[Inside Chodong] The 69th Day of the War in Ukraine

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] Novelist Han Kang published a poetry collection titled “I Put Dinner in the Drawer” in 2013. It included two poems titled “Mark Rothko and Me.”

He was born on September 25, 1903

died on February 25, 1970

I was born on November 27, 1970

and am still alive

Rothko, who died about nine months before Han Kang was born, was a Russian-Jewish abstract expressionist painter active in the United States. According to the French cultural historian Nahi Coen Solar’s book Mark Rothko, February 25, 1970, was the day Rothko’s assistant Oliver Steindecker found Rothko dead in his studio. Rothko chose death by slashing his own wrists.

The year Rothko was born, 1903, was the late period of Imperial Russia (1721?1917). Rothko was born in Dvinsk, which is today called Daugavpils, the second largest city in Latvia.

Five months before Rothko’s birth, on April 19, 1903, a pogrom occurred in Kishinev, now the capital of Moldova. Pogrom is a Russian term meaning organized looting and massacre of Jews. During the three-day Easter holiday, 49 Jews lost their lives.

In late Imperial Russia, social discontent was directed toward Jews. At that time, Jews were only allowed to live in an area roughly the size of Texas, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. This designated Jewish residential area was called the “Pale.” Pogroms gradually spread within the Pale. During the Odessa pogrom in October 1905, 600 Jews were killed.

Rothko’s father chose to emigrate to the United States to protect his family. In December 1912, his father and two older brothers first crossed to America, and in June the following year, Rothko left Dvinsk with his mother and sister.

There is a play featuring Rothko as the protagonist. The American playwright John Logan wrote the script, titled Red. The most impressive scene in the play is when Rothko and his assistant Ken fill a large canvas measuring 2.8 meters wide and 1.8 meters tall with vivid red color. Excited by a sudden flash of inspiration, Rothko hurriedly tells his assistant to bring more pigment, and together they quickly cover the large canvas.

According to Shinsicompany, the performance planning company that introduced the play Red in Korea, the two actors have only 1 minute and 30 seconds to fill the canvas larger than themselves with red. Watching the fast and vigorous hand movements spreading the red color, the audience holds their breath.

The last painting Rothko created before his death is filled with red, as if hinting at death itself.

Mark Rothko 'Untitled', 1970 [Image source= National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA website]

Han Kang’s poem “Mark Rothko and Me 2” seems to convey the emotions felt upon seeing Rothko’s final work.

If one were to split open a person’s soul

and show the inside, this might be it

That is why

there is the smell of blood

Instead of a brush, applying with a sponge

In the paint that spreads forever

Quietly red

The smell of the soul’s blood

(Omitted)

Seeping in

Spreading out

Rothko was nine years old when he left Dvinsk. He later told his friend, painter Robert Motherwell, “You will never know what it is like for a Jewish child dressed in Dvinsk-style clothes, not speaking a word of English, to travel across America.” The subtitle of Solar’s book Mark Rothko is “Coloring a World of Sorrow and Despair with Sublime Abstraction.”

These days, one is reminded of the poignant life of nine-year-old Rothko, who had to leave his hometown to escape genocide. It has now been 69 days since Vladimir Putin started the war in Ukraine.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.