u201cjust\u201d about color.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an\u00a0essay<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0Phillips,\u00a0writer and researcher at Yale University Department of the History of Art, Sarah Bochicchio<\/a>, argues that Rothko\u2019s paintings function as tools that \u201callow us to experience a level of self-reflection\u201d and \u201ctranscendence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a>
\nMark Rothko No. 14. Credit:\u00a0@naotakem on Flickr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Philosopher Federico Campagna\u00a0describes<\/a>\u00a0Rothko\u2019s paintings as \u201cmiraculous objects,\u201d and \u201cinstruments\u201d that allow us to \u201csee something beyond words, beyond language and beyond understanding\u201d\u2014a school of thought consistent with Rothko\u2019s\u00a0own insistence<\/a>\u00a0that his work was never decorative.<\/p>\n

Great art was never a test you could fail. Stand close, give it a minute, and let a Rothko do what it was built to do. The tears, if they do come, are just your body\u2019s proof it worked. That\u2019s the real gift in Tatyana\u2019s art history videos: she\u2019s handing you permission to feel something sublime in front of a painting you were ready to write off.<\/p>\n

The proof, as always, is in the comment section. \u201cThank you!! I feel like people who don\u2019t like them, have never seen one in person,\u201d someone wrote beneath Tatyana\u2019s Rothko explainer video. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love this. Thank you,\u201d commented another. <\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t wait to do this the next time I\u2019m in the gallery,\u201d said one more.<\/p>\n