Created more than five centuries apart, an imperial Chinese porcelain dish and a painting by Mark Rothko (1903–1970)—unexpectedly juxtaposed—reveal the immensity of the color red. The richly layered tonalities of the Chinese ceramic and the American painting were achieved in dramatically different ways, but they uncannily echo each other. In both works, the unstable, subtly shifting hues touch our imagination, reminding us that color transcends time and place.
