General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Rothko Murals: Lightning in a (Seagram’s) Bottle
There is a crack in everything
thats how the light gets in.
--Leonard Cohen
[IMG][/IMG]
from the Seagram Murals
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
In 1958 the Seagram Building, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, was completed.The Seagram Building, housing the corporate offices of the Canadian distillers, is an iconic expression of corporate capitalism in mid twentieth century architecture. A restrained, simple rectilinear design made with expensive materials, it is perhaps the most elegant office tower constructed in New York during the postwar skyscraper boom.
[IMG][/IMG]
Philip Johnson approached Mark Rothko, by then achieving prominence as an artist of his own revolutionary color field style, about painting murals for the Seagram Buildings Four Seasons Restaurant. It would be the premier site of the eras power lunch crowd. The building was an assertion of a capitalistic dominance in the great American era of a postwar economic triumphalism. Rothko relished the idea of his works being shoved in the face of such capitalists. Rothko famously said that he hoped the Seagram murals would ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room, and that if the restaurant refused to hang the works it would be the ultimate compliment.
[IMG][/IMG]
The Four Seasons, 1959
I have wondered if Rothkos color field style is trying to push out into the light in brightness or attempting to hold back a looming dark. Tenuous, shimmering they seem to call out to you. They rarely let you go after just a glance or two. In fact, there is no glance at all. It is more like a perverse seduction that the viewer undergoes. As art critic Peter Schjeldahl advises: Look long, for best results.
An interesting note on Rothkos color choices. He employed a color known as Lithol Red. It was commonly used in the 1950s but it is also classified as a fugitive pigment, which means it is prone to suffer from fading as time goes on. And, indeed, exposure to high levels of light led to dramatic fading of his Harvard murals (along with out and out neglect and abuse on the part of the Harvard administration), and they were removed from display in 1979. There is also evidence of fading on Tates Seagram murals, although to a much lesser degree.The rationale behind Rothkos choice of lithol red is unclear, and we dont know whether he was aware of its light-sensitive nature. It seems unthinkable that he would invite destruction of his art.
Rothkos devotion to color was also a result of the influence of Matisses The Red Studio. He learned from Matisse that color could very well be the subject of a picture. As Simon Schama puts it in The Power of Art
Rothko recalled standing in front of this painting almost every day for months following its acquisition by The Museum of Modern Art in 1949. And he remarked, when you looked at this painting 'you became that color, you became totally saturated with it as if it were music.'
[IMG][/IMG]
The Red Studio, Henri Matisse, 1911, Museum of Modern Art, New York
In 1950, Rothko toured Italy and went to the Laurentian Library of the cloister of San Lorenzo, a dark and disorienting vision of Michelangelos embrace of Mannerism. Rothko later said that he fashioned the Seagram Building murals after it, referring to the librarys effect on viewers. They feel trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall.
[IMG][/IMG]
pic of laurentian library
Schjeldahl, who writes art reviews for the New Yorker, tells of his experience in viewing Rothkos... the concentration required exhausts me and leaves me jangled and anxious. I don't finish looking at the paintings. I break off, turning my back on their tireless radiance. But Professor Schama has stated that you cannot really turn away from a Rothko painting because it burns the back of your neck.
Perhaps Rothko was influenced by his good friend, the poet Stanley Kunitz, who wrote
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
Mark Rothko did not turn in the face of the dark. He embraced it as part of his existence and part of his art. But just as several of his Seagram murals were being delivered to the Tate Museum in London he opened his veins with a razor blade and was found dead later in his Bowery studio. He had considered the offer from Johnson, going through an excruciating soul searching that made him physically ill. In anger and misery he decided that the effect he desired, that of capitalists forced to examine what they were doing with their lives, would not result in an epiphany for the power lunch set. Ruining their lunch would not ruin their careers. Soul-less plutocrats could not contemplate, much less feel, an evocation of existential dread. So Rothko canceled the commission, returning an advance payment that had already been made.
The advent of Pop Art significantly worsened Rothkos anguish. Suddenly, the art scene in New York became swept up in Warhols repeating images of Marilyn, Jasper Johns flags, Roy Lichtensteins comics. They were young and brash and in your face. They were dismissive, if not downright contemptuous of Abstract Expressionism. Frank Stella quite openly said he wanted to purge the romance of Abstract Expression from his canvas.
These young artists are out to murder us, Rothko morosely observed.
By then the artist was going deeper into his alcoholism and chain smoking, causing him to have serious health problems. His second marriage had fallen apart. He was a medical and psychological catastrophe waiting to happen. And on February 20, 1970 it did.
The Seagram Murals were distributed to three museums, and are seen here
[IMG][/IMG]
Kawamura Museum of Art, Japan
[IMG][/IMG]
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
[IMG][/IMG]
The Tate Modern, London, UK
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,523 posts)Thank you for illuminating our lives with your wondrous posts...
K&R
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)Thanks for stopping by.
I really admire Rothko. Too bad he was in such bad shape mentally and physically...but, sigh, it seems to be that way for so many artists!
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)Great place to contemplate your navel and ponder the story of the "Emperor Who Wears No Clothes."
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)It was the kind of venue he thought would be appropriate for his paintings. His tone is grayer and darker at the Chapel and I believe they were his last. Sad ending.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)and repudiated the agreement after walking into the restaurant and finding it wholly offensive. All the better for the rest of us, in the end, because they ended up in public places.
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)He had dinner there with his wife and couldn't go forward afterward. He was tortured emotionally throughout the whole experience. It was awful for him.
And you are right. It is better that they are in public spaces. Of course, the Four Seasons was essentially a public space, but one that only a tiny group of society could ever hope to visit. I am sure it weighed heavily on his mind. He was a dedicated leftist.
Once he realized his goal of having the capitalists choke on their food because of his paintings wouldn't happen, he got even further depressed and withdrew them.
betsuni
(25,380 posts)I love Rothko.
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)I was wondering if anyone here had the experience of crying in front of a Rothko? It seems to be a kind of phenomenon with Rothko.
I've only cried in front of one painting, a wheat field with crows by Van Gogh and I thought that was pretty strange. But break down and cry I did...damndest thing...
betsuni
(25,380 posts)It was alive, vibrating, I was overwhelmed by the energy, bursting with whatever was in that painting.
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)his works. He is mesmerizing.
panader0
(25,816 posts)And committed suicide shortly after finishing it. That painting has an ominous pain in it.
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)panader0
(25,816 posts)There is another that may or may not have been done a week or so later. On July 18th. He shot himself on July 29th, 1890.
The Wheatfield painting is eerie, a foreshadowing of his suicidal intent.
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)The one I saw/cried in front of was at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was the last day of a very intense art trip in 2011 where I went on a barge to the venues where the great Dutch painters of the golden age of Dutch art painted. I had visited Rembrandts, Vermeers and Hals'. The Van Gogh Museum was my final stop. I think I was tired and probably dehydrated. The culmination of that experience was my very own version of "Stendahlismo." If you google that term, you'll find out what it is...(unless you already know).
cyberswede
(26,117 posts)...can't wait to read when I get home!
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)cyberswede
(26,117 posts)I like what I've seen Rothko's work & wasn't aware of these - thanks for posting!
progressoid
(49,945 posts)Just the opposite for me. Well, a little exhausted. But certainly not jangled and anxious.
What happened to the Harvard murals was awful. While they aren't my favorites, it still pains me to think of what happened to them.
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)I like Schjeldahl because he isn't an academic art reviewer. He never went to college and yet he has a sense of art that is exquisite, which you have to have if you review art. And he has a talent for writing about it.
Rothko is not for everyone, like many artists. It just is what it is.
I'm with you on the Harvard murals. I can't believe what abuse Harvard allowed to happen, really awful, renting out the room where they were hung to parties and having drunken people write on them! At HARVARD of all places. Good god...
panader0
(25,816 posts)Unfortunately (for me), Rothko's murals do nothing for me.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)you can absorb the color
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)an epiphany. The picture "glistened." It didn't do that in photographs and I wondered why. Come to find out that Vermeer mixed ground glass in his paint to catch the ambient light coming through the windows. You can't see that in photos. But you see it at the Mauritshaus. I couldn't take my eyes off of it.
cali
(114,904 posts)there is something about his work that I find transcendent. tireless radiance indeed.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)CTyankee
(63,889 posts)What a sad denoument of a career! Why didn't color lift him OUT, not drive him in deeper?
pangaia
(24,324 posts)Rothko and Franz Kline have always been two of my favorite painters.
I knew and worked with Morton Feldman, whose music, including "For Franz," so well reflects them.
And thank you especially for---
"...you cannot really turn away from a Rothko painting because it burns the back of your neck.
NOW I know what that feeling always is...!
CTyankee
(63,889 posts)I loved what Schama said about Rothko. You can see the segment on Rothko in Schama's "Power of Art" series on youtube. I encourage you to watch it. Very excellent.
librechik
(30,673 posts)yuiyoshida
(41,818 posts)The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Just going there, enabled me to really see some fantastic artists including Salvador Dali, Matisse, Edward Hopper and many more.