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“In Motherwell’s analysis of Rothko’s character, he often exaggerated Rothko’s Jewish roots and held for Rothko’s Yiddish dimension his interest in the parable of Abraham and Isaac. When he gives the role of Stephen and gives Rothko Bloom’s, according to Ulysses of Joyce, when he opposes the Jew and the Celtic, Motherwell’s penchant for romance is obvious. He was, I think, philosemite and was trying to make Rothko play an Old Testament role that Rothko himself never approved. In fact, Rothko never punctuated these phrases with the old Yiddish “oy” and nothing of the rabbi. Those who persisted in seeing him as well as generally Jews. From my own experience, no. In my own experience, Rothko was rather a product of the novelists he had in his youth …” (Dore Ashton)