May 3, 2010

re: I get Mark Rothko

Dear Hank,

I got Mark Rothko. I finally got him. Mark Rothko was a twentieth century painter who is famous for making paintings of large black rectangles. I always looked at them and said, “So what?” But this time, for the first time, I got it. I got what he is all about.

Rothko didn’t always paint black rectangles he was known earlier in his career for his bright colors but once again they were rectangles. Typically, the canvasses were vertical rectangles with a horizontal rectangle painted in the upper two thirds of the canvas.

When Rothko moved to the darker painting he kept the same compositional elements: the vertical rectangle that makes up the whole canvass and a second rectangle horizontal on the upper part of the canvas.

In 1967 he produced a series of black canvasses for a Catholic chapel in Houston. It was those painting that I saw yesterday in the Tower of the East Wing of The National Gallery in Washington DC. Many people who visit the East Wing miss the Tower all together. It’s accessed via a staircase off the upper floor of the museum. Many people walk by on their way to the next thing. Several years ago they had David Smith’s sculptures from his Italian exhibition up in the tower, which was a perfect place for them. Here you could see his works as he had laid them out in an old Roman amphitheater. Similarly, Rothko’s painting could be seen alone, as they had been in the chapel in Houston. When I came up the spiral staircase I looked at the painting and once again, as I have before when seeing Rothko, I said. “So what?”

But the Tower has another secret. There’s a small hallway off to the right from where you enter when walking up the staircase. It’s the hallway to the elevator. Oftentimes here you will find are preliminary drawings and explanations of the major work being displayed in the Tower room proper; sure enough, this time was no exception. A seven minute video gave explanation to the large black rectangles. It showed a picture from Life Magazine taken in 1951 of famous American artists. Besides Rothko, there was Jackson Pollock, William De Kooning, and Robert Motherwell. Harry Cooper, who narrated the piece and is the curator of the modern collection, explained that Rothko used the two rectangle motif with the larger rectangle painted so as to appear rough and showing the texture of the underlying canvas; whereas, the smaller horizontal canvas was painted to appear smooth. There was a contrast in texture and in color; albeit, slight.

Rothko was slipping more and more into depression and his paintings reflected this. There was another thing that Mr. Cooper pointed out in his narrative that struck a chord with me, a chord I had not considered before. He said that Rothko thought of painting as linked to feelings, music, and sensuality (and that’s not exactly what he said but that was my sense of it.)

I went back to the main room of the Tower and sat on one of two benches. I heard music: atonal, distant tinkling. I recalled hearing these sounds when I first entered the room on my way to the elevator hallway, but now I paid more attention. On one wall was an explanation about the music. A piece had been composed for the opening of the chapel in 1971. It was a choral piece in four parts, not a massive vocal oeuvre. Instead, it was subtle, and primitive. There were drone like qualities to parts of it. The music was meditative, quiet, everywhere and nowhere. It came and went. As I listened I looked again at the canvasses. I discerned that there were indeed two four-sided objects that made up each painting. I began to notice that the black of the paintings weren’t black in most cases, but subtle shades of brown, maroon, and black. The rectangles that had appeared to be sharp edged weren’t at all. The edges were ragged. Much like looking at an object’s shadow reflected on a wall with the light coming from multiple sources. There is no clear edge, only multiple shades of shadow.

At one point there was a soprano’s voice making sounds. I don’t know what exactly she was saying or singing. It wasn’t that distinct. It was faint. I had the impression it was a sound that moved through the room like that of a stereo recording of a train pulling into a station where you hear the sound coming from one speaker and then moving to another emulating the movement of the train as it came by you. But there was no Doppler effect, no change in pitch. I did have a sense of zooming, slow zooming. Moving my head from my right to my left I looked at the three paintings on the center wall. What I noticed was that only the center painting was truly black, and that was two tones of black. The far one had a brown horizontal rectangle and the other a deep deep maroon for its outer rectangle. The longer I looked the more distinct and apparent the colors became. The music changed at times. Sometimes it seemed to have the quiet zooming effect; at others, the sounds seemed more disconnected, as if the music was trying to help you focus your mind on the works in front of you and not on the music or other extraneous noises. Then there was a drone, but not one that forced your mind to concentrate on it, just enough of a drone to once again focus your mind on the paintings.

I looked at the two paintings on one wall and then the two on the other. Subtle, subtle differences and shadings, none of them black, all of them dark, different shades of dark. These are not happy paintings. Not sunny days in May as we had outside. These were paintings to ponder and brood with. Mr. Cooper said they reflected Rothko’s depression; maybe so, but I think more they reflected his attempt to show the more somber side of human emotion. That might be considered dark or depressed but it could also be more somber and serious. A quiet contemplative work, not light and bubbly. Art can be gay and uplifting, but can it not also be quieting? I’m sure Rothko would say of course.

Yours,

B