“Rothko and Sugimoto think in terms of eras of history and eons of organic life, not the decades of their own lives. Rothko had directed his art, as Sugimoto does now to a primal, evolutionary sense of being human. What is true of Rothko and Sugimoto becomes true of all of us when we attend to their experience—if we encounter the limits of human feeling and perception that Rothko’s paintings and Sugimoto’s photographs represent. We then recognize the condition that already constitutes our living; Peirce identified it as a sympathetic “continuity of mind,” a form of love. All humans have it. We all experience it. Immersed in an artist’s sea of life—this aesthetic entry into nature, history, and other beings—we become aware of our conscious awareness.”—the publisher
