Jan. 29, 2009LONDON - In the early 1950s, Mark Rothko started making paintings that nearly everyone today could identify as a "Rothko." There were large paintings, usually two (sometimes more) rectangles of color on a colored background. Sensuous, almost cloud-like color shapes floating ethereally on equally sensual backgrounds. Because they have no recognizable images, when you look at them you feel only pure emotion. That was the radical idea that came in with the whole movement called Abstract Expressionism.
By 1956 or so, Rothko and other Abstract Expressionists had been on the cover of Life Magazine, were selling well in New York galleries and making money. At this time, Rothko was asked to paint a dozen canvases to decorate the soon-to-opened Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, in New York City.
For this commission, instead of the multi-toned palette of his previous works, Rothko limited himself to a very small number of colors: red violet, orange and a dark red. The works were never installed in the restaurant. Rothko is quoted as having said he wanted to make the rich bastards who ate there nauseous, then of saying he designed these to be placed very close to the diners, then finally, refusing to sell the paintings to the restaurant at all because the place was just too inappropriate for his work. At the Tate exhibition, these dozen paintings fill an enormous, dimly-lit room with their emotional presence. The low lighting is to protect the paint that turns out to be a commercial house paint rather than artists' oil, and the space is to accommodate stepping far back from these painting to see them glow back at you. You can't actually pretend to sit at a table next to them because there are little ropes keeping you two feet back, but when you do put a shoulder at least that close to them, they become the works of a man, not a shining star. They have splattered pain and brushy swirls of paint, which is something just about everyone has seen emphasized in a contemporary painting.
Not a bad or nauseating view. We, almost 50 years later, live with faux painted walls, very busy décor and multiple TVs nearly everywhere we eat.
They do glow, though, viewed from afar, in this lighting, even with a hoard of people filling the gallery room. Rothko was incredibly perceptive to know that his work would look infinitely better in the Tate Modern than in a commercial restaurant. After this commission, he did a series of paintings that was even darker: blacks and dark blue and red violets. Several of this series were made to fill the walls of the octagonal, non-denominational chapel being built in Houston by architect Phillip Johnson. This dark palette was what Rothko used until his death in 1969.
They have such overwhelming somberness, viewers have always felt they described increasing depression over his deteriorating health and foretold his suicide. A couple quotable people on the audio guide said they thought Rothko's choice of color was intellectual. He had excluded images and had great success. Was he trying to exclude color to find another level of success?
One room contained paintings on paper done around 1964. These were mostly framed with a narrow, white border created by taping the paper on a surface, then the top half was painted completely black, and the bottom half varieties of gray. The gray, lower halves, became the dancing parts in this chorus line of similarly sized works. But again, the somberness is so pervasive, that I starting thinking of life and death. And actually found myself thinking that the top half - the black - was now the monotony of life, and the bottom half were guesses of what death might be like.
I'm not alone, other people walked into the room and looked like they were at a funeral. And obviously, the curators had found his daughter and an art historian to quote about how intellectual these were. Someone said he'd started a new series that was brighter.
We didn't see any evidence of this new series in this show that was organized to specifically featuring his later work. The last room of paintings was even darker. All were made in 1969.
I do think all Rothko's painting was intellectually driven because I've read what he's written about his work, and interviews. He read Neitzche and liked to listen to Mozart's Dissance Concerto or Don Gionanni while he worked. I think you can intellectually organize your work, try to make something that people will be drawn to, and try to evoke a specific response, but what happens when all those elements get put together sometimes turns out to be more (and often, unfortunately less) than what you intend. Intense emotion is what comes from these canvas.
Website Info from the Tate Modern: Rothko
26 September 2008 - 1 February 2009
Mark Rothko Mural for End Wall (Untitled) [Seagram Mural] 1959 National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of the Mark Rothko Foundation Inc.
Sponsored by
Fujitsu
With additional support from
Access Industries
Exhibition organised by Tate Modern in association with the Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Japan, supported by Japan Airlines
With a donation from The Dedalus Foundation, New York
Media partner
The Times
Tate Modern presents an exhibition by one of the world's most famous and best-loved artists, Mark Rothko. This is the first significant exhibition of his work to be held in the UK for over 20 years.
Tate Modern's iconic 'Rothko Room' works are reunited for the first time with works from Japan. The Seagram Murals were originally commissioned for The Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building New York.
Rothko's iconic paintings, composed of luminous, soft-edged rectangles saturated with colour, are among the most enduring and mysterious created by an artist in modern times. In the exhibition his paintings glow meditatively from the walls in deep dark reds, oranges, maroons, browns, blacks, and greys.
The exhibition will also focus on other work in series, such as the Black-Form paintings, his large-scale Brown and Grey works on paper, and his last series of Black on Grey paintings, created in the final decade of his life from 1958-1970.
Rothko is the must-see exhibition of the year - book your tickets now to avoid missing out.
