Rothko ~ always controversial?

 Okay.  I have seen my share of Rothko works in various museums. I can appreciate them at an emotional level, I guess.  And really, even Rothko stated that that is the essence of what art is and does.  As he communicated to curator Katharine Kuh, who worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, he felt that "paintings should speak directly to the viewers, without the filter of critical interpretation.  'Silence,' he implied, is the most honest form of engagement with art, an idea that mirrors the meditative stillness [of many of his works]." (from a placard at the Strozzi)

Now.... the Palazzo Strozzi, THAT is my kind of place.  I love this palazzo.  It's enormous, looming over the street, almost menacing.  Very 'plunked' from the heavens; so perfectly Renaissance in its design.  And with a light and airy inner courtyard:

The Strozzi were a very wealthy banking family.  And when their palazzo was built, it was truly one impressive palace.  

When the Pitti family wanted to build their family palazzo, they informed the architect that they wanted Palazzo Strozzi to fit in its interior courtyard.  I think that is known as a 'sick burn'.

So the dimensions were noted, and the architect proceeded to design Palazzo Pitti around them.

The Pitti is..... colossal.  And way too much.  Which was why they agreed to sell it to Cosimo I de'Medici, when his wife, Eleanora of Toledo, got tired of the small rooms in Palazzo Vecchio.

Back to Rothko... which I really don't like.  Maybe I'm a schmuck..... I don't really get the impact.

His work is even at San Marco, "in conversation" with Giotto's work in some of the monk's cells:

What can I say?