You are in it

1) From the episode “The Gold Violin,” Mad Men (Sept. 7, 2008)

image by Dyna Moe

Ken:

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be explained.”

Sal:

“I’m an artist, okay? It must mean something.”

Ken:

“Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you’re just supposed to experience it. Cause when you look at it, you do feel something. Right? It’s like looking into something very… deep. You could fall in.”

Sal:

“That’s true… Did someone tell you that?”

Ken:

“How could someone tell you that?”

Harry:

“This is pointless. Let’s go.”

2) From “Escape Artist,” by John Lahr (April 12, 2010)

"The Red Studio," by Henri Matisse

"For a month in 1949, Rothko went to the Museum of Modern Art to stand in front of Matisse’s 'The Red Studio,' which the museum had newly acquired. Looking at it, he said, 'you became that color, you became totally saturated with it.' Rothko turned his transcendental experience into an artistic strategy; his work demanded surrender to the physical sensation of color. 'Compressing his feelings into a few zones of color,' Rosenberg wrote, 'he was at once dramatist, actor, and audience of his self-negation.' Rothko escaped from the hell of personal chaos into the paradise of color. 'To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience,' he said. 'However, you paint the large picture, you are in it.'"