The Sublime as an Aesthetic Experience of Art : The Aesthetic Experience of Mark Rothko's Abstract Paintings

Abstract: The following work investigates the nature of the aesthetic experience of the abstract expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko. I suggest that the aesthetic experience in relation to his paintings best is understood in terms of the sublime. To support my position, I discuss the impact of abstraction in comparison to figuration in art on our aesthetic experience. Abstraction in art, I suggest, provides the basis for an aesthetic experience where the viewer can enjoy the visual features and composition free from connecting any depicted imagery to our physical world. This, I hold, provides the basis for a unique type of aesthetic experience. Further, I suggest that the visual complexity in the abstract paintings of Mark Rothko, as well as the aesthetic appeal of his artworks, provides a sense of great magnitude and depth whilst captivating our aesthetic attention. The notion of abstraction allows our minds to never reach a final conclusion as to what type of object we are perceiving. The artistically refined manner in which the artworks are presented captivates our aesthetic attention, allowing us to fully perceptually engage in the limitless sense of depth and visual complexity of his paintings. This, I suggest, provides an encounter in which we through means of perception encounter the idea of a complete form of which magnitude we can never fully comprehend. I argue that this suggests that the aesthetic experience of the abstract expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko best is understood as that of the sublime.