The piece on it’s own isn’t amazingly shit, it’s fairly nice to glance at and would fit squarely as a work for a contemporary hospital corridor – but to be sold at 53 million completely defecates on the entire practice. People say they’re overwhelmed by it’s ‘simplicity’ – I’m overwhelmed by their simplicity.

If you place a large slab of all of Rothko’s work on one page, and stand them next to each other, what do you get? The paintings are pretty much the same. They contain a background colour, and two or three other colours placed on to the page in a square/rectangular shape. The worst thing about Rothko is the fact that he doesn’t even have any variation within his work. It’s somewhich which a child could create.

In fact, I recall an art class in primary school where we painted a piece of paper in one colour and then used square sponges to stamp other colours on the page. I’m no artist, but what I was doing was exactly what Rothko was doing; the only difference is that he was doing it on a larger canvas.

And I’m sure if I saw my old work now I could create some meaning from it within my mind and try and feign some emotional response, which wouldn’t be difficult since I’m sure I could evoke a nostalgic feeling within myself.

But the only thing that I will give to Rothko, in terms of skill, is that he managed to make people believe something as childish as that is any good. That could be replicated/created within a day. That’s a far cry from the artists who used to spend days and even months locked in a basement studio.

Modern art is always guaranteed to spark a debate. Although i must say I’m with Samuel here – i can’t see any emotional power in a square painted in a couple of different shades