Mark Rothko On His Art “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on,” Rothko said in 1957. “The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.” https://www.opb.org/television/programs/artbeat/segment/mark-rothko-portland-oregon-art-abstract/#.WuRe1ZaxvF1.twitter