In the same account, the Statement, published in New York Times in 1943 which is the response to the art critic Edward Alden Jewell, Rothko and his friend Gottlieb defends the matter of his paintings. He declares: "we favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth." (Chipp,545) This statement easily explains the immense size of Rothko's paintings. Despite the fact that large paintings traditionally function as display of grandness and pompousness Rothko's paintings insinuate intimacy and sense of humanity. Viewer is left one on one with the work of art to form the profound relationship and absorb Rothko's transcendence. .
Color.
Rothko is widely recognized for being a colorist, although he was famously at odds with this fact. He claimed that if we regard him as colorist we miss the point of his art; (Weiss, 247) although, it is hard not to regard him as colorist when the color is the sole medium of his art. Rothko's such a peculiar belief surprised critics and patrons. He argued that not colors but measures are of great interest for him. Throughout his life he was persistent in his belief that color had no importance in his paintings. Only in the lecture at the Pratt Institute in 1958 he admitted that color was all there is, but "I am not against line. I don't use it because it would have detracted from the clarity of what I had to say." He allowed the idea that color was after all the clarity that benefited to the passage of paintings meaning. .
From year 1949 onward Rothko's preferred format was upright rectangular canvas or paper. The painting itself consists of limited amount of rectangular forms sometimes separated with stripes of distinct color. Rectangles vary in areas. The form of the painting, the picture itself is free of edge and the color parameter seems to be endless.