I think practically all art requires some kind of social context to be understood. For example, in Hopper's painting "Early Sunday Morning", here, without the context of the title, you don't know whether it's morning, an abandoned town, or what. Further, if you didn't have a social context, you might interpret the barber pole as a space ship and the fire hydrant as an alien. I know that's stretching, but artwork requires a social context for understanding.
Check out the Japanese Manga. If you don't understand that the Japanese read from right to left, and their extensive use of aspect to aspect illustrations (use of the same object at the same time from different angles to establish a mood), the strips are incomprehensible. Artwork uses numerous pieces of "shorthand" to convey information to the viewer.
That being said, I'm not a big Rothko fan.
Understood, maybe, but not enjoyed. It isn't the same thing. If Hopper retitled that painting "Abandoned Town," would it suddenly be less (or more) good as a painting?
Not that I hugely care for Hopper, but his paintings are what they are without a lot of biography and backstory.