Mark Rothko, Four Darks in Red, 1958

Alex Da Corte: My name is Alex Da Corte, and I'm an artist living and working in Philadelphia. 

Narrator: Da Corte shares his experience of Rothko’s Four Darks in Red. 

Alex Da Corte: Close your eyes. Imagine you are the picture. You are within the painting and beyond it. Our bodies are red inside, lush, wet, pulsing redness. Dark, deep crimsons hidden from light, roses and cadmiums dance within us and across us, rising to the surface, cheeks a sudden red. With eyes closed, look to the light, scarlets, corals, vermilion and poppies. The skin so thinly stretched across our eyes is a flock of cardinals, a wall of bricks, a sea of blood. We stare into the sun, the colors change. We look backward and forwards across time. The dramatic red veil and all of its variants: always a constant in lightness and in dark.