   
Mark Rothko, No. 8 [Multiform], 1949, National Gallery of Art, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, 1986.43.147
During
the late 1940s, Rothko described the conception of a painting
in which "shapes"--or "performers"--first emerge as "an unknown
adventure in an unknown space."
In the journal Possibilities he explained that these "shapes have no direct association with any
particular visible experience, but in them, one recognizes the principle and passion of organisms."
He later wrote: "...art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness."  
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