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Z ao Wou-Ki and Mark Rothko, 20th century masters who radically shaped and redefined the artistic landscape of the last century, throughout their careers found themselves in a foreign country, exposed to new ideas and influences away from home. Despite their disparate origins, Zao being born in Beijing in 1920, and Rothko in Latvia in 1903, both artists find a kinship across time in their deeply philosophical practices, wherein each staged some of the most moving, transcendent, and simply breathtaking unions between material and spirit. Zao’s travels took him across the world, and from his 1948 journey to France onward, he went through cycles of discovery and deep reflection, successfully absorbing elements from his mother culture – Tang and Song poetry, bronze ware, oracle bone and bronze bell inscriptions, ancient engravings, traditional calligraphy and paintings – and fusing them with ease into Western oil painting. Much like Zao, who came to the city in the late 1950s, Rothko found inspiration and direction in the dynamism of 1920s New York City. It was whilst visiting the city that Zao encountered Abstract Expressionist painters such as Franz Kline, Philip Guston and, of course, Mark Rothko. It was part of this milieu that both Rothko and Zao would find patronage with Samuel Kootz, influential gallerist and a pivotal supporter of a new form of expressive art in America, whose support saw that both Zao and Rothko embraced a larger, dynamic and visceral approach to composition which would produce amongst their most celebrated works.
Zao’s creative journey reflects the very path of East Asian art’s arrival into the era of contemporary art. This journey began shortly before the artist’s move to Paris, a time defined by the artist’s curiosity toward and absorption of Western art. This was followed by the Paul Klee Period (1951-1954), then by the Oracle-Bone Period (1954-1959), in which Zao began innovating from ancient materials, growing more self-assured in his merging of East and West. Finally, in 1959, the artist embarked upon a series of travels around the world, beginning in Paris, landing in North America and Asia, before returning to Europe. In the late 1950s, Zao was living in New York, which is where the artist first encountered Abstract Expressionist painters including Rothko. This inspired him to develop a bolder style – one that integrated American action painting with the mesmerising lyrical nature of Chinese calligraphy. It was at the introduction of Pierre Soulages that Zao met Kootz, who founded Kootz Gallery in New York in 1945. With his foresight and vision, Kootz discovered and supported many emerging post-war artists, with his Madison Avenue gallery becoming a symbol of the American art world. The unrestrained, bold and innovative spirit of the city would produce a profound change in Zao’s painting, inspiring the artist’s acclaimed Hurricane Period. Recognised as one of his creative peaks, 02.01.65 represents the exhilarating and spiritually immersive spirit of the series.
“Large surfaces demanded that I fight against space. I was compelled, given an imperative, to fill the surface, to enliven it and yield to it...In this way, I had moved on from painting emotions to painting space.”
Kootz, whose gallery became the nexus point for championing “exactly what I felt was the future of American painting” (Samuel Kootz, quoted in Archives of American Art, “Interview of Samuel M. Kootz conducted by John Morse,” Smithsonian Institution, 2 March 1960), was a pivotal supporter of a new form of expressive art in America. A staunch supporter of Rothko from the late 1940s, it was Kootz who included works by the artist in the highly significant The Intrasubjectives exhibition at his gallery in 1949. This exhibition, which also featured works by Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning, is considered to have given rise to the Abstract Expressionism movement. It was through Kootz that Zao found himself in dialogue with the works of Rothko and Newman, whose work “burst with spontaneity, with violence and freshness” (Zao Wou-Ki, Autoportrait, p.112). As the exclusive representative of Zao between 1959 and 1965, and a champion of his art in America and Europe, it was through Kootz’s continued support that Zao embraced the large-scale, viscerally physical canvases of this period. As Zao explained in his autobiography: “Large surfaces demanded that I fight against space. I was compelled, given an imperative, to fill the surface, to enliven it and yield to it.” (Zao Wou-Ki, Autoportrait, Chapter 7). In the humming and vibrant city, the artist was emboldened through exposure to the free and unrestrained spirit of Abstract Expressionism, with Rothko similarly remarking that only large surfaces allowed him to be enveloped in the space and create a “very intimate and human” experience.
“It would be good if little places could be set up all over the country, like a little chapel where the traveller, or wanderer could come for an hour to meditate on a single painting hung in a small room, and by itself.”
From his 1948 journey to France and onwards, Zao went through cycles of discovery and deep reflection inspired by his travels. It was through his time spent in Europe and America that Zao was able to create such a rich and enigmatic visual language, the invigorating and inspirational effects of travel being similarly a source of inspiration for Rothko. Born Markus Rothkowitz in Latvia in 1903, Rothko at the age of 10 immigrated to the United States with his parents from Latvia to Oregon via Ellis Island. Like many of his contemporaries, Rothko found inspiration and direction in New York City, where in 1925 he began to study at Parsons School of Design under Gorky, who was a powerful influence on the young artist and many other latent Abstract Expressionists. Rothko was often forthright in his rejection of the ‘old world’ despite the influence of Gorky and European Surrealism on his early 1940s compositions, and it would be nearly four decades before Rothko would return to Europe. In March 1950, whilst seeking solace from an intense period of mental adversity following the death of his mother, Rothko began a tour of the continent. Despite finding the post-war decrepitude of Paris “engaging to the eye”, upon his return to America in 1951, poet Stanley Kunitz was struck by his friend’s anti-Europeanism; “What I recall […] of Mark was his vehemence about the European scene, about the whole tradition of European painting beginning with the Renaissance, and his flat rejection of it,” Kunitz said in an interview of 1983 for the Archives of American Art. Despite this intense reaction to his first trip back to the ‘old world’ since childhood, within the decade, Rothko would return to Europe in an ongoing, sometimes fraught, relationship with the continent and artistic heritage he conversely sought to transcend, and command. It was within this 10 year period that Rothko produced his most ambitious and admired compositions, of which Untitled (Yellow and Blue) (1954) is a defining masterwork.
From 1958 to 1965, Zao made annual trips to New York for exhibitions, experiencing the American cultural context as entirely different from the long histories of China and France. Inspired by the unrestrained, bold, and innovative spirit of American culture, he approached a new way in his painting style. Travel and the search of new ideas and influences defined both Zao and Rothko’s lives and careers. Rothko, only 10 when he came to America from Europe, found international acclaim as part of the dynamic and influential New York art scene. Yet, the ‘old world’ would continue to play an important role in the spiritual and historic landscape of his work, much as it did for Zao. Radiant, sublime and provocative of visual and somatic experiences which transcend spatial and temporal boundaries, the expansive compositions of Rothko and Zao suspend us in a sea of mediative calm, majestic manifestations of the miracle of existence and creation.
