Rothko and Simplification

The paintings above were done by Mark Rothko. What? Yep, that's the early work of Rothko. 37signals has a great post about Rothko's artistic progression and how he gradually simplified his paintings in an attempt towards clarity.

This would be the familiar Rothko. Now, not everyone buys the simplification angle, it seems, and things heat up a bit in the comment session. Regardless of how you feel personally about Rothko, a less-is-more focus can often result in an extremely effective design process and it's interesting to compare the potency of these different styles.