My top 10 pieces of art: 10

Mark Rothko - Black on Maroon, 1959
Mixed media on canvas, 2667 x 3812 mm

This is for my art foundation contextual study, so if you have no interest in art whatsoever (shame on you!) don't bother reading on. I'll be updating this list in the next few weeks aswell.

At first glance it looks dull to the untrained eye, and merely just looking at his work won't get the full effect.
I stumbled onto his work when I visited Tate Liverpool for our annual gallery trip and Rothko was the main display on at that time (around 2008) and since it was the first thing you saw, many of my collegues glaced at his work, shrugged, and walked off upstairs - completely uninterested. I stayed behind with a friend and absorbed the artwork around me - the atmosphere it created was very unsettling, which was heped by the dim lights that was required. It took a minute or two for my eyes to adjust to the lights, but that was part of Rothko's work - to see it in weak lights was like looking into an abyss that engulfed you. I could've sat in there all day and try to decipher what it was about, but my mind merely wandered and didn't come to a full conclusion when I looked at the collection "Black on Maroon".

The tour guide came over and explained Rothko's life and works with us, and I could tell why he painted Abstract Experssionism - the first "multiforms" were bright and colourful - signifying ecstacy and vibrancy. but by the mid-1950's the colours gradually got darker - a small hint at the growing problems in his personal life. Even though it's a "simple" piece of artwork, he has influenced many artists - and even musicians - through his bleak work. It just goes to show that you could express human emotions through the simplest techniques - the general method for these paintings was to apply a thin layer of binder mixed with pigment directly onto uncoated and untreated canvas, and to paint significantly thinned oils directly onto this layer, creating a dense mixture of overlapping colors and shapes. His brush strokes were fast and light, a method he would continue to use until his death
This is that very room at Tate Gallery. The way the artwork were layed out was almost religiously done, creating a calming atmosphere. To be honest, I didn't want to leave!

"I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however . . . is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command!" - Rothko

It just goes to show, no matter how "simple" art may seem, there's a lot going on underneath the skin.