Four Darks in Red

Mystery Painting Description

by Mabel and Alexandria

Mystery Painting

recreated by our Walter Hays partners

In this painting there are four rectangles. The painting goes horizontally, and all the rectangles go horizontally. The tiny rectangle at the very top of the picture is a dark olive green and it has a tiny red border. It is very small, 1/2 of the total height. It is 5/12 of the total height. The second rectangle from the top is a nice black. The second from the bottom is a color that is mixed from a dark olive green and red. This middle sized rectangle is 1/4 of the total height. The last is a bright orange-red color with another dark brick-red rectangle inside it. The brick red is mixed from red and a small amount of black. This whole bottom rectangle is the same height as the middle-sized one. The orange-red part is the same width all around as the top rectangle. When we look at the picture we feel darkness, a scared darkness.

Analysis
by Alexandria and Mabel

The name of our painter is Mark Rothko and the painting is called "Four Darks in Red." He painted it in 1958. It was made with oil on canvas. The size of the painting is 105 by 116 inches. The painting is now at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Our partners got some of the colors right. The arrangement that was used wasn't right. Some of the colors that they used weren't right.

We could have described the arrangements better. It could have been the fractions that confused them. We could have described the colors more accurately. We think that our partners did an okay job on the painting, considering that our directions were not as clear as they could have been.

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This site maintained by Lucinda Surber. Page finished 6/6/98.