Rothko's street scenes and subway pictures of the 1930s have been compared to examples of Ashcan School and Depression-era realist painting, but this resemblance is likely based on the perception of a shared urban motif. Rather than providing a "realistic" portrayal of the city life, Rothko seems far more interested in conveying the perceptual experience of architectural space, using abstract compositional arrangements to explore the relationship between the painting and its viewer, an element that would play a critical role in the artist's later works.

2007年5月，苏富比代表大卫·洛克菲勒(David Rockefeller)将这幅作品卖给了卡塔尔王室;Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani和他的妻子Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned。这幅画以7284万美元的价格成交，创下了战后最昂贵的艺术品拍卖纪录。《白色中心》是罗斯科的签名多形式风格的一部分:几个块分层，互补的颜色在一个大画布上。这幅画从上到下，一个黄色的水平矩形，一个黑色的水平条，一个狭窄的白色矩形带，下半部是淡紫色。玫瑰地面的上半部分颜色更深，下半部分是白色的。

马克·罗斯科生于沙俄时代的拉脱维亚，1910 移民美国。年青时以兼职赚取费用求学，当过演员、场记、画家、侍者。1929年成为一所犹太教会的兼职教师，也是表现主义时的创始成员。后因患病、沮丧、忧郁、酗酒及服用过量镇定剂和抗忧郁药物，导致于1970年切断静脉自杀身亡。尽管他本人排斥被打上流派分类的标签，但他的作品和画风依然被认为是抽象表现主义的典范之作。此幅画作价值1.86亿美元， 俄国的一个亿万富翁德米特里雷波诺列夫支付了1.86亿美元买下这幅作品，使美国画家马克·罗斯科的这幅画创下纪录。

Orange and Yellow reflects Mark Rothko’s mature style, in which two or three rectangles are set within a background that surrounds them all, but divides them gently from one another. The edges of the rectangles are never distinct, avoiding an optical break and allowing viewers’ eyes to move quietly from other area to another in a contemplative way.Rothko did not want us to think about him when looking at his paintings, so he tried to remove all evidence of the creation process. To accomplish this, he applied numerous layers of thin paint with a brush or rag to unprepared canvas, which absorbed the colors into its fabric. The many thin washes help to give his paintings a lightness and brightness, as if they glow from within.Orange and Yellow was considered quite large in the 1950s, and Rothko asked viewers to stand close in order to be visually surrounded by the colors.

The rectangles within this painting do not extend to the edges of the canvas and appear to hover just over its surface. Heightening this sensation is the effect of chromatic afterimage. Staring at each colored segment individually affects the perception of those adjacent to it. The red–orange center of the painting tints the yellow above it with just a bit of green. The yellow above seems to tint the orange with blue. Despite these color relationships, Rothko did not want his pictures appreciated solely for their spectral qualities. He said, "If you are only moved by color relationships, then you miss the point. I'm interested in expressing the big emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom."

Magenta, Black, Green on Orange follows a compositional structure that Rothko explored for twenty–three years beginning in 1947. Narrowly separated, rectangular blocks of color hover in a column against a colored ground. Their edges are soft and irregular, so that when Rothko uses closely related tones, the rectangles sometimes seem barely to coalesce out of the ground, concentrations of its substance. The green bar in Magenta, Black, Green on Orange, on the other hand, appears to vibrate against the orange around it, creating an optical flicker. In fact the canvas is full of gentle movement, as blocks emerge and recede, and surfaces breathe. Just as edges tend to fade and blur, colors are never completely flat, and the faint unevenness in their intensity, besides hinting at the artist's process in layering wash on wash, mobilizes an ambiguity, a shifting between solidity and impalpable depth.The sense of boundlessness in Rothko's paintings has been related to the aesthetics of the sublime, an implicit or explicit concern of a number of his fellow painters in the New York School. In fact, the remarkable color in his paintings was for him only a means to a larger end: "I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom," he said. "If you... are moved only by... color relationships, then you miss the point."

The work was first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1961. In common with Rothko's other works from this period, No 61 consists of large expanses of colour delineated by uneven, hazy shades.

Now applied in thin washes (often composed of both oil and egg-based media), Rothko's color achieved a new luminosity. The artist's technique appears simple, but on close examination is richly varied in its range of effects. At times, paint can be seen running upward across the surface; this is because Rothko often inverted a picture while working on it, sometimes changing the final orientation at a late stage.

Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue) from 1966 is a rare painting by Mark Rothko, believed to be one of only four recorded works on paper from this year (in this case the paper is mounted on canvas). Until 1970, Rothko has been preoccupied exploring the limits of painting on paper. In a period of depression, Blue Divided by Blue is arguably one of his most serene-looking paintings.