Paintings with soft edges are fewer. The fuzzy borders between forms often connote something seen through a haze of imperfect memory, or something nebulous in nature, such as smoke, fog, rain, spray or blowing snow. Both of these could be the case with this picture of a storm at sea by Turner:
Sometimes soft edges are used to indicate tenderness or innocence or femininity. Those are the qualities effected by this Renoir painting:
In giving these rectangular shapes soft edges, Rothko possibly meant to guide the viewer away from giving the forms an identity, and focus the attention instead on the buzz produced by the colors; to encourage a state of non-specific contemplation. It's only a guess; his intention could be something like that.
My readers and students, having had the concept indicated, can find other examples. I put in this last one because it is really, really soft. It was painted by Joseph Gies in 1898:
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