This is art:
This is not:
At least in terms of post-modern abstract art ... ;-)
I'm still trying to figure this one - "fraught" with what? This guy needs an editor.
"Eventually, he decided instead to donate the paintings to Tate.
This transaction was also to prove fraught, for Rothko, despite, or, as is more likely, because of the great critical and commercial success that had come to him in the 1950s, tended to detect slights and veiled insults at every turn."
I'm thrilled that you like Kandinsky; perhaps you could see Rothko as an extremely simple reduction of some of Kandinsky's ideas.
I don't know if you are interested or not, but I just posted a new "lecture" on Romanticism that has some references to Rothko.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1630734/posts?page=3
It occured to me that Rothko may be the last derivation from the nineteenth century Romantics like Friedrich and Turner. So check it out if you wish.