ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an example 'Black on Maroon' for the study on expression. Dominic Lopes calls "scene expression": "an expression that is attributable at least in part to a depicted scene and is not wholly attributable to any depicted persons". The suggestiveness of Mark Rothko's imagination is captured in a celebrated paragraph by the art critic David Sylvester: The emphatic frontality of a Rothko creates a related kind of confrontation. Sylvester finds in a Rothko into two kinds of property. On the one hand he sees three-dimensional shapes. Sylvester does not see things in the painting, but instead detects the presence of emotions: intimacy, menace, mystery, threat and frustration. The emotional darkness of the painting is a case of scene expression. There are instances of scene expression in art where what is depicted could not be seen face to face.
