Rothko Angst Update

I have finished my paper, which I believe was far less professional than I would have preferred.  Even if it is an assignment on MY impressions, I still feel like I've used an unqualified 1st person.  Whatever.  It's MATC.  He'll probably think it's the greatest student paper he's ever read.

Anyway, through writing the paper (which, again, is more like a good first draft as far as I'm concerned), I eventually came to a conclusion (note I didn't say I came to *the* conclusion), that it's the colors that make a Rothko in the format in which he has presented them.  And these colors exude life and energy and a vibrancy which strikes me as really interesting, like if we lived in a black and white world, it's not just that the trees wouldn't be green, it's that the green itself provides the cues to our brains that the tree is alive.  (Yes, I understand photosynthesis, but I'm dealing in psychology just now.)  (And yes, I realize that our brains probably evolved in some form as an adaptation to the innate recognition of photosynthesis, but again, regular ol' neuropsychology, not evolutionary psychology.)

So if that is the case and Rothko has within his rectangles with their rough edges captured the color in such a way as to mimic the cues that color provides to our brains, maybe that it what makes a Rothko so challenging.  I see green color in a leaf-shape, my brain says "Look!  A leaf!"  I see green color in a fuzzy radiating rectangle shape, my brain says, "Look!  A...  thing!  Wait... what?"  My brain is telling me there's energy there, but it has no idea with what type of energy to identify it with.

I will think on this further and hopefully be able to more clearly explain myself at a later time.  In the meanwhile, I actually feel better.  It's as if I've released my brain from the tension created between it and the painting.  (Seriously, though, am I the only person with this problem?)