Once It Leaves the Studio

“Once it leaves the studio, a painting acquires a social identity and life of its own, being priced, bought, sold, loaned, shipped, stored, exhibited, evaluated, restored - an independent object, a possession now belonging to someone else, a commodity which can belong to anyone. A picture lives by companionship, but transplanted from its home environment in the studio, the painting enters an alien and impersonal place (or series of places) where it does not quite belong - a living organism now displaced, rootless, lost in the crowd, unprotected.”

— Mark Rothko, artist