Mark Rothko: From the Inside Out 9780300212815

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Mark Rothko FROM THE INSIDE OUT

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Mark Rothko FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Christopher Rothko

YA L E U N I V E R S I TY P R E S S

N E W H AV E N A N D LO N D O N

Copyright © 2015 by Christopher Rothko. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. “Mark Rothko Song” Words and Music by Dar Williams Copyright © 1993 Burning Field Music All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation yalebooks.com/art Designed by Jo Ellen Ackerman Set in Frutiger Next Pro type by Linotype Printed in China by Regent Publishing Services Limited Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937426 isbn 978-0-300-20472-8 eISBN 978-0-300-21281-5

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Jacket illustrations: (front) Untitled, 1950s–60s; (back) Mark Rothko in his studio, 1952–53. Photograph by Henry Elkan. Copyright © 2015 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. Frontispiece: Mark Rothko in his studio, 1952–53. Photograph by Henry Elkan. Copyright © 2015 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko.

For my wife, Lori — my source of perpetual inspiration

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix 1

Prologue

5

Mark Rothko and the Inner World

40

Ceci n’est pas un frigo

52

The Quiet Dominance of Form

80

The Tyranny of Size

94

The Artist’s Reality: Mark Rothko’s Crystal Ball

112

Stacked

120

The Rothko Chapel: Our Voices in the Silence

131

The Seagram Murals: The Epic and the Myth

157

Untitled

167

Mark Rothko and Music

183

Rothkos’ Humor

196

The Mastery of the ’60s

207

Black and Grey

217

Works on Paper: Outside the Box

234

Van Gogh’s Ear

250

Return to Dvinsk via Daugavpils

262

Mell-Ecstatic

271

MR & CHR Notes 289 Index 294 Illustrations and Credits 300

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the people who helped make this book a reality: my sister Kate Rothko Prizel and brother-in-law Ilya Prizel, who have offered wise counsel throughout; Laili Nasr, the definitive source for all things Rothko; Henry Mandell, who brings art even to the mundane; Marion Kahan, who has forgotten more Rothko history than most others will ever know; Farida Zalitelo, a magician who brought Rothko back to Latvia; Alytia Levendosky, Carol MancusiUngaro, and Stephen Fox for their scholarship and friendship; Walter Gadlin, for his opinions literary and otherwise; Sunetra Gupta and Isy Morgensztern for their encouragement; Mary Sutherland, who introduced me to half the publishers she knows; Jonathan Rosen, an occasional sounding board with a sympathetic resonance; and my children, Mischa, Aaron, and Isabel, for just being themselves and allowing me, from time to time, to be a writer. I would also like to thank my terrific editing and publishing team: Susan Whitlock, who has read more chr writing than anyone still standing; Amy Canonico, a close second, who somehow always manages to convince me that she is reasonable; Patricia Fidler, who has trusted me for two big projects; Michelle Komie, who got the ball rolling; Heidi Downey and Miranda Ottewell, who have deepened my appreciation for syntax and the semicolon beyond what I thought possible; and Elizabeth Malchione, who helped with all the research that involved typing “www” rather than opening a book. Thank you to my crack legal team, Adrienne Fields and Karen Berry. Finally, thanks to all the helpful image people: Janet Hicks at ars, who probably never wants to see another Rothko; Sara S. Sanders-Buell at the National Gallery; and Lindsay McGuire at Pace Gallery.

ix

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Prologue

Open vistas of the intangible, forbidding because they seem to contain so little. Colors so immediate and yet evocative of the infinite. Deeply saturated surfaces that remain diaphanous and fragile. Since they first drew notice in the late 1940s, Mark Rothko’s works have given viewers pause and left them wondering what they have seen, if indeed they have seen anything at all. I make no attempt to demystify these paintings here, nor do I wish to render them familiar, as their otherness is so central to their ability to make us look anew. Rather, by examining many facets of my father’s career, I hope to make his works not easier but more directly approachable. I indicate paths in that might have been less clear before, even as these paths remain very much the viewer’s to tread. And if Rothko’s works still make us uncomfortable, then perhaps it is not comfort we should be seeking. First and last, this volume is a journey of discovery. I lead the reader along the same course I myself followed to learn more about my father’s work and why it affects us so. Mindful of the full scope of Rothko’s output, I highlight the broad brushstrokes but also the fine lines, looking to foster comprehension and bring the reader closer to the paintings. By examining the details of his oeuvre, we can appreciate not only how the works function but also how they reveal some glimpses of the man who made them. For my father is embedded deeply in his work, and breathes a fundamentally human spirit into each of his paintings. That humanity speaks to us and serves as a touchstone in understanding these elusive compositions as well as their often-elusive creator. What I share here are the understandings I have developed through three decades working with my father’s art. My observations are necessarily personal, but they draw primarily on my active work, carried out in tandem with my sister, Kate, presenting Rothko exhibitions and publications—coordinating, hanging, lighting, curating, researching, archiving, proofing, editing, lecturing, and writ-

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ing. During this time my vista has been almost entirely filled with Rothko, and these essays are the fruits of that immersion. My understandings are abetted by whatever instinctual comprehension of, and affinity for, the work I possess as my father’s son. I have no doubt that these instincts exist, and I refer to them from time to time throughout this volume. Still, their mechanism remains to me mysterious and obscure. I was six years old when I lost my father, so I have no vast cache of private communications to trawl as I think about the art. And certainly the six-year-old is in no position to write a kiss-and-tell, so those seeking copious revelations about my father’s personal life will be disappointed. Rothko from the inside out is the viewpoint I offer. I do not claim any great knowledge of art history beyond what my own love for art has taught me. Nor do I attempt to codify the many influences on my father, how his artwork relates to that of his contemporaries or to the great procession of forebears whom he revered. Instead I examine the development of his own artwork; how the different periods of his output relate to one another, how his technique evolved, how and what he hoped to communicate, and how the progression of his art interacted with the events of his life. I am not suggesting that Rothko worked in some hermetically sealed environment or that there is not much to be understood by considering his communications with the world around him. I propose only that a different kind of understanding may be gained by looking at the corpus of his work as a unique and continuous entity with its own internal logic and pathways. By considering the relationship between my father’s different periods, styles, and compositions in different media, we can gain a fuller picture of his aims, beliefs, and the quest for meaning that was at the root of all his work. My inside-out approach stems from my position as son but also reflects Rothko’s own relation to the external world. For although often garrulous and sociable, and close to his family, my father remained, first and last, a solitary man. While very conscious of the art world around him—both its history and the contemporary scene—he tucked that knowledge away as he pondered the expressive task before him. That retreat from the social realm was fundamental to his working process. Specifically, he always painted alone. Always. This was not a manifestation of secrecy but an indication of intimacy with his artwork, driven by the necessity of creating a space for inward focus. Indeed, from his earliest figurative works forward, we encounter very little of the perceivable world in his paintings. Instead we see the realization of his internal view—reality as he experienced it.

This orientation carried over to the way he installed and presented his work. Like the artist himself, the paintings were most content—most harmonious—in their own company. Ever sensitive to their needs, my father refused to participate in group exhibitions and, as soon as he was in a position to demand it, insisted that his works have a room to themselves. He was creating small universes emanating from his own vision. Thus when I present Rothko from the inside out, in some ways I am recapitulating the creation of my father’s artwork, linking to its development and mimicking his perspective on the world at large. My father was certainly not a hermit, but there was undoubtedly a monk-like search for truth that had his own reflection as its foundation. Mark Rothko’s artistic journey extended from 1923 to 1970 and from figuration grounded in his own brand of social realism to the nethermost bounds of abstraction. A seemingly unspannable chasm separates the ends of his career. And yet, while the means and media changed, the essential goal of his work remained constant throughout the intervening decades and the styles: the expression of the human condition. To achieve this, Rothko looked to communicate on the most elemental level, to appeal to core emotions, to our common, proto-rational understanding of the universe around us and our place in it. Throughout these essays, as I examine the many disparate features of my father’s painting, a remarkable consistency emerges, one that unifies them despite how divergent they appear on the surface. While I may be discussing paintings separated by nearly forty years’ time and multiple stylistic revolutions, there have been truths that have not only remained constant but have persistently reasserted themselves as the most relevant to any understanding of Rothko. Two of these will inform much of our progress through the book. First is the constant, palpable presence of my father’s humanity in his work to which I have already alluded. Whatever one may have read or seen about Rothko’s fierce intellect or his uncompromising, argumentative nature, it is an engaged, kindled human spirit that flows through and reaches out from his work. For Rothko, there was no art without ideas, but emotion was the level of engagement, and his is omnipresent in his painting. This is why people who love Rothko really love Rothko, why they find themselves moved and gripped by the work in ways both disturbing and irresistible. Second is that my father’s work is fragile. Not in the physical sense but in terms of its efficacy and impact. It is so dangerously close to nothing that it is easily rendered irrelevant when approached or presented unsympathetically; its initial grip on us can be tenuous at best. Rothko’s works spur us to speak in

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contradictions as we strain to grasp the ungraspable. “The always is and the has not yet become,” “the congruence of presence and absence”—these are the types of phrases I concoct in an effort to capture that distinctly tangible intangibility that is a Rothko painting. The works live as material objects but they communicate only on an experiential level, ironically rendering the effect of even a vast color field fleeting at best. Morgan Thomas speaks of “the work’s capacity to conjure an uncanny sense of the lived experience of time, space, light and movement.”1 Here the works are reduced to four nouns, none of which can be bottled; essential concepts that defy realization in the concrete world. Like Thomas’s summation, the works themselves are elusive yet deeply truthful when we are able to feel what they are saying. But that feeling can be fugitive. This is why so much of the family’s effort on behalf of Rothko, and such a large portion of this book, focuses on clearing the air of myth, preconception, and all manner of distractions that interfere with our direct encounter with his painting. Only when our engagement is immediate and concentrated can the works speak plainly enough for us to fathom their complexity. In the end, the journey to understand the painting is also the journey to understand Rothko, because the work is so thoroughly suffused with the man. This path leads in one direction only, however, for knowledge about Rothko, be it historical, technical, or biographical, does not help us understand the painting. There is, in fact, no greater impediment to engaging with the work than imposing on it what we know, or think we know, about the person who made it. And, perhaps ironically, this is why the viewer’s journey with Rothko can ultimately be as fruitful as the one I have taken, because it is a purely experiential one. You can’t really learn about Rothko, for that “knowledge” will keep you rooted in one place. You have to learn to speak Rothko to have a conversation that invokes timelessness.

Mark Rothko and the Inner World

I gave my first Rothko lecture on what would have been my father’s one hundredth birthday, at a symposium held in the town of his birth, Dvinsk (now Daugavpils), Latvia, to mark his centennial. I had previously given introductory remarks at exhibitions, sat on discussion panels, and in all manner of other ways broken the champagne bottle over the prow of many a Rothko steamer. This, however, was the first time I would give a prepared talk on Rothko, the first time I would assume a public position of authority about my father’s work. Ironically, my official carte d’entrée to the list of speakers was not as the artist’s son but as a psychologist who would speak on the psychological aspects of Rothko’s art. The organizer’s real hope, I imagine, was that as psychologist and son, I would probe my father’s psychic innards and bare them on the stage before an eager and perhaps gaping public. What I delivered instead was an exploration of Rothko’s painting and how it functions on a psychological level. While I certainly glanced at how my father’s own emotional world was expressed in his work, my primary task was to turn the tables—much as Rothko did—and examine how the work affects the viewer psychologically, or more specifically, how the viewer’s reaction to it reflects his or her psychology. What can interacting with a Rothko painting teach us about ourselves? What are the mechanisms—stylistic, technical, and sensory—that allow Rothko paintings to penetrate to internal places of which we may have been scarcely conscious just moments before? My approach was perhaps not so exclusive to Rothko, even if we believe that emotional complexity is particularly central to his work. A painting affects us on many levels, and we can recognize its greatness by the fact that it compels us to examine what it does to us, how it works upon us, even as we remain almost unwitting of its action. Great art engages us, first and unrelentingly, in our own personal realm, not allowing us the opportunity to ask what the work

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may say about its creator until we have first come to terms with our own response. And yet Rothko paintings seem to find that place more directly and keep us focused there more doggedly (to both the delight and dismay of many a viewer) than works by other masters. I spent the majority of my lecture trying to peel the Rothko onion to see why this is so. As I delved into these inner layers, I decided not to dwell too long on psychology as a perceptual science, which frankly is a rather dry subject when there is fine art to consider. I might have spent a great deal of time citing various studies of neural responses to different visual stimuli, or test subject reports of their reactions to different colors. But none of this really has very much relevance to the gestalt of a Rothko painting, which cannot in any case be reduced to discrete graphic elements. Instead I chose to look at how Rothko paintings speak to us; how they get inside our mental and emotional world, and what they tell us about the psychological world of the artist. For this I took my cues from the paintings themselves and what my father said about them, rather than theories of sensation and perception. ■ ■ ■

Rothko’s paintings—especially his classic sectional pieces of the 1950s and ’60s—have long been viewed as expressions of feeling. Their broad expanses of paint, their bold juxtapositions of color, the frameless, all-over composition that often seems to reach for further space—all of these elements speak to something that is being declared, something the artist cannot contain and which he must make public. This is the very opposite of art that attempts to reflect or capture what we see in the tangible world of objects around the artist. In a classic Rothko there is no pastoral scene or glowering royal countenance; there is no likeness being rendered. Nor do these seemingly minimalist abstractions appear to convey flights of fancy or a new view of the material world through a unique lens. There is no external world here, no clear environment to grasp, no place or frame of reference. The surface seems void of content, of action, of narrative, ultimately of any cues that would tie it concretely to the world of objects. And yet these paintings are not voids. The great Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni sought out my father in the 1960s, eager to have a meeting of minds. “I film nothing, you paint nothing,” he remarked as a premise for this summit.1 One can certainly understand what he meant—the open spaces, the unadorned abstraction, the aching search for meaning that marks both of their work. There is a phenotypic similar-

ity in their best-known pieces that presents the viewer with an emptiness that must somehow be filled (Antonioni’s masterpiece The Red Desert embodies this sensibility most powerfully). But here the comparison breaks down, for while Antonioni (and I make no pretense of being a film scholar) presents us with a modernist crisis, a manmade world as vacuous as it is artificial, Rothko’s paintings, for all their reduction in means, are bursting with energy and alive with human spirit. The void they present is only a void of referents to the outside world, and this precisely because my father sought to remove the distractions and preoccupations of the physical realm. He wanted to shift our focus, and draw our attention to the inner world—the world of ideas and, most critically, the world of emotion. Rothko sought to speak as directly as possible to our inner selves, be it in a flood or a whisper—passion dampened by as few mediators as possible. He wanted to communicate with our most core human elements; to those aspects as common to our hunter-gatherer ancestors as they will be to our successors millennia from now, whatever time-space continuum they may live in, or however their minds may be electronically linked. This goal, to connect with the human spirit, to express what he called the “human condition,” is not radical, and is in many ways a highly romantic notion, with a refreshing touch of naïveté in such a serious and intellectual painter. No, Rothko’s great innovation was in the means he used to achieve this expressive goal. His classic abstract gestures embody his boldness as he threw away many of the traditional formal elements in an attempt to penetrate to the heart of our emotional world with a single arrow. This aim makes coming to know Rothko, the artist, not so difficult as one might think when first faced with his mysterious panels of color. He has already begun the conversation, even a bit too forwardly, prodding your innards when he might first have shaken your hand. Perhaps he has not revealed much about himself, but it is safe to believe that the place where his work touches you is a place that resonated in him as well. Getting to know a Rothko painting is a process of learning what human qualities are foremost in you and which ones you and the artist have in common. And while I may have had a head start in developing fluent Rothko, his reach for a universal expression means that, theoretically, anyone should be able to become conversant. When I speak of interacting with Rothko paintings in terms of language, this is not simply a convenient metaphor. People talk of great art expressing the inexpressible, and this is clearly the realm that preoccupied my father. Art that is narrative, descriptive, or reflective of its time and place is inherently limited to

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fig. 1 mother and child (1940)

the bounds of its frame—a physical, social, and temporal frame. This is work that, at least on its most basic level, could have its subject expressed in words. Of course, we all know countless pieces that transcend the conventionality of their subjects to communicate in a profound and deeply emotional way. But Rothko sought to leap neatly over all these pictorial elements and, through direct, unblunted expressive means, speak straight to the inner (fig. 1). One can see this even in his earliest, figurative work, where there is often no focus on character, no attempt to tell us what kind of people these are he has painted. Instead the focus is on their state, their condition—where they are physically, and how this has affected where they are emotionally. Already there is a type of abstraction—and not just in the roughly drawn figures. These are not people whom we can get to know. These are figurative representations of a feeling, of a “human condition” that most of us will recognize, in our own personal way. Now simply because my father ultimately rejected the narrative elements of art, one should not make the mistake of assuming his works are static. It is perhaps easy to do so, particularly with his classic sectional work, where there is little movement within the plane of the canvas and where some viewers have been inclined to see the rectangles as solid and immobile to the point of being “stacked.” I will discuss later on the pictorial ways in which Rothko’s works are visually dynamic, but here I will focus, as my father would, on content. He referred to his paintings—without irony, I might add—as “dramas.”

Of all the statements my father made about his work, I think this perhaps reveals the most about how we interact with his painting. First, because drama places us definitively in the human realm. The paintings are not about color or form, the process of painting or the process of viewing, and they are not about abstract ideas. The paintings are a stage for human concerns and human dialogue, as drama, unlike narrative, inherently involves interaction. Second, seeing the paintings as dramas takes us out of the realm of the static and shifts our focus away from the surface. For what types of dramas are these if they are not psychological dramas? There are no tangible actors on this stage, just raw feelings, expressed honestly and directly—sometimes with an almost brutal power and sometimes more caressingly. These feelings, mediated only through the most basic elements of color and form, are in constant interplay—sometimes harmonious, sometimes contentious, and almost always, like real emotions, in the ambivalent admixtures that continually tint our world. There is no purely black-and-white Rothko, nor, I suspect, is there really much black and white in our own lives. I will mention one other way my father’s work has been characterized, although never by him, I must emphasize. An analogy often made for the classic works is that of a window (fig. 2). The form invites it, and there is unquestionably a lightness to the treatment of the shapes that gives an airy impression. Combine this with the bright colors and inner glow of many of the 1950s works, and it is easy to see a window with light pouring in. To my own surprise, even though it pulls us away from the abstract to a concrete image, I like the window analogy and find it a useful tool in thinking about the work. But I believe it is a basic misunderstanding to see these works as windows to look out. These works are not transparent; there is no light coming from another space, there is no outside. In fact, the windows have been closed off, bricked up with the most sensuous of colors. These are not windows to look out, these are windows to look in. The classic works, through their grand scale, their assured declaration, and their sensual seductiveness, grab our visual attention, but they offer no vistas. Instead they reflect the inner world of the artist, and they reflect back at us the feelings and reactions we project onto them. These works are an invitation not to step out, but to turn inward. They are, in a sense, windows on the soul. Places where better than most, we can see in. Having just delved so far into the inner world, I would like to step back for a moment and consider, on more of a surface level, the responses of viewers to Rothko paintings. As I mentioned, it was a bold leap my father made, with the

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fig. 2 no. 14, 1960

unspoken demand that the viewer follow him into this “unknown world,” as he called it. This necessarily leads to powerful, and strongly divergent, reactions to the work. Indeed, although my perspective is by definition skewed, I do not know of another artist who has garnered such a cult following of rhapsodic devotees and who, at the same time, has suffered so much derision from people who don’t appreciate the work. I nearly called this latter group “unmoved” by the work, but that is clearly not so—they are touched deeply and ultimately disturbed by the paintings. This polarized response to Rothko is highly instructive in understanding how the art affects us, and will soon lead us back to the domain of the inner world. The word I most frequently hear from viewers who love Rothko’s work is, in fact, moving. The word is significant because it speaks to the physicality of our emotional response. We are on such an elemental level that we are having a bodily reaction to the work. We are at that critical place where the physical, the chemical, and the thought-driven elements of our nervous system all come together to produce an emotional reaction. It is primitive, visceral. Moving also suggests the notion of things resonating, of being stirred. When the viewer looks through these windows on the soul, when the interaction between viewer and painting really occurs, a chord is struck and the reaction is, at least in part, basic, physical, and involuntary.

The most conspicuous manifestation of the physical response to a Rothko painting is crying. To see a viewer in tears before a Rothko is not uncommon, and at least in my experience, occurs as frequently with men as with women. My father was keenly aware that people were “moved to tears” before his paintings, and was frankly rather proud of this fact. He cited it as evidence that his work truly was brimming with content—specifically tragic content—and that he not only could, but did reach his viewers in a profound and affecting way.2 Why tears? A traditional understanding views tears as a response to sadness. Yet the paintings themselves are not sad. They have so little socially referenced content, it is not clear what would carry the message of sadness. One could argue that color conveys this message, but it is too simple, and often actually misleading, to equate the brightly colored paintings with joyous feelings and the darker ones with sadness. I will add that, in my own limited research on this topic, I have found that viewers cry as often before the light works as they do before the dark ones. In fact, I believe that this discussion of sadness is somewhat off the mark, for it is not at all clear that the tears shed before a Rothko painting are actually tears of sadness. Those predisposed to do so cry in many different states—in joy or rage, in relief or fear, in accomplishment or failure, and, I will add, at weddings as often as at funerals. Tears do not tell us of sadness, they tell us a person has been moved, that they are experiencing something intensely meaningful. And this is the experience that I believe viewers often have with a Rothko painting. Whatever they bring to the encounter and whatever they are taking from the work, there is a deeply stirring interaction occurring. Something in the painting is striking a chord with them, something is resonating with their inner world. It is an essentially physical process, like a wind through a pipe or a vibration across a string that causes a note to sound. Something in us is struck or strummed, plucked or bowed, hammered or brushed, and involuntarily, from a place before conscious thought, the tears come—unbidden, but not necessarily unwelcome. This is not sadness: this is meaning, keenly felt. Of course, most people do not find themselves crying in front of Rothko paintings, and there are many who have a distinctly negative reaction. I will not treat here those individuals who see my father as some type of charlatan, trying to peddle schoolboy geometric doodles as high art. These are people whose anger stems from something other than the content of the artwork, and who have probably not looked at it very carefully. But there are those people genuinely put off by the work, who have considered the paintings seriously and come away repelled or indignant. Some of the reaction may be purely aesthetic—

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people for whom Rothko’s style is simply not appealing. But when we move into the realm of strong negative emotional reactions, I think we are again witnessing the paintings penetrating the inner world: a resonant chord is struck but leads to a type of aversion. The reason for this will be particular to each such viewer, but I suspect that it has to do with the work hitting too close to sensitive places or triggering negative associations. These are cases of opposites who do not attract or whose attraction is simply too painful. A third category of reaction to Rothko paintings is also the one through which the largest group of viewers at least passes through. I call this reaction the “defensive” response. It is one in which the viewer, for any number of reasons, fends off the work and does not actively engage with it. This stance comes in many guises, but I will consider two examples here. One of the more common manifestations is hearing viewers complain that Rothko’s work is too heart-on-sleeve. They find it almost embarrassing in its excesses of expression and emotiveness. I have encountered this frequently in viewers—and artists—reared upon the knowing parody of Pop, the reduced palette of minimalism, or the general emotional withdrawal of postmodernism. These individuals are far more comfortable with the Pop artist’s cynical, playful smirk or the more detached vantage point offered by the minimalists. While perfectly legitimate aesthetic preferences, these attitudes reflect not just a personal style but an emotional stance. These are people who don’t want their emotions stirred up, who generally don’t want an experience with art that penetrates to the visceral level. They are telling us that they would rather engage with art on a more intellectual and/or purely visual level, or with art whose emotional impact, if present, is heavily mediated by social or political comment. They are also, in essence, confirming that Rothko’s art communicates on a deep emotional level; that it is, in the truest sense, emotionally disturbing. But this type of arm’s-length response to Rothko, where the viewer is left feeling largely uninvolved, can occur—and occur frequently—even in people who consider themselves great admirers of the work. There are many times when even a Rothko painting we love doesn’t work any magic for us and leaves us unmoved. This may be a function of context, of hanging, of lighting, but it may well be an indication of a defensive stance. I know from my own personal experience that a favorite Rothko painting I see daily in my home may, on some occasions, cause me to shrug and question its greatness. Clearly in this situation the painting has not changed, nor the details of how it is presented. The only thing that can have changed is me and the emotional space I am occupying. I

may simply not be in the right frame of mind to hear what the painting has to say to me or feel what it spurs me to feel. No one is prepared for an intense interaction all the time. Everyone finds themselves in states where they cannot tolerate being stirred up. At these times, we will shut the paintings out, confirming again, obversely, their emotional impact. Perhaps more important, however, is the feedback we get from the work. Through our reluctance to engage, the paintings can make us aware of our own feeling states. They can truly function as emotional barometers. Having established the deep emotional territory in which Rothko paintings operate, we must examine the mechanisms, both psychological and artistic, that allow them to communicate on this level. Although psychological theory and research on the effect of visual stimuli on our emotional state is ultimately rather general and its relevance to more complex interactions such as viewer and artwork limited, it remains important to ground ourselves in a bit of science as we consider Rothko. It is both surprising and, I must add, disappointing, to find that virtually all the research on emotional response to visual phenomena has focused on color. There is essentially no research (at least in the English-speaking world) on the emotional impact of other components of painting that affect our visual senses, such as form, texture, or spatial treatment. So while I will discuss here only color, I do not believe that this is the only, or even the primary, aspect of painting that determines the way a particular piece makes us feel. Perhaps the most basic distinction researchers have made between colors is that of “warm” colors, typically seen as red, orange, and yellow, and “cool” colors, typically green and blue. Warm colors have generally been found to be stimulating, increasing, in a number of studies, factors such as muscular action, heart rate, and blood pressure. Cool colors are generally calming, producing relaxation of muscular action and lowering the various physical indexes of excitement. Experimental subjects in their self-reports attribute similar effects to these color groupings. Helping validate the results garnered in experiments relying on survey research, one researcher found that his physically impaired patients would orient their bodies toward red light and away from blue, with green yielding no result.3 We must be cautious in drawing definitive conclusions from these experimental results, however, as more recent research has shown that color reactions do not hold consistently across culture and gender.4 Since I imagine that most of us find both red and blue Rothko paintings stimulating (although I must say that red is very popular), perhaps a different approach will be more revealing about the affective mechanisms of color in

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Rothko paintings. For this I turn to the best known of psychological tests, the Rorschach. The Rorschach consists of a series of inkblot cards presented to the subject to elicit associative responses. Some of these cards contain only black images, some black and red, and some full color. Tens of thousands of test results have yielded a rich database from which revealing patterns emerge. Response sets that include a good deal of color usually indicate a cheerful mood. Response sets that lack color usually indicate a depressed mood. More generally, and here I will paraphrase Rudolf Arnheim, “color responses indicate an openness to external stimuli. Such people are sensitive, easily influenced, unstable and excitable. Shape [only] responses indicate introversion, strong control over impulses and an unemotional attitude.”5 This research indicates that it is not necessarily which color, but the simple attunement to color, that is a key to understanding emotional response to visual phenomena. Ernst Schachtel, in discussing the effect of color revealed by the Rorschach, has offered this explanation: that the experience of color resembles that of emotion. In both cases, we are essentially passive receptors of stimulation. Color bypasses the mental processes and acquired mental organizations we employ for the perception and categorization of shape. It affects us directly, requiring only a certain degree of openness like that needed for emotional response.6 If we accept this explanation, we can see why color would constitute a very attractive expressive medium for Rothko. And indeed, while my father used many other expressive tools, color became more and more the prime carrier for his strongly emotional message. Color’s impact is immediate and elemental. It constitutes a more direct route to the internal workings of his viewer. I cannot state clearly or vehemently enough, however, that it is a mistake to equate Rothko paintings with color.7 My father’s paintings are gestalts—carefully balanced visual wholes—and when they fail to achieve the most persuasive emotional expression, it is rarely because the colors are not beautiful or well chosen. It is usually because the formal balance is not quite optimal. Let us examine, therefore, some of the other mechanisms that bring expressive power to the work. Some of these I will consider in more detail later as we explore my father’s output period by period. The first of these mechanisms I call nebulousness. This is the cloudiness or indistinctness of the image that is common to all the periods. Whether it is a human figure from the 1930s or something more primordial from the neo-surrealist phase, the uncoalesced regions of color known as Multiforms or the floating classic rectangles, one rarely feels the image is fully in focus (figs. 3–6). We are not entirely clear who or what we are seeing. This indistinctness means we need to

fig. 3 family (c. 1936)

fig. 4 untitled, c. 1943–45

fig. 5 untitled, 1948

fig. 6 no. 15, 1951

work a little harder, and that we are already drawn into an active relationship with the painting. But the nebulousness also invites a type of projection—I would argue an emotionally tinged projection. The artist is not telling explicitly what he is showing us. We must make sense of it through the mechanisms of our own psychological processes. And thus, once again, on our journey to understand what Rothko is saying, we find that we are perhaps learning more about ourselves. The second technical means my father employed to convey emotion is action. Perhaps it is ironic that I should put this forth for a color-field painter, but while undoubtedly more subtle and less central for Rothko than it is for Pollock or Kline, action is a key attribute of his work. Whether it is the powerful movement of line in the surrealist watercolors (fig. 7), the deliberate working of the paint in some of the classic works (see fig. 2), or the quiet turmoil of the late Black and Greys (fig. 8), movement is elemental in the work. Perhaps even more powerful is the dynamism of color. This is easily seen in the constant interplay of color in the Multiforms or the explosion of colors that occurs around the borders of classic sectionals. In these small areas of juxtaposition, the emotional energy is at its most fevered pitch. Two additional expressive mechanisms pertain primarily to the classic paintings, but I will consider them here because I think they essentially summarize elements present in all the work. The first of these is the “inner glow” of some of the most moving classic works (see fig. 6). It is a glow that tells us there is content beneath the surface, and acts as an embracing invitation to turn inward. It is the window of inner light. These are also works where Rothko’s essential humanity radiates most clearly. We can feel his warm embrace, his

fig. 7 untitled, 1944–46

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fig. 8 untitled, 1969

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appeal to linger and engage. And in the glow of color, we sense his deep attunement to the joys and sorrows of human existence. In that glow, you can almost feel his life pulse—or is that yours? The quiet presence of imperfection, found in virtually all the work, is a second emotional “hook” that Rothko uses to bring us into the painting. David Anfam speaks eloquently of this element in his introduction to the Rothko catalogue raisonné. For all their regularity and formal cleanliness the paintings are clearly the work of the human hand. These are not Alberses or Newmans or Reinhardts that almost defy mortal imperfection. The human factor, with all its fallibility, is present everywhere for Rothko—in the work of the brush, in the forms that in truth only suggest rectangles, in the drips and splatters that mark every seemingly pristine surface. These subtle cues are intended not to draw the viewer’s attention to the process of painting but to lend the work an extra degree of the personal. These human elements reinforce our unconscious awareness that viewing a painting is an interaction between two people. The final expressive mechanism I wish to touch on is what my father saw as the essential content of his work. Not simply drama, but specifically tragic drama—what he called the “tragedy of the human condition.” My father most likely turned to Nietzsche, but I will turn to Aristotle to help elucidate the workings of this tragic content in the paintings. Writing in the Poetics, Aristotle speaks of the finest tragedies arousing “pity and fear” in the spectator. Pity he defines as a human feeling “occasioned by undeserved misfortune,” and fear stemming from misfortune in “one like ourselves.” It is the second feeling—fear, but more particularly, the recognition

of one like ourselves—which is crucial to my father. My father did not want the viewer to see one of his paintings as something other, but as something directly relevant to the self, something that spoke to him or her in an immediate way about his or her life. The tragic elements in the work must strike a chord with the viewer and arouse a sense of familiarity from his or her own inner world. This is not to underplay the more fearsome aspects of fear. There is a strong current of existential angst in Rothko’s work, a preoccupation with death and ultimate causes. And yet that does not seem to have been the primary thrust for him in his embracing of the tragic. He noted that “the fear of death and pain and frustration seems the most constant binder between human beings, and we know that a common enemy is a much better coalescer of energies . . . than is a common positive end.”8 The tragic was then, for him, the ultimate expression of the common experiences of mankind. He focused on the essences, the defining elements of what it is to be human. The second significant aspect of tragic content is, well, the content. It was no less crucial to Aristotle. He writes that “the tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle; but they may also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play—which is the better way and shows the better poet.” Rothko, similarly, had no use for spectacle. He was interested in not visual effects and artifice but instead the direct communication of the subject of his work. The forms and colors of his work are like the structure and incidents— they are there to stir not what Aristotle calls “the spectacle of Horror” but instead that “pleasure of pity and fear”; that is, the satisfaction that stems from genuine emotional engagement. For Rothko, the surface was just that: surface. It was there only to serve the expression of the painting’s content. How can we reckon this focus on the tragic with the many paintings that exude passion, exuberance, even joy? As at least a partial answer, I will offer the example of Mozart, who was, by a considerable margin, my father’s favorite composer. Mozart generally wears a genial face, his music so tuneful it is frequently canned into packages of background music, much as my father’s work is often reduced to decorative wall covering. But listening to Mozart carefully and openly, one becomes aware of the sadness, the longing, the ache of human suffering. Mozart was “smiling through tears,” my father would often say. Perhaps, I would suggest, the same was true for him. And thus along our way, we gain little glimpses of Rothko the man, peeking from behind the arras. The high seriousness but also the warmth. The focus on

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the tragic not as a preoccupation with doom but as a point of contact that bonds us all together. Rothko reminds us repeatedly that he is not an artist who is painting for himself, or simply placing his finer attributes on display. He is making an overture to his viewer. Yes, he believes that he had something to tell that viewer, but that discussion does not start behind the lectern; it begins with a sentiment more akin to “We are not so different, you and me.” And with that he invites us to embark on a journey to explore the (tragic) drama of human life. Far more than knowledge of techniques, the impact of color on our perceptual systems, or the philosophical groundings of the work, focusing on the interaction between viewer and painting—between viewer and painter—is really at the core of understanding Rothko’s work and its relation to our inner worlds. Seeing the paintings not as a culmination of formal means or painterly processes but instead as acts of communication will enhance our understanding of why they affect us so. For this was my father’s career-long goal: not merely to express himself but to interact, indeed to hold conversation, with his viewer. I do not usually like to dwell on the process of writing, but I will share with you a slip I made when first preparing this essay as a lecture. In this case I had meant to write the words “content and impact,” in reference to how Rothko paintings affect us. But instead of writing “content and impact,” I elided the two, and accidentally wrote “contact.” content + impact = contact

“Eureka!” I yelled, splashing with Archimedes in my metaphorical bathtub, because contact encapsulated precisely what I was trying to say. Rothko paintings are about an encounter—a meeting of minds and souls between artist and viewer. We all try to make contact—superficially through a wave, an exchanged glance, a telephone call (updated to “text message” and “Twitter feed” for the 2015 edition), more deeply through intimacy with those we feel truly understand us. My father’s need and aim were no different, but he sought to make contact through the intermediary of art. In this context I like to imagine my father wandering the streets of New York in search of the most casual conversation, but always needing to carry an eight-foot-square painting with him in order to do so. We know pretty clearly what he was trying from the first to communicate—that “tragic content,” our shared experience of the human condition. But he needed to develop an artistic language in which to do it. His journey as an artist was a quest to develop that language, and it was a process of continual refinement. He sought a medium that could communicate universally, that

tapped into our common experience and our psychological workings. He found through years of seeking that the more elementally he expressed his version of humanness, the more directly he could touch those places, and speak with us about what it means to be alive. In the next section I consider, period by period, that journey of development. I want to emphasize that this development was one of style and it was one of language, but not of content or message. Indeed, if there is one thing that it is crucial to understand about Rothko’s work, it is the essential unity that exists across his oeuvre, from the earliest figurative painting to the most pareddown of the late abstractions. No matter the period, the human content remains constant. Expressed differently, no doubt, but ultimately trying to speak to the same part of us. My father’s development was one of stripping away layers to achieve greater and greater clarity, to achieve “the simple expression of a complex thought”; but that idea was there from the first. Rothko’s painting may have undergone stylistic revolutions, but it is the same artist, the same man, trying to reach us and explore what we can understand together. ■ ■ ■

My father spent nearly twenty years of his career as an essentially realist painter. This is not to say that he sought to make perfect, objective depictions of the world he saw, but that he painted aspects of the world around him filled with generally recognizable figures. His version of that world was in fact highly subjective, and dealt more with inner truths than outward detail or accuracy of visual representation. Stylistically, this period is highly varied and includes a number of different genres, such as landscapes, portraits, nudes, and perhaps most important, what I call urban psychodramas. This last group of works, which can be found throughout the figurative period, contains some of the most striking early paintings. They involve figures in interaction with their emphatically urban environment. The action, however, manifests itself primarily not in external gesture and movement but in internal, mental and emotional workings, conveyed through the figures’ facial expressions, postures, or stances vis-à-vis the represented world around them. Sometimes the figures are actually quite passive in communicating the message of the work. It may simply be a function of how the artist has placed them in the environment, how they have been framed by the rest of the painting, that most reveals their status, their emotional state, their place in the human drama. While there are many paintings from this period that are light, cheerful, even occasionally superficial, it is those that directly express the tragic elements

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fig. 9 city phantasy (c. 1934)

fig. 10 untitled, 1933/34

fig. 11 seated figure (1939)

that most compel. Fear—an amorphous, ill-defined fear—is often lurking at the edges of otherwise untroubled works. More often it is starkly and dramatically present, as in two canvases from the early to mid-1930s, City Phantasy and an untitled work from c. 1933 (figs. 9, 10). In neither case can we see the feared object, or even offer a reasonable guess at its identity. For the inhabitants of the painting, though, it is quite real and immediate. And while the fear we read in their faces certainly has an acute edge to it, there is also a sense that this is a wearing, omnipresent, habitual fear; one that has become a dispiriting and familiar part of their existence. A strong feeling of claustrophobia in the early work has been noted by a number of writers on Rothko.9 One can see it in City Phantasy, where the alleyway and buildings seem almost to collapse on the figures, but one can also find it in much less sinister paintings, such as a number of nudes and urban scenes from the 1930s; fig. 11, for example, shows a sitter whose head actually pushes out against the top of the frame, while many others depict persons cornered in a room or confined in a space too limiting for comfortable existence. These environmental boundaries that hem in the figures take on a surprising prominence in many of the paintings. It is as if the figures in the painting were really of secondary importance, with the architectural and structural elements assuming central roles in the work. One can see this effect in one of

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Rothko’s masterpieces from the period where, uniquely in my father’s work, the figure is largely cast in shadow, while the wardrobe, sky, window moldings, and cornice sing out in bright colors and comparatively sharp detail (see fig. 56). Similarly, one can see in several paintings where Rothko frames his subjects in doorways and windows (fig. 12) that the figures essentially become the set dressing, while the set becomes the central character. It is as if Rothko is emphasizing the insignificance of the persons he places in these dramas—not their insignificance in real terms, but their insignificance in their own minds. We are viewing these characters through their own eyes. This theme comes to its culmination in the series of paintings my father made in the New York subway in the 1930s (figs. 13, 14). Here Giacometti-like figures all but disappear behind support pillars, and hunched men and women blend in against the grey-green walls. The subway encapsulated the dehumanizing aspects of urban existence during this period, with its stifling air, depressing, colorless surroundings, and the insect-like behavior it demanded of its riders. There was no room for individuals in the subway, only faceless masses. My father saw the effects of the crushing urban environment on the people around him (as well as himself), and depicted these effects in paintings filled with a sad and at times bitter irony. His emphasis on the individual, however, is what in fact separates him from many of the other painters of this period. Given that he was a committed socialist, painting during the Great Depression, his work naturally reflected the social concerns of his time. But for Rothko, it is not so much the masses who are suffering; it is the individual subsumed in that mass who is struggling for air. It is that individual, psychological drama that interests him, not the larger social phenomenon, the plight of the people as an oppressed class. All of these framed, cramped figures we have seen are looking to break free. Free of their surroundings, free of the world as they know it. It is metaphorically the same struggle Rothko was engaged in as a painter—how to break free of the confines of his work, how to express himself more clearly, more potently. His real-world hardships were much the same as those of the people he painted. He longed to be free of financial burdens and the doldrums of the workaday world. At the same time he felt trapped by societal and painterly conventions. During this period he created artistic means to show and rail against their limitations; he had not yet found a way to pierce cleanly through them. The progress of his work would be in that direction until, with the classic sectional works, we see a breaking of bonds, an escape from the frame, an unleashing of a decidedly human, if more primal, expression. Ironically, on a pictorial level, the liberation would come from abandoning the figure and

fig. 12 untitled, 1938/1939

embracing the more generalized architectural elements that seem to dominate the figures in those early works. It is 1940. That ultimate freeing of form and emotional voice is still ten years away, but Rothko is about to take the first of two very important steps. Struck by the vibrancy of the surrealist movement, which had recently swept the New York art world, he delves into its philosophical rhetoric and adopts elements of its stylistic framework. While his aesthetic world is certainly influenced by the great European surrealists who have fled war-torn Europe for America, Rothko adopts the style in large part because it takes him in the direction toward which he has always striven—that is, a more universal and yet more immediate way of expressing the human experience.

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fig. 13 untitled [subway], 1937

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Thus began his deconstruction of the figure (quite literally as you can see in the case of Oedipus, fig. 15) that would ultimately lead him to abstraction. While there are several levels on which to understand these paintings, what is essential to us here is Rothko’s breaking down of convention—both pictorial convention and conventional ways of viewing the subject, as he essentially turns the portrait inside out. He is stripping away societal referents and interfering with our typical conscious understanding of humanness in a social context. He is appealing to a more basic, a more primitive, part of us, bypassing the outside and going straight to the innards, as in the case of poor Oedipus. In this effort to communicate on a more elemental level, my father, like many of the artists around him, embraced myth as source of content for his works. Myth appealed to him because it embodied a more universal language full of referents grasped readily by a large number of people. More important, one of the cultural functions of myth is to grapple with the basic, existential questions of the human world. Myths address many of our most elemental thoughts and feelings, and do so in societies throughout the world. Thus, by using the language of myth, my father felt he could more directly address these basic human concerns and speak more immediately to our inner world. During this period, Rothko was wrestling actively with the writings of Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy informed a good deal of his thinking about both drama and myth, but it is Jung’s psychological theories of the unconscious that perhaps best clarify the new avenues my

fig. 14 subway (1935)

fig. 15 oedipus (1940)

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father was exploring. In addition to the personal unconscious, which Freud had brought to light a few decades earlier, Jung spoke of a collective unconscious, which was a part of the psyche common to all. His collective unconscious was essentially a repository of shared human experience, populated by “archetypes,” which were unchanging forms, figures, and concepts that consistently reappeared throughout mythic and religious tales. They are the “psychic molds” from which the recurring themes and symbols of myths are cast. Whether or not Rothko actively subscribed to Jungian theory, it is clear that Jung’s ideas concerning the power and origin of myth were thick in the air that my father was breathing at the time. Myth seemed like a direct channel to the core of our minds and souls. My father’s philosophical inquiries not only informed his painting; they occupied him enough that he stopped painting altogether for the better part of a year around 1941 to pursue his ideas about philosophy and art through his own research and writing. When he returned to painting, his work, although still neo-surrealist in style, started to move in a new direction.10 Perhaps influenced by Jung and intrigued by the power of unconscious and preconscious processes, Rothko’s painting became increasingly abstract and fanciful (fig. 16). The figures are now barely recognizable, and they seem to come from some earlier epoch in human existence, or perhaps further up (down?) the phylogenetic tree. They are as primitive as the “thoughts” they represent, a transliteration of sorts of the language of the unconscious. They speak not so much to our waking mind as to the world of dreams—those most elemental parts of ourselves that serve as the cradle of the emotions. As his work evolved, Rothko also began to incorporate more and more drawn elements into his paintings, and many of these have an automatic quality. It would seem that in his efforts to tap the rich communicative vein of the collective unconscious, he, for the first time in his career, began to leave part of his creative process to chance. By allowing his hand to follow, unbidden, the directives of his unconscious mind, he hoped to pull from those shared, elemental, species-shaping experiences resident in the collective unconscious, and in so doing communicate directly with that same core harbored in his viewer. Many works feature an essentially automatic drawing that became a central element of particularly his works on paper during the mid-1940s (see fig. 7). Line brought, or rather developed, another expressive aspect of the paintings. This is a sense of “action,” a word, as I noted earlier, not typically associated with my father’s work. But these works are dramas, the figures clearly vigorous on the stage. It is not only the movement of the figures that creates

fig. 16 processional (1943)

energy, however, but an increasing vibrancy of the palette. In contrast to the largely monolithic and often muted fields of the figurative work, here both figures and backgrounds are alive with color—colors in interaction, pushing and pulling against one another. Even more striking is the new assertion of the brush (fig. 17). It does not hide itself in even strokes but comes bursting to the fore, providing an active and sometimes turbulent field for the figures. These are not quiet works. They remind us of the violence that my father insisted was part of even his sunniest classic works. This is the volcanic energy of the primordial world, and although transformed as his style changed, it would remain an essential element of the work up through the last paintings. The active brushwork and spontaneous drawing are not simply a conduit to the unconscious mind or a direct expression of its contents, however. Rapid execution with brush and drawn line allowed my father a freedom that he had not previously enjoyed in his painted works. If the figures in his earlier realist works had often seemed contained and constrained, this was also true of the paintings themselves, which had an emotional intensity that was not fully unleashed. With the neo-surrealist works, Rothko was loosening the reins, allowing himself more uninhibited expression. These lines and brushstrokes are in fact bold gestures, dynamic and dramatic, and they foreshadow the still bolder and freer gestures he will make with color in his classic abstractions. They speak of a growing confidence in my father to speak louder and more clearly. It

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fig. 17 rites of lilith (1945)

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is the beginning of the audacity that will enable him to produce walls of raw emotion, mediated only by the simplest forms and immersive color. A movement toward greater and greater freedom is certainly the hallmark of the so-called Multiform period of my father’s work. The briefest stylistic period of his career, lasting from just 1946 to 1949, it constitutes the essential transitional step to the classic sectional work. It is also his first wholly original painting, not so clearly rooted in an older European tradition. As 1946 moved forward, the abstract figures of his surrealist work continued to break down until there was nothing left but the colors that had accompanied their shapes (figs. 18, 19; and see fig. 5). My father had abandoned mythic work in the previous two years in large part, I believe, because it constrained him. Although it provided a pathway to unconscious, emotion-laden thought processes, it was an inherently culturebound, socially referenced language. One needed to know the story of the myth and understand it in the context of its culture in order to fully engage with the painting. But more important, the language of myth was an adopted one—it

was not Rothko’s language. As myth receded to the role of subtext, color, which had helped carry the message of the mythic figures, came forward. By the end of 1946 color had become Rothko’s new vocabulary. In the Multiforms, Rothko has broken away from myth and has liberated himself completely from the figure, with all of its layers of received meaning and connotation. They are works of new freedom where he has also dispensed with line, which for all of its gestural power was perhaps ultimately a distraction from his direct communication of emotional content. We are now in a realm of pure abstraction, where the artist is unfettered by tradition and where the message of his paintings operates outside of social context. The colors, although carefully chosen, indicate a type of abandon. They push and clash against one another in amorphous shapes that barely contain their content. They are bold, encompassing the dynamism of line and brush from the previous period, looking to bring the inner emotional level to the surface. Yet for all the freedom and the openness of emotional content in the Multiforms, impact upon the inner world of the viewer has not been fully realized. Emotions are indeed coming to the surface, but it is as if they are not yet

fig. 18 no. 14, 1946

fig. 19 untitled, 1946

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ready for expression—they are not fully committed and lack specificity or clarity. Much of the raw power we will soon see in Rothko’s classic work is there, but it has not yet been harnessed into the hammer stroke of intent. The artist needs one more bold leap to strip away one further layer and bring focus to the inner world he is showing us. Observing these transitions—from surrealism to abstraction and then to the iconic color fields for which he is best known—one also observes hallmarks of Rothko’s personality. The sense of constraint in the earliest work was just that—not a closed-in personality but one that had been bound. One can feel the artist persistently looking for a route to unfettered expression. The conviction that suffused his philosophical writings on art in the 1930s and ’40s will now burst forth in walls of color, in emotion barely contained. There is a sense of exhilaration that will pervade all the work going forward. Even when he is depressed, Rothko will produce work that resonates with an intense personal involvement, a clear communication that he is putting all of himself into his painting. And that persistence, which carried him through two and half decades of laboring in obscurity, will drive him to continually refine the shape and particulars of his message. He clearly knows he has “arrived” in 1949/1950, that he has found his medium. The excitement is palpable—and nothing could make him less comfortable! Thus each new painting becomes an effort to rework and rethink and ultimately to speak more clearly. The classic works, or sectionals, are Rothko’s signature works, and are well known for the deep feelings they evoke and their ability to articulate the language of the sublime. These works touch us because they know exactly “where we live.” They speak to us, imparting a message akin to “This is what it feels like to feel this way.” They are essentially the painted expression of what it is to be human and alive; filled with joy and sorrow, aspiration and despair, fears and hopes, and fears about our hopes. Is this greatly different from what my father’s works had been saying for the previous thirty years? No, I’m not sure it is any different at all. It is simply that my father has summoned his full voice—bold, impassioned, confident, and if occasionally bombastic, never strident or shouted. What are the elements that allow the sectionals to touch us so deeply? Perhaps most important is that my father found definitively his universal language: color. Although different colors undoubtedly have different cultural connotations, my father was able to juxtapose them and present them in such a way that each painting functioned as its own world, where the colors had their own meaning,

fig. 20 no. 12, 1960

specific to the context of that painting. In this way, he made color his own language, but a language with the potential to speak to every viewer. The second important element is the sheer sweep, size, and resulting power of many of the classic works (fig. 20). While I have argued ad nauseam that many of the greatest works are small, I have come to realize that this is the viewpoint of someone who has already been fully entranced by the larger works. The large paintings envelop the viewer and invite him or her in. It is an invitation to a selfcontained world where one can lose oneself, and in the process find oneself. And for all the grandness of scale, it is an intimate experience; a world unique to that particular encounter and the emotional experience it holds. It is not an accident

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fig. 21 no. 16 [?], 1951 (detail)

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that many of the paintings are person-sized, and that my father urged curators to hang them close to the floor, where the viewer could all but step into them. Rothko wanted you and the painting to essentially look one another in the eye. The size of the paintings and the openness of their form not only invite the viewer in but give space for exploration. We have broken free of the earlier claustrophobia—there is room for the spirit to soar. In the case of the darker, more meditative works that became increasingly common in the late 1950s and ’60s, the invitation is more explicitly to turn inward, these typically wider paintings expanding to fill the horizon and help maintain our focus on our inner world. One must not overstate the freedom and openness of vistas presented by the classic works, however. Form is an absolutely critical part of these works, and it exerts essential control over the experience of viewing a Rothko painting. While we can easily lose ourselves in the cloudy nebulousness of Rothko’s rectangles, structure and form keep us rooted. These are frameless paintings, but they are not without borders. My father eschewed frames in part because the border already acts as a frame, directing the attention and defining the small world constituted by the painting. The backgrounds provide a stage for the drama of the painting, carefully balanced, as are each of the rectangles, for the scale of the emotional activity at play. Finally there are the multiple layers of paint my father built up to achieve the effects of color and luminosity that are keys to the emotional impact of the work. “Built up” is probably the wrong term, for in many cases the layers are very thin and semitransparent; a veil for another color to shine through (fig. 21). My sense of these layers is that they are a type of visual representation and expression of emotional complexity. The feelings that the paintings touch are by no means unidimensional—they are rich and multifaceted and inherently divergent. So that when we see layers of pink and green contributing to the makeup

of a seemingly brooding black, we know that we are dealing with neither greeting-card images nor greeting-card emotions. We are delving into many-layered constructions of the inner world. ■ ■ ■

I call the final section of this essay “Paradoxes.” I end with questions and contradictions not because I am trying to dodge conclusions but because those questions are an essential part of the conclusion. How could they not be, with work that speaks to us on the level of emotion? The chief paradox, as I see it, is that in Rothko’s work we are faced with art that strives to be universal and communicate at the most basic human level, yet the communication can occur meaningfully only with the individual, and the meaning derived can only be understood on a personal, individual level. My father not only acknowledged but espoused the need for his paintings to be seen by the solitary observer. He spoke of having small chapels dotted throughout the country where the lone traveler could stop and encounter one of his paintings.11 Similarly, the room of four Rothko paintings at the Phillips Collection in Washington, which he helped design, is really quite small and intimate. One quickly feels intruded upon if other viewers enter. And I think even the most impassioned devotees have failed to have a moving experience with a Rothko painting when surrounded by dozens of other visitors taking in the same retrospective exhibition. More troubling than the physical requirements for effectively viewing Rothko paintings are the implications for the meaning of the work that stem from this highly individualized approach. For what can we conclude about the content of the work if each person finds a different meaning? Can one viewer’s personal response be just as valid as the next? Does this not invite idiosyncrasy and, in fact, misunderstanding? How can I make the claim that one can come to know Rothko through his paintings when each person must be seeing a different Rothko? These questions might not give us so much pause with other artwork. After all, are we not speaking of the essence of interpretation here? But my father’s work thrives—in fact, only succeeds at all—because of the universality of its language. And yet we do not seem to be in the realm of universal conclusions. Further, my father was emphatic about the work’s content—“There is no such thing as good painting about nothing,” this painter of seemingly empty rectangles declared.12 At the same time he spoke about the progression of a painter’s work always moving “toward clarity.”13 But where can one find clarity in the cacophony of individualized responses? Is there, in fact, any specific content to his work?

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My “answers” to these paradoxes may help elucidate a path to understanding and can also offer a means to find something more concrete amid this seeming morass of subjectivity. To my mind, the content, the “truth” of the work, lies in interaction—the interaction between painting and viewer. I will even posit that these are hardly paintings at all, but more suggestions or ideas, expressed through color, that only come into being and take on specific meaning—that is, personal meaning—at the moment of that interaction. The painting—and ultimately the painter—has a unique dialogue with each individual, just as we can discuss the same topic and even make the same arguments with different persons and find that the conversations yield very different results. What is occurring with Rothko’s work is a type of chemistry between artist and viewer—a primal, preverbal communication—mediated by the painting. It is not that the paintings are without content—they speak volumes—but communication only occurs in the meeting with the viewer. The individual brings his or her own material to that interaction, and meaning comes into being when the content of the painting and the content of the viewer come together. The paintings speak a universal, deeply human language, but we still hear with different ears that bring us different meanings; meanings that will reflect, in part, our own inner worlds. The Rothko you come to know will thus be different from the one that I or anyone else will come to know. Just as two people can have the same conversation with any given individual, even at the same time, and come away with different impressions of him or her, so too our sense of Rothko derives from conversation with his paintings. We may agree that the woman you and I met in the park has a big personality, but whereas I find her charming and absorbing, you find her overbearing. Were we to spend more time with her, we would still have different reactions, but I imagine that we would have far more agreement about the essence of her makeup. A Rothko painting functions no differently. It benefits from time spent in real engagement, and it reveals more nuance of its personality—and perhaps of Rothko’s personality—as you get to know it better. But that understanding, that recognition of persona, is always mediated by our own inner workings. We should have no illusions that we can escape subjectivity, and ultimately, with Rothko, to attempt to do so is to avoid the very crux of his artistic aim, the very mechanism by which his art functions. A consideration of my father’s work from the last decade of his life—the 1960s—helps clarify, I believe, this process of interaction (see fig. 20). Some viewers struggle with the work of the 1960s, suggesting most typically that the

generally darker colors are less appealing. I don’t believe, however, that this is the primary reason for their difficulty. For what began to change subtly, several years after my father’s palette began to darken, was the means he used to express the emotional content of the work. As he stripped away still more layers in search of clarity, the paintings became formally tighter, the rectangles more regular in shape, the layers of color reduced, and brushwork less and less visible until it reappeared again in dramatic fashion in the last two years of his life. This further simplification of his style can give the impression of less energy; of emotional restraint in comparison to the outpourings of feeling in the sensuous and extroverted works of the 1950s. It is not the case, however, that these works are any less driven by emotion, or less formed from it, than their predecessors. It is simply that the emotional material has become highly focused, and the content more specific. Color still carries the message, looking to engage with our innermost selves, but rather than bright, broad brushstrokes of feeling, we are presented with more pinpointed emotions, expressed through subtle interplay of very carefully juxtaposed colors. The weight and spatial relationships of the forms have also become very precisely balanced. Some of the earlier freedom is now gone—one could almost accuse my father of exerting a type of emotional control over the viewer. There is another crucial aspect of the 1960s work that makes it more difficult—and I would argue greater—than the work of the 1950s. Rothko is, quite simply, demanding more from his viewer. The demand is not in terms of harder work to understand the painting. It is an emotional demand—you as viewer need to bring more of yourself to the painting. The color does not leap off the canvas or lure you in the same way. You need to meet these paintings more than halfway, and offer more of your own emotional input. The primary visual mechanism responsible for this essential change in the character of the paintings is reflectivity. Whereas the many layers of color in the 1950s paintings gave them a luminous glow from within, the rectangles of the 1960s are often less permeable and face the viewer with a reflecting sheen. Many times, forms of quite similar color will interact with one another through subtle differences in this reflectivity. This technique probably stemmed from my father’s work on the Seagram mural commission in the late 1950s (fig. 22). Here he was often painting burgundy rectangles on a burgundy background, causing the rectangles to stand out from the background by their greater reflectivity. While the visual impact of this change in technique can be relatively subtle, the emotional impact is quite significant. The 1950s paintings invited you in. The 1960s paintings are keeping you more at arm’s length. It is, after all, hard to

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fig. 22 seagram mural, section 2 (1959)

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lose yourself in a painting that is shining back at you. It is not, however, that the work of the 1960s is cold or unemotive. It simply makes more explicit what had been implicit all along—these paintings are about you. Rothko is, almost literally, holding up a mirror for you to see yourself in. The clearest and most all-encompassing example of this effect is the Rothko Chapel in Houston (fig. 23). Not simply a group of murals but an entire space designed by my father in the 1960s, this is generally regarded as the very culmination of his work. Those who don’t like the chapel and the atmosphere my father created speak of it as a cold place, with paintings that are unyielding, monochromes that don’t engage the viewer visually or emotionally. There is simply not enough there to stimulate. These viewers are absolutely correct, and have given what I am sure are accurate accounts of their experience. There was something missing at the chapel, an absolutely crucial element: themselves. This is not to fault those people—the chapel is a very unsettling place. As soon as you enter, you feel very much alone. Nothing comes from the paintings. It is all about you. For some people, this is a most welcome gift. For others, it is essentially a formula for an immediate existential crisis. On my first visit I had just such a reaction. I spent two hours alone at the chapel one morning in 1996. It was before opening time, and everything was absolutely silent. But instead of the profound

meditative experience I had expected, I had to fight a very strong compulsion to flee. I felt utterly isolated in that empty space, like a tiny speck in a great universe. I resisted the urge to leave, however, and as I walked around the octagon, surrounded by huge murals on all sides, I began to realize that what I was uncomfortable with was not the paintings or the space. I was uncomfortable with myself. I was in a room full of mirrors—dark, unwavering mirrors—and I was standing at their point of coincidence so that they were all reflecting back on me. The next hour was a process of adjusting to looking at myself, and only myself, and learning from what I saw. It was a deeply rewarding experience, but truly unnerving. And I will confess that, despite good intentions and a deep fascination, I have only rarely made solo ventures into the chapel since. The Rothko Chapel makes patently clear what I have learned is true of all Rothko works. They yield only what we put in. The paintings only “work,” they will only speak to our inner worlds, when we are open to their invitation or suggestion. Ultimately, to understand a Rothko is to understand what the painting helps us see in ourselves.

fig. 23 interior, west walls, rothko chapel

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“Refrigerators! Big, squashy refrigerators,” my college girlfriend proclaimed with glee. Nodding with excitement, her Spanish-speaking great-grandmother understood just enough to signal her agreement. My father, who bemoaned the commercialization of art, who ran screaming from the functional, who would rather have died than decorate, who chafed beneath the yoke of his first wife’s jewelry-making tasks, had just had his work thrust decisively and unceremoniously into the world of the utilitarian. His art, certainly not for the last time, had become a lifestyle product. In the moment, I laughed, and I think my father would have laughed too, but the interaction made me ask myself just how often similar scenarios have played themselves out. Was the scene I had just witnessed a manifestation of a broader tendency—a need—to recast the amorphous into a readily identified object? Not just with Rothko, but foremost with Rothko, what was this urge to render the unfamiliar something recognizable? What psychological necessities instinctually make us attempt to transform the abstract into the concrete? Is there something inherently unstable in abstraction? Something threatening? Something ominous? Or is there really an irresistible suggestion in the format of a classic Rothko, a facet so basic that it compels viewers to make the painting something other than a painting? There was more than an element of the truth to my girlfriend’s association, especially for anyone so blessed to have experienced that decade known as the ne plus ultra in all aspects of design and fashion, the 1970s. The refrigerators of that era were not only rectangular but also sported a darkish band of color around the perimeter, with the ever so slightly lighter main area of the panel melding into it with a soft, feathery edge. Very Rothkoesque, indeed (fig. 24). Then there were the colors; deep, muted earth tones—rusts, mustard, puce. I was fortunate enough to grow up with appliances in a tone that aspired

to olive, perhaps an olive just past its prime. “Menopause green,” a friend called it. Undeniably, because of the basic geometric “rectangular” shape featured in Rothko paintings of the 1950s and ’60s, there is a broad spectrum of real world items that might be evoked by Rothko paintings. They seem to invite free association—my friends or acquaintances were always particularly keen to share theirs with me. Indeed, I had not been married twenty minutes before a trio of my newly acquired uncles inserted themselves between me and my wife, proudly declaring the paintings “screen doors.” My experience is hardly unique, however, as this way of “fixing” a Rothko in the familiar occurs in print nearly as often as in speech. A classic New Yorker cartoon of the 1960s, for example, renders a Rothko as a sunset—or perhaps it is the other way around (fig. 25). Nor are scholars immune to the need to connect abstract Rothko paintings to worldly events and images, more than one historian suggesting that my father’s 1969–70 Black and Grey canvases repfig. 24 refrigerator with resented lunar landscapes, then very topical in the spacewoman (c. 1971–75) context of the first landing on the moon.1 Even associations that acknowledge the works’ essential blankness speak to our need to fill them up with images. The commonly applied window analogy is a prime example. First, it is a response to the basic rectangular shape and the division of the painting into different “panes” by means of thin bands of color, met by the viewer’s need to reify the abstraction into a familiar object. But the object is itself very telling—telling of our need to explain away the perceived emptiness by placing its emptiness in the service of things that fill it up. For when we look through a window, we hardly notice it. It is, at least by poetic definition, a passage or portal to things beyond. What lies through that Rothko window is a function of our own imagination; it can be as “real,” as physical, as recognizable, as we like. We commence a process, when we gaze through a window pane-ting, that gets our focus off the work itself and on to what it might be. The movie screen has also gained traction as a way to conceive of a classic Rothko.2 Our typical notion of a movie screen is something that is filled with

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fig. 25 james stevenson, first published in the new yorker (august 29, 1964)

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figures, with action, with stories. It is essentially a vehicle for narrative. Again we find our tendency to move away from the painted image and toward familiar experience. We need to jump quickly to the painting’s potential to communicate images that are not only commonplace but also serve to illustrate and animate any ideas that might be present. And notice how readily we fill that screen. An empty screen is not in a stable, quiescent state. Instead it is inherently unfulfilled, unnerving us with its lack of life and drawing our attention to absent, essential elements; that is, the focus is clearly on what is missing rather than on what is there. There is a type of nervous anticipation of what is to come that is part excitement but also part anxiety at the prospect of being left with a void. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s brilliant photographs of theater interiors capture much of this feeling (fig. 26). The sense of loneliness and of nostalgia is undeniable, as well as the bitter irony of our near worship of the iconic, monolithic screen. But perhaps most palpable is our discomfort at the emptiness, the uninterpretable blank, and the lack of instruction or direction issuing from its silence. We are so used to being told what to do and where to think. Even simple stories or uncomplicated images, bathed as they nearly always are in social cues and context, supply these directives in subtle ways. Screens are a place for presentation, for ideas that come at us. The interaction is unidirectional and our role is almost always passive. Without input from the screen, the twenty-first-century being faces a profound and existentially unbearable uncertainty.

fig. 26 hiroshi sugimoto, al ringling, baraboo (1995)

As you read the other essays in this volume, you will come to understand that this is not the Rothko way. His paintings require an active viewer. As he famously pronounced: “A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token.”3 Yet we must be careful not to overestimate the power and value of our role as viewer, lest we reduce a Rothko to nothing. A classic Rothko cannot be a blank screen, since that suggests that there is no content to the painting, and Rothko made clear that the content of his art was primary. It is not a vacuum to be filled, because that suggests that there is no painting there, and Rothko emphasized the essential physicality of his work; that it was an object in and of itself. Nor is it a movie screen, something onto which we project; the randomness and solipsism central to such a process are very much at odds with both the specificity of meaning and the universality of communication that are hallmarks of Rothko’s approach to painting. That road leads quickly back to the refrigerator. Such an approach is too personal, and however lighthearted our particular image may be, it pulls us away from the process of discovering what that painting is about, and what it might really mean to us. Our struggles with Rothko paintings and the lack of direction suggested by their abstraction echo some of the primary philosophical preoccupations of the twentieth century. Thinkers and artists alike among the Dadaists, the Structuralists, and the Post-Structuralists addressed the dangers of reading a work of art through a culturally tinged lens and pointed out the dead ends and distor-

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fig. 27 rené magritte, la trahison des images (1928/29)

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tions to which such an approach inevitably leads, if not recognized and discussed as such. Whether it is Duchamp’s urinal-cum-fountain or Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas un pipe (fig. 27)—the inspiration for this essay—the Dadaists repeatedly lampooned the overlays of the conventional and the familiar that color our thinking and interaction with the world around us. Playful and provocative as their pieces are, their message is dead serious. As we allow our perceptions to be channeled by norms of culture and language, as we view the world through glasses tinted by fashion, by commerce, by the quotidien, we limit our horizons and foreclose the possible. Worse still, we misread and distort what is actually there, transforming much of what we see and hear simply into what we expect without even thinking about what we are doing. Few were more direct about this problem than Magritte himself, whose signature early work has come to be known by the disavowal written below the “non-pipe,” but whose actual title is The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images). If Magritte suggests that the problem lies in the image itself (and in fact, I think his title is more of a warning), his philosophical heirs, the Structuralist critics, were quite clear that the “crime” is committed by the perceiver. Their focus was primarily the written word, and here they repeatedly underlined our excessive trust in language, our ready acceptance that the letters of a word actually add up to mean what we assume they mean. They reminded us that it is no more than cultural convention that makes us accept that the word bird refers to a class of flying animals, and that when it comes to figurative language (the close cousin of visual art) the potential for misunderstanding and compromised communication is exponentially greater. The essentially arbitrary pairing of “signifier” (that is, any word, but especially figurative language or a work of art) and “signified” (that is, a con-

crete meaning or object derived from or referenced by the signifier) becomes an unthinking act that makes material what should remain fluid. We allow conventional thinking to control the interpretive act, and as a result, convention comes to dictate content. Such ready-made acceptance of meaning boxes in our experience and gives a false sense of certainty in a world rife with contradiction and all the richer in its many shades of grey. This is of course, a wildly reductionistic treatment of a complex philosophy, but I believe this is the essence of what drives that machine. We have a natural impulse—or, depending on your politics, a socially/culturally/corporately/governmentally imposed impulse—to make actual what is still in a state of becoming; to render object from concept. It is not a great leap to see how this process comes into play in the case of a classic Rothko painting, and to see how potentially damaging it is to our interaction with the work. Our need to make the painted image something, to read it as a reference to a thing we can recognize, takes us away from both the experience of the painting itself and our experience of ourselves in the context of that painting. Hence the warning from Robert Goldwater, one of the few critics my father felt understood his work: “Likening them [Rothko abstractions] to Greek drama, gathering from them the notes of impending doom, or seeing in them the symbolic action of storm clouds gathering in an immense horizon . . . such literary fancies are program notes that relax the visual hold of these canvases, filter their immediacy, and push away their enigmatic, gripping presence.”4 There is a particular irony that we should look for the familiar in the presence of a classic Rothko, because my father abandoned the figure and embraced abstraction largely to create the possibility of this other type of experience; an experience freed from the residue of the everyday. He intentionally stepped away from the figure, from myth, from story and anecdote, in the hopes of breaking the association between the objects he painted and the cultural milieu in which they would be read. As he wrote: “It was with the utmost reluctance that I found that [the figure] did not meet my needs. Whoever used it mutilated it. No one could paint the figure as it was and feel that he could produce something that could express the world. I refuse to mutilate and had to find another way of expression.”5 Hence, as the 1940s progressed, Rothko abstracted the figure and abstracted it still more in an effort to undermine its links to the familiar world, but he found that in doing so he merely disfigured it, and did little to help his viewer break his associations. Only “pure” abstraction would allow him to clear the slate, placing us, he hoped, at the null point where all directions were equally accessible and all destinations equidistant.

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But if abstraction freed the artist in his attempt to express the world, it did not necessarily free the viewer to experience the artwork outside his or her customary frames of reference. I think even the staunchest Rothko devotees will acknowledge that they needed to learn to do so, and that while the paintings did indeed help them, it was a process of fighting against what had become second nature. Those who profess the profound connection they feel with Rothko paintings almost always, in my experience, present that experience as a liberation—a newfound freedom from a previous bondage. It is a break that is not so easily made. The difficulty of interacting with the artwork outside our previous notions of painting as representation is attested to by the art community’s de facto refusal or inability to do so. Despite the striking ironies involved, scholars, curators, and critics—in my experience often casually and repeatedly—group Rothko works into “landscapes” (wider than they are tall) and “portraits” (taller than they are wide), sometimes even remarking that the paintings have the feel of landscapes while possessing the proportions of portraits. Almost in spite of themselves, they insist on placing the works into the old boxes even when they do not fit. And the labels on those boxes are clearly representational even when the content of the paintings indicates otherwise. This dogged refusal to break with a representational mindset when viewing a Rothko painting finds its most conspicuous example in art historian Anna Chave, one of America’s most respected contemporary art scholars. Chave devotes much of her 1989 book on Rothko to her theory that his seemingly abstract paintings continued to directly reference the figure and aspects of the landscape throughout his classic period. Rothko’s shapes are “signifiers” of the figure, and while that figure is typically hidden or obscured, she resolutely sees his art as “mimetic.”6 While Chave’s argument is quite nuanced and she stops short of declaring Rothko’s work directly representational, within her metaphorical language, she ultimately maintains that Rothko’s “subject matter” is derived from, and expressive of, the figure and figurative art, even in his most apparently abstract work. We should note that Chave’s position is presented not so much as a retrenching as it is a radical reconsideration of the accepted “fact” of Rothko’s embrace of abstraction. And yet, no matter how unorthodox Chave’s position, its revisionist thinking remains symptomatic of the seemingly unshakable biases that creep into the way we look at Rothko. We cannot seem to avoid the inclination to think of Rothko’s work in ways that suggest images. Here I am ultimately less concerned about the viewer’s ability to understand Rothko, because I think many viewers, despite this tendency, find their way to Rothko’s language. I am

more interested in examining how Rothko paintings serve as a psychological barometer for the viewer. What does our reaction to the representational void in Rothko paintings tell us about ourselves? What does abstraction trigger in us that we so instinctively deny it? What does this pull (or is it flight?) to the image tell us about our needs, our desires, our fears? There is no question that an abstract painting places a greater burden on the viewer than a figurative one. The image it presents demands to be understood, rather than simply recognized. And not only must we understand what the work is about, we must understand why the painter painted it. When we see a Turner seascape there is, even in the late works, a degree of narrative content that gives us a foothold for subject matter. Further, sea and sky evoke a certain mood; they suggest a quest that might be a journey for the soul as well. They trigger a swelling of emotion based on experience, or perhaps lack of experience, instilling in the landlocked, for example, a longing for uncharted waters. And we also focus upon the technical challenges for the artist, the ways that he or she captures how the objects might really appear as well as representing them in a way that will stir the imagination beyond the limitations of the scene depicted on the canvas. Similarly, with a Goya portrait, we note the social cues present in the rendering and, even at a remove of two hundred years and perhaps an ocean or two, understand something about the courtly position or social standing of the sitters. We can also know that the “why” was, on some level, no more profound than that Goya was commissioned and this is how he made his livelihood, while on another, he clearly took great pride in depicting a cultural and psychological subtext beneath the remarkably unblemished surface of his formidable technique. By contrast, when we are faced with one of Albers’s Homage to the Square paintings (fig. 28), all such understanding quickly breaks down. On the one hand, we can clearly perceive concentric squares, but we quickly need to believe that there must be something more that we are missing, because this level of interpretation fails the “why” test. Why would someone paint similar patterns of squares over and over? There certainly wasn’t anyone commissioning him to do so, and it is not an image that readily fires the imagination. And while they were no doubt much harder to paint than a quick glance would reveal, these canvases do not suggest a painter engaged in a rooster-like strut of his abilities with the brush. We are thus faced with an unspoken demand to find meaning beyond that immediately communicated by the objects in the painting itself, and without the aid of the typical social and narrative contexts implied in representational works.

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fig. 28 josef albers, study for homage to the square: light rising (1950, altered 1959)

And what is our reaction? As often as not, disbelief, disinterest, or anger. Even sixty years on. The burden imparted by the abstract work is typically unlooked for and unwelcome, and the surprise, the disorientation and confusion, can be humiliating. Much easier to be dismissive. The strict geometry of Albers’s abstraction makes it an even more difficult case than Rothko’s, except that Albers presents a more readily recognized object, and there is an air of a formalized study about the work (reinforced by the title) that helps explain intent. Rothko’s shapes are not really any shape at all, and the compositions lack the rigor of a study in form or color. They seem to ask us even more insistently to delve for meaning and wrestle for content. The reaction of the uninitiated is no less hostile. Abstraction, and perhaps particularly Rothko’s brand of abstraction, is unsettling for the viewer on the most basic level because the image it presents is unfamiliar. Even today, when my father’s classic paintings have become so well known, their form may be familiar, but they remain unexplained, and it is still hard to understand, in any immediate way, what they represent. And thus our reflexive reactions tend to dominate. We distrust what we do not recognize, a response no doubt stemming from inborn self-preservation instincts that lead us to see the new as potentially dangerous and, more than likely, hostile. This is the same inclination that leads the three-year-old to regard the latest vegetable placed on his or her tray with deep suspicion, and the science fiction or Western film hero to shoot any aliens or foreigners first and interrogate them later. It is a natural reaction—per-

haps not our most mature, not our most “civilized,” but one that has kept more than a few of our species from becoming someone else’s meal. We fear what we do not understand, and sometimes with good reason (although I have noticed a dearth of carnivorous canvases roaming the city in recent years). The corollary to this is the comfort we find in the familiar. This is the seemingly involuntary impulse that leads Americans to seek out McDonald’s hamburgers in every port around the world. There is comfort in reliving what we know—it is safe, and it is a great deal less work. Rothko’s abstractions do not dwell in this “comfort zone”; they present several hurdles for the viewer by comparison to a figurative painting. They can be confusing and humiliating, they can make us feel wary as they beckon us into the unknown, and interacting with them involves considerably more effort. They require a much more active response to yield their content. Viewers’ reflexive wariness in the presence of Rothko paintings is all the more ironic in that Rothko paintings engage with us, quite naturally, on the instinctual level. Rothko spent years honing his artistic language in search of a universal mode of communication—a visual idiom that would speak with us on a very primitive, precognitive level, addressing that which was most basic and human in us. No matter the background of his viewer or the epoch in which he or she dwelt, my father sought the same intense connection through an artwork that was outside time and place. The sensuality of his painting engaged the emotions on an immediate, visceral plane, while the abstract image kept it free from socially mediated associations. Further, the concrete way in which his objects filled space gave the paintings a reality and tangibility missing in works that sought only visual realism. My girlfriend’s description of the Rothko refrigerators as “squashy” touches on exactly this element. She understood, on the same basic level, the paintings’ inherently tactile nature, their physicality, and specifically, a certain softness that makes them far more approachable than a typical refrigerator. This tangibility is crucial because the sense of touch is our most primitive sense, the first one we develop as beings, and the one we most trust as a gauge of reality (“Pinch me so I know I’m not dreaming”). But even as we note the degree of familiarity that stems from communication on a very basic level, we must also note that the primal possesses its own degree of mystery; instinctual, but foreign to our more conscious selves. Our first associations to the word are of the dark and the raw, something potentially wild and unpredictable. We are more accustomed to communication bedecked in the usual cultural finery, language mediated by function, images which are themselves descriptive or, at the minimum, imply narrative. When stripped of

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these, art becomes threatening; unknown because we do not know how we know it, unsettling because its familiarity is unfamiliar. Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those

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willing to take the risks.7

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On one level a “welcome aboard” to fellow travelers, on the other, a warning to those not certain they want to take the ride, Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb’s wellknown letter to the New York Times serves notice that theirs is not an easy journey. That journey is difficult not because it takes us places we have not seen. After all, we know “orange,” and we know the basic geometry of the Rothkothian plane. The journey is difficult because it takes us inward to places that, perhaps, we do not want to see. That primitive communication can, in fact, only communicate if there is a primitive part of us also conversant in the language. And we, so busy with the doings of the material world in a complex society, do not particularly wish to acknowledge that primitive side and the foundation it provides to our personhood. The irrational. The prerational. These are uncomfortable places because our rational minds do not fully understand how they work. And because we cannot control them, their output is seen as undermining rather than enhancing the products of our more conscious minds. They reside in the darkness of the unexplored. To make use of them, we must overcome that instinctual fear we discussed earlier. The dark is not “evil,” it does not have hostile intent; it simply harbors the unknown. It can hold danger but it can also provide tremendous opportunity—to explore things we have not seen, to understand better what we believed we understood. That is the essence of a classic Rothko painting, its very purpose. It is an invitation to look again at what we thought we already knew: an invitation to open up the refrigerator, to step through the screen door, to plunge into the underbelly of what we are, far away from the practical, and out from under the dictatorship of reason. As we espouse these less quantifiable elements and become more comfortable with the uncertain, our need to make all things familiar will diminish. A Rothko painting can become something that speaks an intelligible language to us; a language that requires us not to panic in the face of the foreign and instead listen with our whole person to sounds that will resonate in places we may have long ignored. The artwork need not be threatening, and we need not transform it into a household item to make it safe. There is another darkness, however, that alarms us even more. This is the darkness of Sugimoto’s fully illuminated screen; the blankness, the emptiness

that we do not know how to fill up. I suggested earlier that our discomfort here arises from feeling forced to be active, to create content and narrative and meaning, to find internal elements to substitute for the lack of the external. We may not wish to explore our innards and we may not wish to synthesize a story where none is presented, but there is a more basic fear underlying this confrontation by the blank. What if there really is nothing else? What if our task is not simply a matter of filling a blank that is not yet filled? What if the blank is unfillable? What if that emptiness is absolute? What are these works saying about the substance and meaning of our existence? Rothko paintings raise these existential fears because their simplicity, their vast open planes, can suggest the void. We jokingly make them into nothings, that is, into the most conventional of objects, because for them to be truly nothing is too frightening. The idea that the paintings are full-wall proclamations of meaninglessness, of the arbitrary, of the emptiness of life, is very unsettling indeed. Even more so when the artwork has been endorsed by a museum that has seen fit to give it a place of prominence in one of its galleries. Some viewers may try frantically to fill up the void with aspects of themselves. More simply slam the door. If you look squarely into the Rothko void, however, its fullness becomes much more evident. There is nothing nihilistic about these paintings, not even the most austere late works. The human hand and the human spirit infuse these works, and in the simple act of painting, Rothko affirmed that spirit. If we feel that, it becomes easier to see that the paintings suggest depth, not emptiness. And if we see that, it becomes easier to say, “There is something there,” knowing that the painting will respond, “Yes, there is.” This exercise that we conduct with a Rothko painting is very much what we carry out each day more broadly in our lives: we affirm the meaningfulness of our existence. When we stop frantically filling our world with refrigerators and screen doors and televisions and running shoes, we can see that we do not have to fill the void with something, we can simply be part of the something. Indeed, our existence creates that somethingness. To communicate with a Rothko painting is to feel that something, to experience the substance of being, the substance of our humanness. Perhaps not to see it or speak it or describe it but simply to know that it is there. It is a process that is, at once, so very abstract and so very concrete.

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The Quiet Dominance of Form

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Color. Always the first word one associates with Rothko paintings. Bright, resplendent color, dark, somber color, audacious reds, luminous yellows, haunting blues, earthy browns and wines, mysterious blacks and charcoals. These colors attract us, seduce us, with the sensuality that Rothko asserted was the essential mode of communication for the visual arts.1 They mesmerize our eyes, trigger our emotions, stimulate untouched nerves, and enwrap us in a full mind/body experience. That experience is so powerful in part because there is so little to interfere with color’s impassioned play upon and below the surface. Indeed, color so dominates the canvas amid rectangular fields so simple, it is as if Rothko had cleared all else from the stage to allow color to perform its own virtuosic dance. And yet I must assert, based upon an understanding distilled from a lifelong involvement with my father’s work, that it is not the color with all its brilliance, but the form with its comparative blandness, which directs the action. Color may be the dancer, engaging the viewer frontally with its undeniable energy, but it is kept on a deceptively tight rein by the forms that define its arena and shape its movement. That dancer may be the one to shine, but her performance is crafted under the careful guidance of the space and shape, directors who help elevate skill and beauty to the level of art. Our instincts want to fight against this view: it is hard to get excited about the lowly rectangle. It is truly the most pedestrian of shapes—even the circle or triangle would have been more engaging. The square meanwhile, courtesy Malevich, has gained an air of mystery and command that is unlikely to be equaled. Rothko embraced the rectangle, all the same, and we can bet that this most deliberate and calculating of painters did not come by this shape casually. Instead, he chose the rectangle because it provided precisely the formal attributes he needed to express his ideas most fully, most clearly, and yes, most passionately. Let us take a more in-depth look and examine how this might be.

Ironically, it was in considering this aspect of my father’s oeuvre, perhaps the most technical—dare I say formalistic—that I treat in this book, that I gleaned one of my deeper understandings of his psyche. Examining his paintings in light of their structure reveals an artist who left very little to chance. Those blunted rectangles that seem so informal are anything but, and the carelessly executed shapes arranged, it would appear, nonchalantly on the canvas are indeed the product of purposeful design. My father may have wanted you to believe that his paintings were executed offhand, and a given work may suggest a relaxed approach, but in truth it is all rhetoric. Offhand and relaxed were not in my father’s vocabulary. Rothko’s classic work is so synonymous with color that some have suggested that the paintings are in fact about color, that the medium is indeed the message. These assertions have ranged from the dismissal of Rothko paintings as merely decorative, to modernist and minimalist notions of color studies being sufficient as art in themselves, to more psychological and mystical discussions of the symbolic meaning of the specific colors he employs. Even Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, one of my father’s first champions and an art lover of renowned sensitivity, presumed as much: “Am I right . . . color means more to you than any other element?” Phillips asked. To which my father replied, “No, not color, but measures.”2 Here, Rothko makes plain that form is more central to him than color, but this is just one of many instances where he asserted more generally that he was “not interested in color.”3 While I would not recommend doing so in all instances, I think in this case we may take my father at his word. It is not simply that he continually argued for the content of his paintings and the philosophical underpinnings of his work, or that viewers and critics have insisted upon the profundity of what he produced. No, to see Rothko paintings as primarily concerned with color fundamentally misapprehends the world of meaning in which they function and, just as essentially, misapprehends how that meaning is produced. Color for Rothko is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a language through which he can express his ideas about the world. Color is not the object of those ideas, and in fact Rothko is quite wary of color given free rein. He indicates his caution in the following discussion of Cézanne’s move away from Impressionist technique: Essentially Cézanne was a pragmatist. He saw clearly that with the pursuit of Monet’s preoccupations, all visual phenomena would be disintegrated into a series of equally material color blobs; that it would be the dissolution of all reality, for the result would be an ultimate monotony wherein the similar would annihilate all

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differences; a situation which is not consistent with our conscious awareness. For he knew that man was sensitive to limitations, to differences of weight or sharply

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differentiated forms, and to a variety of intrinsic properties.4

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Cézanne, to Rothko’s mind, pulls away from Impressionism because that movement deals only in color and therefore lies outside reality as we perceive it. And we can note that despite Monet’s fabulously rich color palette, it is the “monotony” of the material blobs that catches my father’s attention and deeply concerns him. So much so that he sees them leading to the “dissolution of all reality.” By extension, it would appear that, for Rothko, it is through form and shape that we make sense of the reality of things. Just as crucial here as the formal questions he raises is Rothko’s reference to an experientially based reality. For Rothko, the human, and human experience, is always the benchmark from which we must measure and to which we must return. Painting that has no relation to the human, that does not express ideas central to human consciousness, is ultimately irrelevant, perhaps even decadent. To Rothko’s mind, Cézanne is a greater painter than Monet because he recognizes and embraces this central human reference, and goes on to produce paintings of real weight and substance, rather than studies of visual effects and perceptual phenomena. It is therefore essential, as we examine the compositional factors in Rothko’s paintings, that we always keep in view this human yardstick as a measure of the relevance of what we discover. While it was not commonplace for my father to actually disavow the importance of color, it is remarkable how frequently, at least in his early writings, he assigned it a seemingly subordinate role and certainly did not place it in the pantheon of the artist’s tools that one would naturally expect from a consideration of his paintings. I will share here a few more examples, first from the aptly named “Scribble Book,” a journal filled with notes and ideas, many of which would later find expression in the essays of his unfinished treatise The Artist’s Reality: “Pictorial function of a color involves aggressions advancing or regressions coming forward or going back.”5 Rothko thus sees the role of color in specifically (and at least in this instance, exclusively) formal terms. He does not speak of its expressive, emotive, or evocative qualities, but instead strictly of its relationship to movement. While we can find statements among his writings that counterbalance this view of color, this note does show us that, from the very first, Rothko was preoccupied in active ways with formal questions, and that color, as often as not, played a role subservient to those formal goals.

Rothko would go much further, however, in asserting the dominant position of form for painters: The fundamental unity of conception lies in the kind of space the artist employs, and the kind of space he uses will determine how color, line, texture, chiaroscuro, and every other item contributes to this movement. For all of these elements intrinsically have the potential to produce that motion. Color advances and recedes. Line gives the direction, the attitude, and the tilt of shapes. The functions of each of these elements in the plastic scheme are unique, additive, and essential, but before these can be dealt with we must discuss the world of space, for it determines how the others will function in the picture [my emphasis].6

In this passage from The Artist’s Reality (which may indeed derive from the “Scribble Book” note from several years before) Rothko is explicit about the primacy of compositional form in painting. The contribution of color, along with the other “plastic” elements, is acknowledged, but the authoritative role of what he calls “space” is quite clear. With other artists I would be very cautious to equate space with form. In the case of at least my father’s classic work, however, the very openness and spaciousness of his chosen form seem to bring the two together asymptotically. Thus when he champions space, he is speaking, I believe, of that dancer’s stage which I described earlier, and he is intently aware of that stage’s critical place in allowing the dancer’s performance to come fully to fruition. In the following chapter of The Artist’s Reality my father goes one step further, taking the role of space/form to the all-important level of meaning. This is the artist who said that “there is no such thing as good painting about nothing,”7 so we know with confidence the critical place that meaning holds for Rothko. And in this passage he is unequivocal about the source of meaning in painted artwork: If one understands, or if one has the sensibility to live in, the particular kind of space to which a painting is committed, then he has obtained the most comprehensive statement of the artist’s attitude toward reality. Space, therefore, is the chief plastic manifestation of the artist’s conception of reality. It is the most inclusive category of the artist’s statement and can very well be called the key to the meaning of the picture. It constitutes a statement of faith, an a priori unity, to which all of the plastic elements are in a state of subservience [my emphasis].8

While my father wrote substantially and substantively about his philosophical ideas concerning art, I do not believe that these writings are sufficient to fully explain his attitude toward form and color. These writings are from relatively

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early in his career, and although, as I have pointed out elsewhere, their arguments apply readily to his best-known work, that cannot change the fact that the essays were written nearly a decade before his stylistic breakthrough to his sectional canvases.9 More importantly, however, I think we must remain cautious about relying upon what the artist tells us when looking to understand how his paintings function—I know that my father would have been the first to issue such cautions. However fully he may have expressed his philosophical views on art, the fact remains that he was an artist, not a writer or philosopher. Ultimately, the proof of the painting is in the viewing, and we must come to our own understanding of how his compositions achieve their effects. So let us return to the rectangle, that shape he explored so doggedly over two decades’ time, to see if we can find the source of its appeal and power for this artist. It is worth noting, as we undertake this examination, that while Rothko’s color palette varied widely, his commitment to the rectangle was nearly unwavering (more on this later). Whether one sees this as a sign of its dominance or subservience will perhaps reflect one’s own personality—whether one values the constant and defining elements or things dynamic and of the moment. What is clear is that for my father, the rectangle offered tremendous flexibility, seemingly getting out of the way and allowing him to say whatever he had to say within its borders, without drawing attention to itself. As I noted before, it is not an exciting shape, but therein lies its self-effacing beauty: it is almost an “un-shape.” What, we may ask, is the shape of that un-shape; what is it that makes the rectangle so generic? The rectangle is quite simply what we see every time we open our eyes, regardless of what we are looking at. It is so omnipresent that we are rarely aware that it is there. But whether we are conscious of it or not, the rectangle presides, roughly the shape of our field of vision, the box of the lens through which we view the world. And indeed, that rectangle of our vision is not bordered by the rigid right angles of a screen but is instead rounded, not fully defined at the edges, much like the rectangles Rothko created anew for each painting. Thus I think we can understand that Rothko chose the rectangle precisely because it defines space in the most natural and most absolute way. It mimics our field of vision and creates a nearly organic picture frame, window, or (heaven forbid!) television screen through or upon which we can view the other elements of the painting. As we consider Rothko’s choice, we may note that it is hardly an accident that movie screens, traditional theater stages, and indeed most paintings themselves share this shape. The rectangle provides the most natural frame for the

fig. 29 rosa parks riding the bus, december 21, 1956 fig. 30 rosa parks riding the bus (cropped)

activity that occurs within it. Museum architects have themselves largely returned to this understanding after a variety of experimentation, finding that the rectangular room allows the most natural presentation of the art—one that does not impose its own stamp but instead allows the architect to define and balance the space to enhance the viewing of the art. Although on one level the rectangle remains unobtrusive, we should not therefore assume that it exerts no influence over what we see. Stage directors will adjust curtains and scrims endlessly in order to present exactly the view into the stage that will maximize the impact of what occurs upon it (or conversely, in some instances, to keep the viewer distanced from the actors and scene). Similarly, in the world of film and photography, the framing of the scene or picture is not only critical to the aesthetic experience of what is presented but also provides a central means for the author to present his or her point of view. The famous photograph of Rosa Parks on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama—an icon of the civil rights movement in America—would have been an entirely different photograph if it had been cropped to show just her, rather than also including the apparently disgruntled man in hazy focus to her rear (figs. 29, 30). The artist, the filmmaker, the director, the photographer, all frame the scene to show us what they want us to see.10 This is how they tell their story. And we should not for a moment assume that Rothko, an artist who referred to his paintings as dramas and who made multiple references to the theater in the brief span of The Artist’s Reality, was unaware of these issues. If I suggested before that there was a good bit of rhetoric in my father’s presentation of his art, I would emphasize that this is not rhetoric used to mis-

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lead or delude, but instead language designed to engage those before his paintings, to keep them there and draw them in. Ultimately Rothko’s aim is communication, a conversation in search of truth or truths, so it is only fitting that he uses the most natural of forms and views. He is simply making us at home, albeit for his own ends. And if those ends concern the human drama, then his ends should be ours as well. Having settled upon the rectangle, how then did Rothko utilize it to shape the world of his paintings? By employing that silent, omnipresent frame of our visual perception, he almost necessarily fills our field of vision, this effect largely independent of size, although my father was certainly not hesitant to paint large pictures. By filling our field of vision, Rothko pulls us into the painting as a world of its own, inviting or nearly demanding direct and intense interaction between viewer and picture. He creates a work that is its own domain, a place that encompasses a potent reduction of our human experience. Very natural on the surface but quite a manipulative coup, I believe, underneath. With our universe framed in this manner, small variations in the rectangles can greatly influence our sensory experience of space in Rothko paintings. There are those paintings which seem ever-expanding and those which remain static, those which invite you in and those which close you out. The way in which Rothko paints the rectangles molds the experiential world of the painting, its confines and its accessibility. It shapes our interaction with the painting. These effects and the play of the color within these conditions are all minutely controlled by the rectangles and the fields in which they float; the hardness or wispiness of the rectangles’ edges, the extent of the border area, the juxtaposition of the rectangles on the plane, the amount of brushwork in each field. Let us consider some examples. Two canvases from 1956—Yellow over Purple and Untitled (figs. 31, 32)— both feature brilliant reds and glowing yellows, and yet the effect of each painting, the feeling emanating from each one, could hardly be more contrasted. The difference is in their formal properties and the way these define their space. In Yellow over Purple the rectangles hover in space in front of the background, their softly painted edges and translucent centers revealing, at least to my eye, a sense of vulnerability. They are in flux, and while in the reproduction it is not clear whether they are expanding or contracting, they are clearly still in a state of becoming. Untitled, 1956, although in essentially the same color scheme, speaks to an entirely different sensibility. Here the yellow square defiantly proclaims itself against the red background, nearly taking over the top two-thirds of the painting. Unlike that of Yellow over Purple, however, this rectangle is static, hardbound, and

any sense we have of it bursting its bounds comes from the degree to which it has nearly eclipsed its border rather than eclipsing its own form. Similarly, while in the first painting the two rectangles seemed engaged in a type of dialogue, in the untitled work the yellow rectangle appears completely in a world unto itself, opaque and letting nothing in, hardly taking notice of the lower red rectangle, which nearly disappears into the like-colored background. These are, of course, my own personal responses to the works, but it is hard to deny the dissimilarity of feeling in these two paintings whose colors are so much alike but whose forms reveal substantial differences. It is easy to find a much closer kin for Yellow over Purple in paintings with very different color schemes. For example, in No. 7, 1963 (fig. 33), the formal similarities to Yellow over Purple are obvious. One can also find kindred paintings, however, where the arrangement and proportions of the rectangles are quite different from Yellow over Purple’s (along with the colors) but which share its translucency, its feathered edges, and some of the relation to space within the painting. Green on Blue, 1956 (fig. 34) is an example. Although there are many differences between them, this painting shares a great deal with Yellow over Purple, more than does Untitled, 1956, despite the near color match between the two latter paintings. Form, as we can see in these examples, really does direct the role color plays, and ultimately the message the painting conveys. We can learn more about Rothko’s use of form by examining two paintings from presumably the same moment, No. 14, 1957 and No. 15, 1957 (figs. 35, 36), both painted in meditative green tones upon vibrant blue backgrounds. The primary difference between the two works does not seem to emanate from the presence of white in No. 14, a color that is absent from No. 15. Instead the formal differences dominate. First, the broad landscape orientation of No. 15 entirely fills the horizon, in contrast with No. 14, which seems almost to sport a figure made from its three rectangles. Although both are large paintings, No. 15 seems to be expanding ever outward, in an almost languid, inevitable way. No. 14 is much more tightly contained within its broad borders; its energy is more nervous, and one can feel the rectangles pushing to break free. Although the borders are broad in No. 15 as well, they are not as broad, and they cannot compete with the sheer mass of the rectangles. The feeling of energy in No. 14 also stems from the area around each rectangle where there is a lighter, mistier shade; an area where two substances or forces are interacting and matter is unsettled, much like the corona of a star where the fiery gases meet the near vacuum of space. And finally, the greater tension in No. 14 stems from the more active way the rectangles are painted, with significantly more brushwork and

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fig. 31 yellow over purple, 1956

fig. 32 untitled, 1956

fig. 33 no. 7, 1963

fig. 34 green on blue, 1956

fig. 35 no. 14, 1957

fig. 36 no. 15, 1957

interplay with underlayers visible than in No. 15. Again, it is primarily the formal differences between these works—the details in the way they are painted—that account for their distinct effects upon us. Rothko does not need different color to say things differently. The salience of the formal details becomes apparent when one considers the unsatisfying results in those paintings where form has been interfered with. Just as in my other professional work, psychology, where we learn a great deal about how the mind works from those that do not function optimally, so too with Rothko paintings those that have been compromised help reveal how the successful paintings work. I see these cases far too often in the form of indifferently prepared or conserved paintings, or in any number of badly cropped reproductions. Change any of the balances we have discussed even slightly, and the effect of the painting often collapses. It can feel congested, lose its sense of movement, become flat instead of spacious. We know that these balances were crucial to my father because there are many works where we can see that he has expanded or contracted the rectangles from their initial size, seeking that perfect weighting of the forms. No. 9, 1958 (fig. 37) is one of the glories of Rothko’s oeuvre, but an examination of its center rectangle clearly reveals that it was reworked by Rothko, the red form opened up to balance the weight of those above and below it. To highlight the role of that rebalancing, I have made a digitally manipulated rendering of the work (fig. 38) with those added areas removed, revealing just how central their additional mass is to the painting’s function. This type of reworking and near obsession with form and proportion was at the very core of his process for his mural commissions as well. In the case of the Seagram commission he painted three full series of murals, all utilizing the same color schemes but each crafted with a further fine-tuning of formal balance. The Harvard murals clearly derive from the Seagram format (and color) and may be seen as one further reworking of the weighting of these forms. From 1957 on, form became the primary focus of Rothko’s efforts. While we as viewers may be less consciously aware of the formal questions, when we find a Rothko that seems somehow less magical, less engaging, than others, it results almost inevitably not from a problem with the colors, which may exceed those of many other paintings in beauty, but instead from a problem with form, where the balances never found their optimal point. By extension, problems with color may be outweighed by felicities of form. The most striking example of this is the ill-fated Harvard murals, mentioned above, which faded over a twenty-year period in glaring sunlight from burgundy to pink and ultimately to

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fig. 37 no. 9, 1958

fig. 38 no. 9, 1958 (digitally manipulated)

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cobalt blue. And yet so compelling and intriguing is the form of these mural paintings that even though their color has completely changed, they remain hauntingly beautiful and hardly less engaging, as one can observe in Harvard Mural Panel Five (1962; fig. 39). The years 1957 into 1962 were absolutely crucial ones for the development of Rothko’s work, and very revealing of the central role form plays in the composition of his paintings. Not only did these years encompass the largescale Seagram and Harvard commissions, each of which prompted striking

explorations of form, but 1957 is also the year that my father marked as the year his “dark pictures” began.11 In fact, this assertion is rather misleading: there are wonderfully rich dark paintings from the early 1950s as well as brilliant ones after 1957. While it is true that there is a general darkening of the palette in the last thirteen years of my father’s career, the changes in form are at least equally responsible for the more meditative mood of the later works. Starting with the Seagram murals and continuing through the decade of the 1960s to the completion of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, there is an increasing hardening of the edges of the rectangles. They no longer open outward and instead become more and more tightly defined. Space has been reined in, and much as we saw in No. 14, 1957, the generally wider borders seem less malleable and open to expansion. Yes, many of these paintings are darker, but the change in overall impression is primarily tactile. They feel less yielding or penetrable—for example, No. 5, 1963 (fig. 40). The endless vistas opened in the early 1950s works have not necessarily contracted, but our access to them is

fig. 39 harvard mural panel five (1962)

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fig. 40 no. 5, 1963

more limited—they can only be glimpsed in halos around rectangles that no longer hover so lightly, or be intuited from subtle shifts in luminosity. During this period, my father altered the feeling and effect of his work by shifting the way space functioned in the painting. Part of this change was achieved through color, which, he maintained, had its own ability to create movement, but much of it was brought about through changes in the way he handled the paint.12 By using dried pigment and more reflective paint, Rothko produced surfaces that are less supple and inviting. He essentially stained his canvases with a single, thinned-out color, foreshortening the sense of space that had been created by the many layers of color in his 1950s works. By simplifying the form of his rectangles, typically now much more regular in shape than those from the 1950s, he tightened his compositions, rendering their communication more focused and direct. Rothko also began to shift the orientation of many of his paintings. His works had long broken down traditional scholarly categories of portrait and

landscape, featuring portrait dimensions (that is, taller than wide) but often landscape-oriented rectangles (that is, wider than tall). Beginning in 1957, however, Rothko increasingly expanded the width of his paintings as if to banish all semblance of the portrait and truly fill our horizons. While there is still considerable variety, there are now many more horizontally oriented paintings, and even the vertical ones tend to be much squarer than in the past. Whether the intention was to make the paintings less personal or to exert greater control over the viewer by filling the horizontal rectangle of his or her vision, the result is hardly less powerful than the darkening of the color palette. Further, the manner in which my father painted his rectangles evolved during this time. Brushstrokes and the general working of the surface become less and less prominent in the work. The more opaque forms, with fewer colors showing through from underneath, also work to reduce the sense of depth. The rectangles are generally harder-edged, the wispy brushed edges now more the exception than the rule, giving the work a spatial flatness and less of a feeling of spontaneous, human creation. It is as if the viewer is no longer invited quite so intimately into the process of the work, its very humanness and, indeed, fallibility. Those underlayers of paint, which seemed to carry so much of the emotional content, no longer reveal their colors so openly. We must work harder to engage with these paintings, which do not show themselves as readily and which no longer invite us in quite so willingly. Rothko, largely through form, has subtly re-created the way we interact with his paintings. Much of the change in activity found in the canvases of this period is echoed and perhaps amplified in Rothko’s works on paper. Nineteen fifty-nine was a year in which my father worked with particular enthusiasm and remarkably beautiful results on paper. Many of these works break with the more typical juxtaposition of rectangles, and through relatively small rearrangements of form produce a different set of spatial relations and offer a new type of interface with the viewer. And while the colors are particularly rich, it is the departures in form rather than color that distinguish them from his canvases of the time. We can note the importance of form for the work on paper of this period in Untitled, 1959 (fig. 41). Here, despite the striking color, it is the ethereal, brushy quality of the way the rectangles and background are painted that gives the work its expressive power. Rothko also made numerous sketches on paper of classic sectional works around this time (see Untitled, 1950s– 60s; fig. 42). Significantly, all of these are executed in pen and ink, rather than in color; that is, they are studies in form rather than in color relationships. I will jump momentarily to the last two years of Rothko’s life, which were also his most prolific and contained the greatest concentration of works on

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fig. 41 untitled, 1959 fig. 42 untitled, 1950s–60s

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paper. An untitled example from the last series of works on paper that he executed in 1969 is particularly fascinating (fig. 43). It surprises us first because its light colors are a departure from the somber tones associated with Rothko in the 1960s. But we should also note a return to the style he employed in the 1959 works on paper, with the small upper and lower bands framing the large central field. And while the color here is certainly very powerful, it is the engulfing and disproportionate size of the central field that produces much of the effect. The saturated pink would not hold sway over us so strongly did it not hold sway in just the same way in its own composition. The shifts in form on both canvas and paper that date from 1957 have continued repercussions throughout the remainder of Rothko’s career and embody Rothko’s increasing preoccupation with his paintings’ relation to the space they will inhabit—a preoccupation certainly prompted by his mural commissions. Two strikingly horizontal works, Untitled, 1958 and No. 30, 1962 (figs. 44, 45), seem in fact to parallel the large horizontal panels painted in the Seagram and Harvard mural series from those same two years, and demonstrate some of the ways in which those murals influenced his “easel” paintings. And although these two paintings can most obviously be distinguished by their strong tonal differences, their formal disparities are what separate them most fundamentally. Ultimately, it is the more clearly segregated relation of the rectangles to their background in Untitled, 1958 which marks this work as a new

direction in my father’s output, since its colors are not outside Rothko’s norms. It is its relationship to space that is unique, seemingly less complicated than in No. 30, although the 1958 painting is dynamic, with rectangles that appear to recede into the background rather than float above it. As with many of the more typically shaped classic works, we need to look past the outwardly small formal differences to see how those subtle variations affect the way we view the painting and the feeling we take away from it. Rothko’s mural paintings, although painted in some of his most typical colors, show perhaps the greatest departure from his classic format (see figs. 22, 39). Yet the rectangular bounds always remain, marking the field of play. Indeed, although factors such as color, transparency, and reflectivity would all shift sig-

fig. 43 untitled, 1969

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fig. 44 untitled, 1958

fig. 45 no. 30, 1962

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nificantly with my father’s development, the rectangle, no matter how manipulated, remained the constant defining characteristic of his work for the last twenty years of his life. This held true even for the Rothko Chapel mural commission in Houston, Texas, whose panels are formally the most minimalistic works he painted, and yet still derive from this same basic shape (see fig. 23). My father worked on this commission for fully three years, first producing a series of pensive, hard-edged canvases known as the Blackform paintings (see fig. 70). He then rented a new studio where he could make a full-scale replica of three walls of the chapel, and there he went to work, constantly experimenting and revising the dimensions and balances of the canvases. The Rothko family collection contains a remarkable study for the chapel murals, Untitled, 1965

(fig. 46), a burgundy background, with a black charcoal/dry pigment rectangle sketched in on top of it. Close examination reveals that this rectangle’s dimensions were redrawn multiple times in both the horizontal and vertical planes as Rothko searched for its ideal contours. The work is strictly a study in form, its dimensions shifting repeatedly within a color scheme that remains constant. Rothko was no less focused on how the murals would relate to the space he conceived for them. Since he was working on an architectural project, it was not only the proportions of the works themselves but their relationship to the walls that framed them that preoccupied him. He had an elaborate (if home-brewed) system of pulleys for adjusting the massive murals on the mock walls in his studio, minutely tailoring placement of each group, and of each work within the group. The countless hours of examination and reexamination were ultimately codified in a fascinating document held in the Rothko Chapel archive, in which my father detailed the installation heights, positions, and offsets to within fractions of an inch for each mural. Thus it was in the realm of form, of measures, of structure, where my father was expending his primary effort, honing relative minutiae to maximize the effect of these massive panels in their dedicated room. The preeminent place of form in his own work was something that my father was also keenly aware of, at least as regards the chapel murals. He makes this quite clear in the following remark, noted by Ulfert Wilke: “When asked in October 1967, if the color were the same in the two black form triptychs, Rothko replied, ‘Who can tell? It’s all a study in proportion and one can become engulfed in considering the two triptychs and wondering whether their shapes are the same—they appear similar but are not the same; one has vertically wider and horizontally narrower borders than the other. It is all a study in proportion.’ ”13 Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, who had an intimate twenty-year relationship with the murals as their caretaker and conservator, has a similar understanding of how these works function: “The Rothko Chapel paintings . . . reflect a concern with formal issues other than color, i.e., issues of proportion and issues of reflectance.”14 Standing in the meditative space that is the Rothko Chapel, it is easy to appreciate Mancusi-Ungaro’s understanding of the murals. They are plainly not about color. But we must not assume that simply because these works are dark, and in some cases nearly monochromatic, they are the exception. Just because many of the 1950s paintings are bursting with eye-catching bright colors does not mean that they are concerned with color in a way the darker paintings are not. Both types of paintings use color as an expressive means to an end, but as a means only. And it is form, proportion, and space that set the parameters for that expression. They define the topic upon which color may then expound.

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fig. 46 untitled, 1965 (unfinished rothko chapel study)

There was just one further evolutionary step that Rothko took in the formal development of his paintings. This step is embodied in the series of Black and Grey canvas and Brown and Grey works on paper that are among his last works. The changes here are not ones of color—Rothko had used black, brown, and grey extensively before, although admittedly in the context of other colors. The changes here are formal, even as Rothko continues to cling to the rectangle. The rectangles’ orientation to space has been significantly changed. There is no longer any background. The rectangles do not float in any space and the bipartite forms meet abruptly at a horizon line with no intervening background color to act as intermediary between them. The juxtaposition is intense and absolute and it shapes our view of the painting as much as the striking palette (see fig. 8). But Rothko giveth even while he taketh away, for while there is no background color to provide a border around the rectangles, he has imposed a new

one in the form of a taped white boundary around each edge. My father’s paintings had been frameless since the mid-1940s, and yet here, in 1969, at the twilight of his career, he imposes what amounts to a white frame around each work. Of course, in a sense, my father’s classic paintings had always been framed by the colorful background that surrounded each rectangle. And that frame sculpted our viewpoint into the work. This white border is different, however, for it exists in the same plane as the rectangles themselves, or perhaps, giving the illusion of a physical frame, it appears just in front of the rectangles. By so doing, it prevents the rectangles from expanding and floating free; they are resolutely boxed in, their energy contained. These formal changes are subtle, but they completely alter the viewer’s experience of the painting. They focus our perspective definitively onto the plane before us, drawing us sharply inward from the vistas opened up by Rothko’s earlier classic work. It is as if Rothko were saying, “This is all there is”; the answer is inward, not in the beyond. And it is not the color that tells us this; it is my father’s redefinition of the painting space by manipulation of its borders that orients us to his new perspective. While I have focused on Rothko’s particular engagement with form during his classic period, spatial and formal preoccupations dominate my father’s painting from the very beginning of his career. His explorations in the 1920s to 1940s are both striking in their own right and set the stage for the close study of proportion in the late work. Nearly twenty years as a figurative painter honed Rothko’s awareness of the role of space and form in his work, be it landscape, nude, portrait, or urban scene. Perhaps most notable are my father’s depictions of interior scenes where formal considerations already dominate. Precursors of rectangles to come, windows, and doorframes populate the landscape of Rothko’s interiors in numbers disproportionate to their naturally occurring frequency (see figs. 12, 56). The spaces in these works seem to be the primary focus, while the figures are nearly swallowed by the architectural detail surrounding them. And if the color in these paintings can be striking (certainly so in the portrait of the boy), it is really the framing of the scene that defines the role of the figures in it and our perspective on those figures. My father’s paintings of the mid- to late 1930s are often marked by strange views of the scene and markedly distorted spatial relationships. Examples are legion, but I will cite two here. First, an untitled street scene from around 1934 (fig. 47). Here we have figures most of whom nearly disappear into

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fig. 47 untitled, c. 1934

the building behind, seeming to emanate from the grey monolithic wall that dominates the left side of the painting. That wall thrusts forward into the painting, balancing the one figure who stands apart on the right side, while Rothko makes the staircase in the background appear much closer than it is. A very actively painted sky weighs down upon the scene, appearing to share the same plane as the wall and stairs. Here again, as we saw in the classic work, it is the handling (in this case the distorting) of the space and the relationship of the forms in the painting that sets the tone and shapes our experience of the work. While some of the colors are unusual and compelling (note the sky in particular), they are really in the service of the formal structure of the piece. Form and space are again the defining elements in a little-known New York subway scene from 1939 (fig. 48). Here once more we have figures that nearly disappear, this time into each other, and it is the space they inhabit that grabs our attention. The entryway they are walking down into is another monolith, painted so uniformly in color that it is hard to tell what kind of incline they are standing on. Meanwhile the shape of this essentially three-sided box is distorted so it is hard to tell the actual size of the figures and their relationship to the space. And while one can intuit a movement downward because they are standing on steps, the figures in fact appear static and almost disengaged from the plane. Although I think my father’s use of color in this painting is brilliant in

fig. 48 untitled [subway entrance], 1939

its variations upon a monochrome, clearly it is form and space that dictate our relationship to the work. Rothko evolved from purely figurative painting into a neo-surrealist style around 1940. To some degree both form and color take a back seat to the mythdriven agendas of the works from this period, but ultimately it is form that primarily shapes his rendering of the myths. This formal emphasis reflects the centrality of the mythic figures to the meaning of the painting, and those figures’ dynamic relationship to the subject matter, as in the case of the eponymous subject of Tiresias (fig. 49), who nearly walks out of the painting, such is the impulse of his/her forward motion. Yet we should also note the bi- or tripartite division of the scene that marks nearly every work from this period, such as Untitled, 1945 (fig. 50). Rectangles already act as a framing background for these scenes, and while I emphatically do not believe it was simply a matter of stripping away the figures to get to the classic work, we should note that, even at this point, the rectangle is there, shaping the space. If color has seemed of secondary status to this point, that role is certainly addressed in the Multiforms, which my father began to paint in 1946. Here Rothko discovers color as a primary expressive medium. You can feel the freedom as he courts a type of formlessness, an unbounded all-over painting (not coincidentally, it is at this point that he stops framing his canvases). Color here

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fig. 49 tiresias (1944)

fig. 50 untitled, 1945

is clearly dominant and given free rein it has not experienced before and will not experience again. And yet, if one observes a sequence of these works, it is not so much questions of color expressivity or color relationships that Rothko is working out but, you guessed it, questions of form. How large and uniform to make the color patches, how to give them weight and balance different areas of the canvas? These formal questions are the primary ones he asks through the remainder of the 1940s, the answers to which will remain relevant into the next decade as he continues to refine his classic compositions. We have come nearly full circle, and are on the brink of Rothko’s arrival at his classic style. There remains only the year of transitional paintings that bridge the Multiforms to the classic sectionals. These roughly forty paintings, however, tell us perhaps more about Rothko’s use of form than any others from his career. For 1949 was the year of slow but steady movement to the rectangle. We can observe the journey step by step, starting with an untitled Multiform from 1948 (see fig. 5). We can see that the signature color is already in place, and although Rothko will ultimately simplify a little, this painting has the full expressive palette of the 1950s work. What changes as we creep forward in time is the tightening of form, the creation of a context in which the color can speak more directly. The 1948 Untitled mentioned above shows the first stage of the focusing of form and the edging toward the rectangle. We can observe this process continue across two additional examples: No. 20 and No. 11/20 (both 1949; figs. 51, 52), the latter a fully rectangle-based composition. Here, only final refinements of arrangement and balance separate this work from what we recognize as a classic Rothko. And in truth, Rothko continued to experiment with form and the shape of his rectangles throughout the early 1950s—witness the differences between No. 15, 1951 and Untitled, 1954 (see figs. 6, 57). The concentration of development during this year-long period drives home so clearly how central form is to the expressive power of Rothko paintings. Color was already there, essentially fully developed in the Multiforms. The breakthrough of 1949 is one of form. By simplifying to the “full frame” rectangle, Rothko found a style in which form could serve color absolutely, by creating context and defining its parameters. Great as the transitional paintings are, they still do not speak to us quite as clearly as the classic works. Only there does the form work symbiotically with color to allow the painting to sing with full voice and clean diction. To shift the metaphor slightly, the rectangle and its balance in space comprise the essential syntax and grammar of Rothko painting. They allow the rich vocabulary of color to express itself with meaning.

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fig. 51 no. 20, 1949

Perhaps ultimately my father did not choose the rectangle. It was simply there: the most essential element in the spatial world he was exploring. It came to define the universe in which he worked, but it was a universe of near infinite possibilities. He molded and sculpted and even played with the form until it was no longer a limiting factor but a liberating one whose horizons were bounded only by his and the viewer’s imaginations. And yes, he brought color to tint that universe as well.

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fig. 52 no. 11/20, 1949

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I have an indelible memory of visiting curator Katherine Kuh—who played a highly formative role in my father’s career—at her New York apartment in the 1970s. On the wall, she had a tiny but powerfully expressive late work on paper. She told how my father had brought her three paintings one day in 1969, laid them out, and instructed her to select one to keep as a gift. She pretended to deliberate a long time, but knew almost immediately that she wanted the smallest. “You haven’t lost your eye!” Rothko told her, smiling broadly. “The small one was the best.” For Rothko, and for Kuh—a lifelong connoisseur of his work—a painting’s small scale was not an impediment to an authentic Rothko experience. Yet when we think of Rothkos, we tend to think of large paintings, canvases that are not only striking in their colorfulness but that boldly command broad expanses of the museum gallery, uninhibited in demeanor and tone. We expect to be enveloped by them, to lose ourselves in their depth and breadth, to let color wash over us in what at least begins as an essentially passive interaction. There is a notable casualness to their pose upon the wall, a naturalness to their dimensions, a sense that “of course that is the size they would be.” But if the work is not so large—what then? Do the same rules of engagement apply? Will the painting still work its magic if the scale fails to impress? We have been so thoroughly conditioned to expect large paintings from Rothko in every instance that when faced with a work that is somewhat smaller, we feel somehow cheated, as if we had not been presented with the genuine experience. Numerous times I have heard comments that Institution A or B “has a nice Rothko—but it’s small,” as if the work had been kicked out of category on account of its stature. And on two occasions I have heard employees of the big auction houses refer to 1968 works on paper (most typically 39 × 26 or 24 × 18 inches) as “starter Rothkos.” Although there may be other factors that keep these works

from being the most immediately desirable—and for an auction house the first and last criterion is price—the attitude toward these smaller paintings can often be patronizing. If it is not large, somehow it is not a real Rothko. This was certainly not my father’s attitude, despite comments he made about being a painter of large pictures. His substantial output of moderate-size and small work clearly argues against it, as he was hardly an artist who painted simply for his or others’ amusement. He would not have trifled with work he did not care about. Nor do we encounter this type of exclusionary thinking about the works of great artists of the past, for instance, a Titian or a Constable or even a Matisse. There is a recognition that these masters’ mastery comes in all sizes, and that the quality of the composition and the strength of its argument is rarely a function of dimensions. In truth, many of my father’s contemporaries are likely subject to the same type of prejudice concerning scale; I would imagine de Kooning and Still foremost among them. We expect a certain sweep to an Abstract Expressionist painting, a blunt power and drama that is readily experienced on a large scale. And Rothko, since his style is not “active” in the way favored by many of the other painters in the school, and since he makes significant use of spatial effects, benefits directly from the boost in amplitude that comes coupled with a large painting. Do the small paintings need special pleading as a result? Should our expectations be reduced proportionally to their size? Not at all. I am convinced that many of my father’s greatest works are on a small scale, sacrificing nothing in power, immediacy, complexity, or allure to their larger siblings. They simply need the right presentation—and an accepting mindset from the viewer. You may officially consider your mindset under attack. What I propose here is a consideration of the “intimate” Rothko. Works where local intensity substitutes readily for the compelling force of overall sensation. Scale undeniably affects how we interact with the world around us. Let us examine how it does so in the particular world of Rothko. First, we must be clear what constitutes a small Rothko and a large one. These big pictures—just how large are they? Well, the king of them all (murals excluded) measures 117 by 175 inches, and there are several others pushing 10 to 12 feet square. Excluding these leviathans, however, how big a Rothko appears is significantly influenced by context. Depending on their color, how they are lighted, the proximity of other works, the size of the room, and one’s own expectations and experiences with the work, the paintings can seem either substantially larger or smaller than they actually are. As a rather arbitrary rule of thumb, I think of a

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Rothko painting as large once it hits six feet tall, but I have seen such paintings look imposing and I have seen them look almost diminutive. Is there, in fact, a normative size for a Rothko canvas? I have not crunched the numbers in an exhaustive way, but a flip through the catalogue raisonné suggests that that six-foot measure functions not only as the fulcrum between large and small but also as the median size for a classic Rothko. Adding a few inches either up or down materially influences how a painting reads, particularly in the vertical plane, where, all else being equal, a 75-inch-tall painting seems dramatically larger than one that logs in at 69 inches. What influences that perception of a “normative” Rothko? Primarily the “all else” that isn’t equal. In addition to the various environmental factors I have noted, there are properties inherent to the paintings themselves that affect their perceived size. On the whole, the darker paintings feel larger. As I have detailed elsewhere, they are also less active than their brighter brethren, more quiescent in nature, the length of time they take to communicate engendering a slower, weightier quality. This feel, combined with the way they stand out from a lighter-colored wall, lends the darker paintings a visual impact where size takes the place of color as the primary visual experience. As I noted, we are more sensitive to changes in scale in the vertical plane. When Rothko paintings grow wider, as they do in the 1960s, they do not necessarily seem bigger; there is simply more of them. I attribute this to the way they naturally fill our field of vision, expanding across that horizontal rectangle through which we see the world. When the painting punctures upward through that field, however, violating the natural panorama, it gets our attention, causing us to raise our eyes, crane our necks, and note its size. It feels larger in part because the act of perceiving involves a more overtly physical and volitional interaction between the viewer and the painting. We are also social creatures, however, and we are perceptually attuned to the shape of other humans. Thus when a Rothko painting is taller than it is wide, its proportions are more akin to those of human beings and more likely to trigger our noting of their size. This has long been a conundrum for those who would classify Rothkos in the traditional art history nomenclature of landscape (wider than tall) and portrait (taller than wide). Classic Rothkos recall the landscape, but they are most typically shaped like portraits. In fact, that tension between the horizontal and the vertical is a significant source of energy in Rothko paintings, where we feel, consistently, a strong pull upward even from flatter rectangles whose expected movement would be more lateral.1 That tension engenders a feeling of elasticity, creating a sense of expansion in works that would otherwise seem quiescent.

While my father dismissed the suggestion that his paintings functioned as abstract landscapes, he did actively reference human scale in his compositions: “Since I am involved with the human element, I want to create a state of intimacy—an immediate transaction. Large pictures take you into them. Scale is of tremendous importance to me—human scale.”2 Rothko created people-size paintings, ones that felt personal not just in how they were painted and what they communicated but also in terms of the physical interaction between painting and viewer; an interaction that recapitulated the experience he himself had when making the work. Perhaps not surprisingly, at five feet and eleven inches, Mark Rothko painted a lot of six-foot paintings. He speaks of the importance of that interaction in a letter to Katherine Kuh, who curated his first major solo exhibition (Art Institute of Chicago, 1954): “I also hang the largest pictures so that they must be first encountered at close quarters, so that the first experience is to be within the picture. This may well give the key to the observer of the ideal relationship between himself and the rest of the pictures.”3 Rothko keeps returning to that relationship, a physical relationship between art and observer. With his finger on the pulse of the human spirit and his calipers measuring our form, Rothko is, in his own way, making paintings of people. Is he painting your portrait? Cautiously, I would answer yes, especially if it looks like you, or rather, if it feels like you. Rothko’s paintings do not explicitly (and explicitly do not) depict anything—they are experiential—but he works actively to make sure that experience touches us in a deeply human place. Does this mean the small paintings stand outside the realm of human interaction that he seeks to evoke in his larger works? Does their size mean that they inherently function differently from the paintings on his more familiar, more substantial scale? While the answer to the second question may be yes, it is not because the smaller work fails to engage our most essentially human side. We must remember that, even though these works will not envelop us in the “usual” Rothko way, they still stare us straight in the face, and we can get very close to them indeed. Unlike the large paintings, which must hang at floor level to be centered on our eye and for which the artist needed to create artificial spaces that compelled close contact, the small paintings allow both of these types of interactions naturally. There is, indeed, nothing inhibiting a very direct, very intense dialogue between the work and the observer. Perhaps it is true that we stand outside the small works, rather than falling into the world of the painting as we do with the larger ones. And yet, because classic Rothko paintings convey a sense of boundless vistas, even the small paintings begin to envelop the viewer. A feeling of elasticity and expansion

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makes all but the very smallest of the works appear larger than they are, and we find ourselves easily caught up in their aspirations toward the infinite. Those aspirations are, of course, primarily emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, and yet Rothko clearly evokes them through his manipulation of space, rendering forms that do not wish to be contained. While the expansiveness of Rothko paintings is quite dramatic on a large scale, the small works often push the boundaries with equal or greater force, the physical impetus acting directly in our plane of vision. They speak to similar impulses bound more tightly. Ultimately, however, can our experience of the small paintings truly be the same as those we have with the larger ones? Even if they contain many similar elements to their bigger siblings, must not the smaller works function differently, especially as the progeny of an artist so clearly focused on the importance of scale? Indeed, why would my father have painted significantly smaller works if he did not want to communicate through different means? Rothko addressed this subject in 1958: “I think that small pictures since the Renaissance are like novels; large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way. The different subject necessitates different means.”4 It is not clear, however, when he speaks of small pictures, that Rothko is referring to his own. In a paragraph that begins with him declaring that he paints large pictures, he may be contrasting his own works (large) with those of other, primarily earlier artists (small). The temporal context may also be significant. He delivered this lecture in the same moment that he was completely engaged with the monumental Seagram mural project. He may have lost sight of his own smaller works, which surfaced in that year only as compact tempera sketches on paper, studies for the massive canvases he was producing. His perspective on scale and human proportion may have shifted entirely as he strove to create murals that would work in concert to enforce intimacy, rather than elicit it through a shared perspective with the observer. But what of this notion of small painting as novel? Novels may be suffused with emotional content and they may evoke strong passions, but they do not put those feelings into action. A novel paints a scene, whereas a drama brings it to life. Once again, we find Rothko wishing to be something other than a painter, in this case longing for the visceral power of the stage. He does not want to create an “as if” experience, something viewed or imagined or overheard. He wants his painting to be an experience.5 In this sense, Rothko’s smaller paintings live in both worlds. They are clearly experiential, objects with which we interact in a direct way and ones that do not reference things outside themselves. And yet we remain observers in part; we are not caught up in their pro-

cess so wholly as with the large paintings. When we connect with a small Rothko, we taste drama but we are not abandoned to it. “We are for the large shape,” Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb declared in 1943, “because it has the impact of the unequivocal.”6 As with many of my father’s statements, this one seems prophetic, well ahead of his painting. The great breakthrough of his classic style, six years later, is primarily the result of my father’s audacity to paint his ideas as boldly and unequivocally as he had written them. And yes, in large shapes. Philosophically he understood this in 1943, perhaps before, but not until years later did he find the courage of his convictions to realize that philosophy in paint. So what are we to make of this plucky pronouncement from two artists still producing relatively small paintings, at least by the standards they would set in the 1950s and ’60s? It would appear that their references to scale center more on an artistic attitude than on actual size. Their statement was likely a reaction against the salon, the painting sized for domestic use, the vignette, the little window into a distant world, the small slice of life. These were all too precious, too mundane, too commercial. Such works were defined by their frame rather than bursting forth from it. The key may reside in the “large shape” they so readily embrace. Rothko and Gottlieb were interested in a blunter, broader form of expression—not finicky refinement or the perfect rendering of minutiae. Working within a neosurrealist style, they were looking for forms that would get past the surface and get to essences and archetypes. Undeterred by derision from critics, they made paintings that took on everything—myth, history, god, man/woman, creation, death, and beyond. The scale they spoke of had as much to do with content as with size. The ambition of their painting was infinite; ambition reflected not in an aim for “success,” but in a need to encompass all of reality in order to say something replete with meaning. It is essentially a redefinition of scale: the size of a painting is determined not by its dimensions but by its subject matter. Paintings are as big as what they express. This understanding offers a helpful path into Rothko’s early work. His artistic and philosophical aims were well established by the 1930s and remained consistent throughout most if not all of his career. Yet up to 1944, his works are universally small to moderate in size, and remained so, with a few glorious exceptions, until 1948, although it would be a mistake to overlook two very practical considerations. The first of these is convention, where typically artists of this era and before painted on a modest scale unless they were making a “grandiose”

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statement, a stance directly at odds with the intimacy my father sought.7 The other albatross constantly shadowing my father was economic worry. In today’s era of astronomical Rothko prices it takes a conscious effort to remember that my father was desperately poor for most of his career. Large paintings require more canvas, more paint, and bigger stretchers. We know this was a consideration because of the many paintings, canvas and paper, that my father painted on both sides, something an artist would only do to save money. Large paintings also require more space, and Rothko was painting in the confines of small New York family apartments until he was nearly fifty years old. The small painting fit his budget for materials and real estate much more comfortably. Keeping the practical in mind, we can still find a compelling power in the early work that outstrips the scale of its composition (see figs. 9, 11). The works of the 1930s are notable for their overcrowded canvases, with figures barely contained by the bounds of the painting, or huddled in claustrophobic clumps. This density is often seen as a metaphor for the human condition, particularly in the context of the urban travails of the Great Depression.8 Indeed, people’s sense of space, particularly in the crowded city, was notably different from what it would be two decades later. My father when creating small works may well have been painting for the human scale of that moment. More potently, those tightly packed surfaces may be an embodiment of an overcrowding of ideas, of overambitious subject matter that exposes the limitations of his materials and the small picture plane. Rothko wanted his paintings to touch the profound, to encompass the most significant ideas, the greatest human aspirations. It is hardly surprising that those paintings feel cramped. The content may make them want to be larger than they are but it also reveals how much more space they need. These works, and the neo-surreal works that follow them, come from a time before Rothko realized that a larger painting was, in fact, bigger. As Rothko’s work evolved in the 1940s, his subject matter remained relatively constant but he was unceasing in his efforts to optimize the ways in which the viewer interacted with that subject matter. His active embrace of the myth, the arcane, and the primordial during his neo-surrealist phase had little to do with his interest in any specific imagery; it was all a means to draw observers into the painting by using content that would touch them on a preconscious level. Myths effectively encapsulate grand ideas, human conflict and aspiration, foundations of social structure and morality, compressing them into a story that essentially unpacks itself in the telling. They are a means of shorthand, of compacting a great deal of content into a small space. What Rothko would achieve

with scale a decade later, he attempted with images and stories so much a part of our being that the mere act of viewing puts us in the painting. As he began to lose faith in the universality of that content, however, he moved toward abstraction as a means to a more all-encompassing expression. Along the way he painted three notable large canvases, of which I will mention Rites of Lilith (see fig. 17) because I think this work most actively propelled him forward. Not only is it the largest, and the images the most abstract, there is a raw passion and violence that cannot be contained even by its sizable dimensions. Here Rothko exploited both great size and its limitations as expressive avenues, with content that looks to burst forth from the confines of the composition and a scale that envelops the viewer in the overwhelming energy. Rothko would move to pure abstraction in the ensuing months, and he would bring with him that sense of barely contained energy. The Multiforms of the mid- to late 1940s are a little larger than the works of the preceding years, and more important, they yearn to be larger still. If the 1930s works suffered for want of space, the shapes of the Multiforms exult in a sense of space that they win for themselves, my father for the first time consistently creating palpable movement that essentially expands the surface. These are the first Rothkos that look larger than they actually are, their activity compensating for any lack of stature. The smaller works from the series do not feel appreciably smaller than the norm, in part because these works are never standing still. The tempo does slow noticeably as we move into the broad fields of the classic works, and with it Rothko changed the level of our interaction with the painting. Now we are facing the “impact of the unequivocal,” the large shape writ large. If the Multiforms brandished their own version of “all-over painting,” it was a realization fired by an amalgam of many areas of local interest. But with the classic work, what there is of the local is subsumed into the whole and we are engaged by the fullness, the entirety of what my father has painted. And presumably, the more of it there is, the more readily we are so subsumed. But the revolution of 1949 was not primarily one of scale; it was one of single-mindedness and intentionality. And this burgeoning confidence on the part of the artist was reflected in a newfound clarity and simplicity in the work. My father had found the means to say exactly what needed to be said. All of these factors—those internal to my father and those that are expressed directly upon the canvas—are active and instrumental, regardless of the scale of the work. Perhaps Rothko’s intentionality is reflected more robustly in the declamation of a large work, but that potent distillation of content that is the classic work thoroughly infuses his painted utterances both big and small. Whatever

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fig. 53 untitled, 1949 (32 × 235⁄8 in.)

liberation he may have felt as his paintings increased in scale at that pivotal time, that liberation was not primarily attributable to size. Indeed, it is notable that the majority of the smallest classic works also date from the transformative period 1949–51, the years he forged his classic style. And to look at them is not to want for beauty, or power or directness of communication (fig. 53). Do we interact with these small works differently? Without question. They do not command our attention from across the room or sweep us away quite so readily. Face to face, however, they seem every bit as human and as evocative of emotion as the large works. If we stand outside them, it is not very far outside. And what they trade in sheer magnitude they make up in compositional balance, which is usually perfectly judged, making for a more fluid conversation between painting and viewer and an experience that is immediate in its impact. Although Rothko’s paintings do, on the whole, increase notably in size as he moves into his classic style, it is not as if my father simply turned up the volume. The voice, like the color, is insistent, but there is no shout. Rothko’s colors are saturated rather than bright, and they produce an experience for his viewers that sinks in deeply rather than overwhelming them. For all the vitality and free-

dom these works exude, their energy is implosive—compacting a great deal of content into essences. As the works grow larger, rather than growing weightier they become more ethereal, providing some relief from the density and concomitant intensity of the subject matter. This began to change again in the late 1950s and early 1960s when, in the wake of mural projects, my father turned more and more to making walls of art, wholly immersive panels that not only are immense but also communicate a sense of mass. If the large works of the early 1950s enfold us, these are more likely to subsume us, vast expanses that are worlds unto themselves and leave no other vistas. Whatever the level of intimacy on offer (indeed, my father’s statement about intimacy quoted earlier hails from this time), the notion of human scale has either shifted or been left aside. It is, in fact, the “small” (that is, roughly five and a half feet square) works from this period that invite the greatest sense of intimacy— large enough in which to lose oneself but not so very formidable as the ten-foot dark canvases. They invite conversation; they do not demand surrender. I will conclude this discussion of size by examining two special cases—the works on paper and the works of Rothko’s last two years, 1968–70. I hesitate to call these special because, by sheer number, they are more the rule than the exception and they certainly have nothing to apologize for in terms of quality. Only because of the ways museums separate different media and organize exhibitions are they not as well known as the classic canvases. My father had three primary periods when he was actively producing painted works on paper: the early to mid-1940s, 1959, and the late 1960s. Of these, the first is not germane to our discussion, as the watercolors from his neosurrealist period roughly parallel the contemporary canvases in size (although, as noted earlier, there are three dramatically large paintings on canvas from 1944–45 for which there is no paper equivalent). The year 1959, however, presents a particularly interesting case. Here, in the midst of his immersion in the Seagram mural series, Rothko produced no fewer than seventeen works on paper, all identically sized (38 by 25 inches), sourced from the same watercolor block and painted in tempera (see fig. 41). They are, to the best of our knowledge, the only paintings he produced of any kind during this time, save for the murals and related studies. Without doubt, they are among his very greatest works—but why do they exist? We have recourse to little other than conjecture, but any attempt to answer must start by asking what the differences in scale and medium afforded Rothko. Certainly that homely watercolor block must have offered a sense of relief in the context of the imposing scale and vision demanded by the mural project—an opportunity to refresh and refocus. Whatever the attractions of

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texture and delicacy brought in tow with the change of materials, however, we must imagine that the scale of these works provided the primary impetus behind their creation. Painted, like the murals, in largely dark but unforbidding pigments, they speak with a quiet beauty and concentrated tone that cannot be translated to a canvas twelve or twenty times their size. They snap our focus from the room to the place immediately in front of us; we are engaged in a oneon-one interaction rather than inhaling an atmosphere. Whether consciously or not, Rothko was returning to a more human scale. Perhaps these are not the large paintings he wanted his viewer “within,” but they are paintings that engender that “state of intimacy” he spoke of at Pratt Institute. Rothko’s murals are institutional works, but these works on paper are far more personal, scaled for private contemplation and infused with emotion that emerges in dyadic interaction with the viewer. I tell the story of the late 1960s works on paper several times in different ways over the course of this volume,9 but here my emphasis is, naturally, on scale rather than medium. Forbidden to paint by his physician following his near-fatal aneurysm in 1968, my father negotiated a compromise that allowed him to produce small works on paper, which presumably involved less physical exertion than their larger brethren on canvas. And paint he did, at a startling pace that outstripped his output at any other point in his career. Rothko produced over one hundred works that year, even with the loss of time due to ill health. While we may presume that his frenzied pace reflected pent-up artistic ambition frustrated by something approaching three months in bed, the sheer numbers must also communicate an excitement about working on this smaller scale. If we accept the premise that a small work may be faster to paint but, as a whole composition, no quicker to conceive than a larger work (and we know that for Rothko, the conceptual piece was the central part of his process), then his productivity is truly remarkable. But do these small works carry with them a new means of communication? At 24 × 18 inches, 33 × 25 inches, or, at their largest, 39 by 26 inches, these are (with just a couple of exceptions) the smallest abstract paintings my father ever made. Is Rothko exploring a new mode of interaction with his viewer, or is he just making the most of his deal with the devil? Although very much classic Rothkos in their configuration, these small works push recent trends in my father’s work further than he had dared before (fig. 54). Everything here is simpler than in the preceding classic canvases. The background color is typically reduced to a single tone, often applied in a thin wash that recalls his watercolors of twenty-five years earlier. Turning exclusively to acrylics, Rothko created surfaces for the rectangles that were either uncom-

fig. 54 untitled, 1968

promisingly matte or, come 1969, defiantly reflective. My father had employed both of these techniques in his murals for the Rothko Chapel a few years earlier, as well as some of the preceding and ensuing canvases, but here on paper and markedly condensed, the effect has even more impact. Fifteen years earlier, Rothko had said of small paintings that the painter, and ultimately the viewer, necessarily remains outside them.10 This notion is clearly realized in these small works on paper, which can be emotionally withdrawn, and whose hard surfaces often do not invite the same type of immersion that the earlier—and larger—canvases did. The effect is the product of an interaction between media, composition, and size; it is indeed hard to lose oneself in the cool, often unyielding, microcosms Rothko creates in these small papers. Whether my father elected to pursue a more neutral tone because of the size he was restricted to, or whether he adhered to the initial size restrictions because he was exploring work with a reduced emotional palette, we cannot know. It is clear, however, that for the first time, Rothko succeeded in creating small paintings that function as he predicted, often leaving us peering in at them as if from afar.

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In 1969 the works began to grow, and grow further until, although still painted on paper, they moved into size ranges previously reserved for canvas. We do not know if my father was defying doctor’s orders or had negotiated an easing of restrictions, but by the middle of the year he was again painting on his accustomed large scale, eventually reintroducing canvas to his output. While the scale of the work grows, this does not mean that we, the observers, are permitted immediate access. We may no longer feel so far from the work, but we are also not enveloped—it is simply a larger area resisting our urge for a sensual encounter. It is hard, ultimately, to draw clear conclusions from my father’s relationship to scale in the last two years of his life. Rothko embraced the challenge to paint on a small scale with an enthusiasm expressed in that most empirical of measures, numbers. Yet, when presented with the opportunity to paint larger— however that came about—my father’s excitement was quickly manifested with similarly measurable results. Rothko himself could not resist the lure of size, and we must wonder if all the time he was painting those small works on paper, he was champing at the bit. That said, the smallest works realize Rothko’s lateperiod expressive ends in many ways more effectively than the larger ones that follow. They are also the first Rothko paintings truly to feel small. And yet the large works remind us, sometimes to our frustration, of human scale, underlining the ways the works of the previous year do not engage us at the most basic level because they lie outside our bodily experience. Rothko’s paintings in different media, and particularly in different sizes, speak to us in individual ways. What they say, on their varying scales, may not be so different, but their mode of interacting with the viewer can range considerably. As with much else in the world of Rothko, understanding will emerge through time spent listening to the various types of works and learning their language. Large classic Rothkos say to us, essentially, “I am almost human. Join me, and I will help you remember all the ways you are human too.” The smaller classic Rothkos speak to us in a similar way; it is only the process of engaging that is not so immediate. With large late Rothkos, the interaction is slightly different. They ask instead, “Are you human? Look inside yourself to see all the ways you may be.” It is not clear that the small late works pretend to any sort of humanity at all, whatever they may evoke from us despite that. Does size matter? Absolutely! But do not succumb to the tyranny of size—you can have a deeply satisfying experience with a small Rothko painting. Their size does not reflect a difference in content; their content will largely determine how

large they feel. More important, you can have an experience that is as meaningful with a small Rothko as with a large one. The primary difference is the point of entry. The smaller works do not immediately swallow you into their world. You must take a more active, a more purposeful approach, to find the center of the painting and lose yourself there. Some of the strongest Rothko paintings are small, and offer ample opportunities for discovery as they bring you into largely unfamiliar realms. In truth, there are times that I have been a little dismissive of the largest works. Some of them have felt unwieldy to me and have lacked the refinement I find in the paintings of more modest scale. And yet I realize I have a distorted, if rarefied, perspective. Mine is the viewpoint of someone who has seen a thousand Rothkos, who has reveled innumerable times in the sweep of the largest works. I no longer need their scale to feel the authority of their declamation. I have internalized their effect and carry it with me to all my interactions with Rothko paintings. But from time to time I understand that for many others, there is no substitute for the encounter with a Rothko painting that engulfs you, that commands your entire vista, that fills your visual world and becomes, at least locally, the reality in which you dwell. It is a formidable sensation, but I urge you to remember that in the realm of Rothko, it is not the only sensation. Indeed, that feeling is only the first pace on a journey toward substance and truth.

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My relationship with my father’s unfinished manuscript of philosophical writings, The Artist’s Reality, started on ambivalent terms, at best. When I first recognized the manuscript for what it was—the book my father was long rumored to have written—I had no intention of editing it. In fact, I had many intentions not to edit it. A glance at the document gives the reader some insight into the reasons for my hesitation and why a first glimpse of the manuscript fifteen years before had led me to believe there was very little substance with which to work (fig. 55). Witness the cross-outs, the handwritten additions that can continue for paragraphs, jumping from page to page across the backs of a chapter. Observe as well the output of my father’s geriatric typewriter, clearly in the midst of a dyspeptic fit. Despite this minefield, I found myself strangely drawn in. There was something seductive about those yellowed, crumbling pages, something like an old treasure map that whispered of unrepeatable history and untold secrets. Eventually, casting better judgment to the wind, I stopped protesting, put on my editor’s cap, and jumped in. Most people know Rothko as the artist who made the classic floating rectangle abstractions, but he was also the artist who worked for nearly twenty years as a figurative painter, producing a rich body of urban landscapes, interior scenes, and portraits. I had long maintained that such stylistic differences in Rothko’s output concealed a common core, but editing The Artist’s Reality brought into focus just how elemental is the kinship between the earlier and later works. My father’s methods changed, but what he hoped to communicate remained remarkably consistent throughout his career of more than forty years. To push this idea a little further, I would now suggest that in fact the early figurative work and the later abstractions are essentially the same thing. To demonstrate this I will cherry-pick two particularly harmonious works, a 1939 portrait and an untitled work of 1954 (figs. 56, 57). We do not need to look too

closely at the portrait before the many formal and compositional similarities to the 1954 painting become readily apparent. First there is the emphasis of the background over the figure. The boy, despite occupying center stage in the work, is cast in a strangely (and quite beautiful) grisaille-like shadow, so that he is almost hidden. This is in stark contrast to the resplendent colors in the background: the brilliant pink of the building behind him, the deeply saturated blue of the sky, the green of the dresser, and even the mustard of the curtains. It’s almost as if the figure was not supposed to be there. Then there is the manner in which Rothko breaks the picture into horizontal planes: the sky, building, and dresser are almost a composition in and of themselves. Similarly, these elements have been squared off so that one nearly finds Rothko’s later rectangular formula in the earlier work. In notable contrast are the soft edges of the figure, whom Rothko has painted with a loose, almost blurred quality. This is reminiscent of the approximate, rounded rectangles that become Rothko’s “figures” in his classic sectional work.

fig. 55 original manuscript page from mark rothko, the artist’s reality (c. 1935–41)

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fig. 56 portrait (1939)

Rothko’s handling of space in this portrait is perhaps the area of greatest formal similarity with the later work. Note how he brings all the compositional elements from the background to the frontal plane so that it is hard to tell what kind of space exists between the dresser and the building and the building and sky. This same flattening of perspective and ambiguity of space are hallmarks of his later work, and sources of much of their mesmerizing appeal. Finally, and most evidently, there is Rothko’s use of color. Of course, I have chosen these two canvases intentionally for the similarity of their color schemes, but what we see here also applies generally: one finds strong pre-echoes of Rothko’s vibrant palette of the 1950s in his earlier work. Many of the figurative paintings of the 1930s bear the rich, bold hues, directly juxtaposed and broadly applied, for which Rothko would become famous in the 1950s. Careful examination of Rothko’s early work is both rewarding in its own right and often revealing of multiple aspects of the artist’s output yet to come. In terms of composition, aim, and content, there are at least as many similarities as differences. The earlier painting is saying here much of what the later work will ultimately declare with more confidence and authority. The paintings tell us this; but Rothko’s book The Artist’s Reality tells us even more definitively how and why this is so. The philosophies my father puts forth in this volume map out unambiguously the link between the different periods of his career, making it truly a crystal ball for those who would understand his work and how it developed.

fig. 57 untitled, 1954

There is, however, a certain irony to my analogy. First, the soiled, tattered manila folder in which we found the manuscript hardly invites comparison with sources of clairvoyance and crystalline clarity. Then there are the writings themselves, which, like much philosophical work (and more so than some!), initially seem hopelessly opaque and murky before more thorough consideration reveals the light they shed on the subject. The volume itself is rather humble: not terribly long, at times sloppily written, and left unfinished. We do not know the full scope Rothko planned for the book, his aim in writing it, or even who was his intended audience. Further clouds form in the crystal when we recognize that the majority of the book was written ten or more years before he produced his best-known artwork. In fact, Rothko never refers to his own artwork or even to the fact that he, the author, is an artist himself. How, we must ask, can we expect to learn much about Rothko, the Rothko—the one with the rectangles—from this highly compromised volume? As we shall see, the texts themselves address these res-

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ervations and proceed to tell us a great deal about the work he would produce, fifteen, twenty, even thirty years later. Before we gaze into the crystal ball, I will provide what background I can on the manuscript. The earliest dated reference my father made to the book is 1936, and the latest, 1941. We can assume with some confidence that the bulk of the book was written around 1940–41, when Rothko took a hiatus from painting to study philosophy and ancient myth. We do not have concrete details about his researches, but this was likely the time of his formative first encounter with Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. And while my father’s interest in myth ranged broadly, both the content of the book and the titles of his mythic paintings that appeared shortly thereafter suggest that his primary focus was Greece, with a touch of Egypt and Assyria for sauce. Throughout this period my father was working his day job as an art teacher, something he continued to do for a decade after he became well known. This is of particular relevance because the book most likely had its origins as a treatise on teaching art to children; not as a how-to manual but as a philosophical approach addressing issues of pedagogy and what we, and particularly the artist, can learn from the relatively unsocialized mind of the child. Early notes in his journal “The Scribble Book,” as well as fragments of lost or uncompleted essays, indicate that teaching was once a primary focus of the book, or perhaps a previously conceived volume that eventually metamorphosed into The Artist’s Reality. As it stands, a number of the chapters in the book focus at least in part on this topic. Finally, to appreciate the place of Rothko’s writings in his career, we must remain cognizant of what was occurring in his artwork during the writing of the book. In the 1930s, when the book has its origins, Rothko was still a figurative painter, producing many different types of experimental work, all of which incorporate recognizable elements of the human world. Beginning in 1940, however, perhaps the time that he was working most actively on the book, he adopted a neo-surrealist style (as did virtually all the other painters of what came to be known as the New York, or Abstract Expressionist, school). Many of his works in this style bear mythic titles and are filled with references to that formative, universal content that seems to underlie much of human culture. By 1942–43, these works have become increasingly abstract, freer in composition and less often yoked to a mythsourced title. And by 1946 Rothko had abandoned surrealism for fully abstract painting. The realization of his classic style lay just a few years ahead, in 1949. It is notable that Rothko journeyed from figuration to his classic style in just ten years. It was clearly a period of great fecundity and change. We cannot date for certain, however, where the writing of the book occurred in this pro-

cess. My father was a figurative painter during the earlier part of the writing, but we do not know for certain whether the principal writing of the book occurred on the eve of his first, myth-based surrealist style or on the eve of his move to his more abstracted version of surrealism. Whatever the case, his work on the book was clearly a part of the extraordinary series of transformations in his art. The changes in his painting might not have happened so quickly, and certainly would have happened differently, if he had not taken up the pen and engaged his philosophy head-on. So let us now turn to the writings to see what they tell us about Rothko’s work. Given the early provenance of these philosophical statements, we must ask, however, whether these texts have any application to the paintings that most people associate with him. Can the musings of this frustrated neo-surrealist have any real relation to the artist who daringly filled walls with little but color and luminosity? I trust it will not surprise you, now several pages in, that the answer, I believe, is yes. I do not say simply “Yes,” however, but “Resoundingly yes.” The Artist’s Reality not only applies to Rothko’s early and later work alike, but seems to call for the pure abstraction that will follow in a few years’ time. Indeed, the text is often uncannily prophetic of the changes to come. Let us look at a passage from the book concerning my father’s views on abstraction: “That is why, in the significant paintings of today, the subject matter is constituted either of ideological abstraction or appearances abstracted into the world of ideals by being frankly employed as a foil or vehicle for demonstration of these ideals” (p. 28). It would seem from this statement that my father, as of about 1940, had already disavowed figurative painting altogether. But let us remember, he is still painting at this point works that are either demonstrably figurative (fig. 56) or neo-surreal paintings that incorporate many figurative elements (see fig. 16). To understand how this can be so, we must first understand what my father meant by abstraction because clearly he already sees himself as an abstract painter. A glance at an early urban scene (see fig. 9) reveals a composition that, while certainly figurative, does not embrace realism—it shows little regard for visual reality. He gives us ideas of people, human situations, but not specific individuals or people we could get to know. In the case of the surrealist work that follows, although Rothko is still painting figures, they have been altered to the point where their purpose is primarily symbolic. Two additional examples, Mother and Child and Oedipus, reinforce our notion of abstraction in Rothko’s early work (see figs. 1, 15). Throughout this period, he distorts or abstracts the body and the scene to express an idea, so that the fig-

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ures bear little resemblance to their original appearance. The two characters in Mother and Child are really just suggestions of the female, with few distinguishing characteristics save perhaps their height and color. They are seemingly divorced from the world, and inhabit a space that has also been abstracted. Like them, that space belongs to the not-real; it is as confining as it is expansive, and it is not a place we could enter easily. Similarly, we find Oedipus, who is both one being and three, revealing, at the same time, his external and internal self. A figure in one sense, but abstracted by Rothko to the point where he has essentially become an idea. And yet, for all that this earlier work involves a type of abstraction, Rothko’s statements are clearly pushing forward to the expansively abstract works to come. To gain a further sense of the strength of his movement toward abstraction, I am afraid we will need to endure a math lesson from my father: “The substitution of the letter x, or, in fact, of any of the numerical quantities by real objects, would immediately remove the whole relationship from the sphere of generality and place it into the particular, for real objects would introduce a host of qualities which would impress themselves upon our attention and consequently confuse the absoluteness of our equations” (p. 97). One could be forgiven the odd grimace or look of consternation upon surfacing from this passage. Neither the subject of this passage nor its explication is immediately clear. For the record, in this passage Rothko is actually discussing Greek myth (!), but his point is broader. He is emphasizing the reality of symbols and the power of the general compared to the specific, the abstract to the concrete. At the risk of treading further into obscurity, I will try to elucidate with my own math lesson. x+y=z 6 + 8 = 14

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In the first example we have an equation, a formula that shows the relationship between three factors: x, y, and z. In the second, we have values filled in for those factors. This yields a concrete answer, but one whose scope is much more limited. The first equation tells us about how things work with one another, and how they may relate on a broad scale, in the abstract. It is a function and it is universally applicable. The second limits us to the specifics of the situation. It is applied, the idea is gone, and we are left with merely 14. What does any of this have to do with painting? For Rothko, it has everything to do with painting, because he is telling us that art does not concern itself with the depiction of a particular image or scene; it is about the expression of an

idea. And the most powerful expression of that idea is an abstract one, because it does not limit—through situational details, social cues, or cultural references— the scope of that idea. It can be a broad philosophical abstraction. Clearly, we find Rothko’s emphasis on the idea expressed in the earlier work: in the examples I have already shown, engagement between the figures often seems more symbolic than personal. But that emphasis is expressed much more fully in the classic sectional work. For example, in Green on Blue, 1956 (see fig. 34), there is indeed beauty of color and a certain air of mystery, but if there is no idea here, we are left with a rather paltry serving. Rothko gives us the attractive surface just to initiate the seduction. Ultimately for the painting to come to life, there must be consummation with the viewer, allowing the idea to come to fruition. Even an artist adept at conveying beauty can only paint rectangles so many times without some content to go with them. A further quote from the book makes still more clear Rothko’s espousal of abstraction and the idea: “The abstractionists of our age [like the painters of the Renaissance] are . . . our objectivists, and they use appearances for the purposes of demonstrating the reality of the world of ideas. Both types of artists are objectivists. Both are occupied with the objective world of appearances, but one subverts ideas to appearance, and the other appearance to the world of ideas” (p. 70). So again, Rothko is not interested in showing how things really look; he is interested in using how things look to express an idea. We find this priority manifested in Seated Figure from 1939 (see fig. 11), where we are not to believe that these are the actual proportions of the figure, or the real proportion of the figure to the space she inhabits. Instead we learn something from the visual distortions. We gain a sense of her relation to the world around her (or perhaps how it impinges upon her). At the same time we learn of her participation in the human experience and, this being Rothko, necessarily, how her experience relates to ours. Rothko will continue to develop this approach until, by the time we get to the fully abstract work, the idea has become so primary that the objects may serve a structural function, but their relation to the world of appearances is also abstract. But just what are these ideas that he insists are at the core of all art worthy of that name? The notoriously inscrutable Rothko goes surprisingly far in answering this question: Modern art . . . actively engages with the myriad ideas in the contemporary environment. We know that all art is inescapably entwined with all the intellectual

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processes of the age in which it is functioning, and modern art is no less an expression of that state of mind than were Christian or Renaissance art of the intellectual aspirations of their own times. In an age that is preoccupied with the dissection of matter to arrive at the basis of its structural life, where all perceptible phenomena are being dissolved into their abstract components, art can do nothing else but

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follow the same course in relation to the laws of art. (p. 112)

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Art, Rothko tells us, is inherently of its times. It is not the source of revolutions. Art expresses the cultural zeitgeist. My father referred to this as the generalization of the time—the distilled, larger societal truth that the artist represents. It is, in fact, the primary task of the artist to capture the essence of his or her times and communicate this in sensual language to his or her audience. Rothko clearly sees an emphasis on the world of science in modern times (c. 1940) and finds this appropriately reflected in the artwork of his time. Modern art, like science, breaks things down into their most basic elements: atomic particles in the case of science; line, color, and form in the case of art. The contemporary artist’s search for truth is based in this cultural notion of stripping away to find those core factors that speak most directly of essences. And although the manuscript does not address his own art directly, we can see this process expressed in Rothko’s own work. One can find it in the figurative work. For example, in a 1939 piece (see fig. 12) known as The Architect the figure hardly exists—he blends into the table in front of him, while the primary player becomes this series of doors, windows, frames, and moldings. Rothko breaks the composition down to the constituent graphic building blocks. Similarly, in the neo-surreal works (see fig. 4), unadorned lines and amorphous shapes communicate the message of the painting (notably, this group of watercolors is often interpreted as aquatic scenes, filled with primordial, single-cell, amoebic organisms, perhaps reflecting science’s preoccupation with the minute structures of life). The Multiform works represent a more thorough breaking down into essential compositional components, where even line has been abandoned, leaving almost formless shapes with color carrying the message (see fig. 5). But this quasi-scientific stripping down is the visual essence of Rothko’s classic work (see fig. 8). Even form here has been reduced to the most basic stage or screen, leaving only the action of brush and color as players to communicate directly with us. Again, although we find the same preoccupation in all the periods, The Artist’s Reality seems to talk most explicitly about the work of ten years hence, or in the case of the Black and Grey works of 1969–70, thirty

years hence. Rothko clearly understood the issues and tasks facing the modern artist, as well as the means the artist could use to address them, but he was still engaged in his own search for how to make his realization. He set out the goals in his writing, but it took some time for his painting to catch up to the ideas and give them their fullest expression. As much as Rothko anticipated his own movement toward greater abstraction, he also knew from early on that the stripping-down process was not sufficient in itself, that ultimately the result was empty: “Science could deal with separate truths and establish insulated units within fragments of the universe. The artist, however, like the philosopher, cannot create partial unities but must always resolve his fragments in man’s subjectivity” (p. 30). For all his identification with the intellectual project of modern science, Rothko was troubled by the resulting atomization—what he called the artificial compartmentalization of our understanding of our world into isolated clusters. He sees it permeating the society around him on both a cultural and an individual level. He speaks in The Artist’s Reality of different sciences with separate truths and no relation to one another: whole fields with no communication between them, each positing its own set of laws. Surely this does not reflect our sensual interaction with the world we live in. Where in this, he asks, does human experience lie? The artist, like the poet and the philosopher, needs to resolve all these laws and systems into one picture, one truth, one worldview—what Rothko called a unity. In classical times when religion, philosophy, and science were all one, thinkers naturally expressed a unified view of human existence, one that has more resonance with our life experience. Rothko, sensing the inherent truth in such an approach, saw that in his own time the artist must take the leading role, to interpret the world around him or her and form it into a single language that will speak to us. The modern artist must weave a whole fabric from the dissolution that continually unravels our society. Rothko goes on to tell us that what is missing today—from science and from art—is the human element. The scientific and philosophical truths need to be expressed in a way that appeals to our subjective experience. Speaking most directly about the modernists of the early twentieth century, the Cubists in particular, Rothko wrote, “It was a kindred, abstract unity which modern painting sought and has achieved through its process of tearing down, although at great sacrifice in the expression of human passion. Shoulder to shoulder with other intellectual activities it has made its researches. It has done this, however, with

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tragic abnegation for the human spirit” (p. 110). For Rothko, to strip away while losing sight of the essential human element is a failure to communicate essences, and it is an abdication of the artist’s most central role. This emphasis on the human is what separates Rothko from the minimalists and other artists who seem to share his pictorial interests. While my father was certainly not hesitant to break his compositions down into basic components, it was always with an eye to creating a more revealing, a more expressive, whole. Rothko’s means may have been quite reduced, but he still looked to communicate directly with our subjective world. To find this human, emotional element, my father was compelled to look backward in art history, past the modernists of his century, and turn instead to the masters of the Renaissance. Here, whether in the work of Leonardo or masters of the Venetian school, Rothko found artists communicating on an affective level by harnessing light to maximize the impact of their work: Leonardo was the first to hint successfully at the solution for the reduction of art again to the subjective. . . . This hint that Leonardo discovered is the subjective quality of light. (p. 31) For light makes it possible to [express] a new factor that we can call emotionality. (p. 34) [It introduces] humanity into the picture, an attempt to relate the representation of the individual emotionality in the terms of universal emotions. (p. 35)

My father saw the culmination of this use of light in the work of Rembrandt. He, above all, employed light as an expressive conduit for the essentially human. We see all these principles captured in Rembrandt’s magnificent rendering of Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem (fig. 58). In this painting it is light that introduces the feeling into the work: it washes us in hope, highlights despair, its absence leaving all enveloped in ominous shadow. And these are not emotions that belong to Jeremiah alone but universal emotions that speak poignantly of the human condition. These are not just Jeremiah’s concern’s; they are our concerns as well. For Rothko, in much the same way, light brings the human and emotional element into the picture. This is true for his works of the 1940s, but it is the essence of the classic abstractions of the 1950s (see fig. 31). By contrast, he sees the modernists of his era as existing too much in their own heads. They may make compelling visual images and stimulating intellectual arguments, but they forget to communicate on the emotional plane. Modern art (and, ironically, he

fig. 58 rembrandt, jeremiah lamenting the destruction of jerusalem (1630)

particularly singles out surrealism) is cynical in the way it breaks down the world of human experience—it tears apart but does not put back together. But light for Rothko is a “binder” (p. 34); he calls it “the instrument of the new unity” (p. 33). It is the element in the painting that captures and speaks to us of the essence of human experience. And not surprisingly, given the artist in question, the primary medium for expressing this light and emotionality is color. My father spends a great deal of time in the book discussing the use of color and, particularly, the detrimental effect of linear perspective on the representation of color. To Rothko, perspective is little more than a visual trick. Rather than lending a greater sense of realism, it makes the painting essentially a pastiche, robbing it of its validity as a thing in and of itself. It also sacrifices the painting’s other expressive elements, chief among these color, making all subservient to the attempt at spatial effect. Ever since the time of his hero, Giotto, he laments, the treatment of color has been largely subdued: “A painter was not interested in giving the sensation of colorfulness but rather the sensation of the

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fig. 59 raphael, the school of athens (1509–11)

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recession of color, that is, in its various intervals of grey as it receded [from the frontal plane]. Also, instead of affecting the emotions sensually by the interaction of colors the artist affected mood through the pervasion of the entire surface by a single color mood in much the same way we described the use of color mood in the modern theater” (p. 38). Very briefly, what he is trying to tell us here is that, because the use of linear perspective places an emphasis on the depiction of visual reality, it mutes the colors in the background because with distance, and the accompanying diminution of light, our eyes are less sensitive to color. In short, if the artist wants something to appear farther away, he or she reduces the vibrancy of the color. We can witness this in Raphael’s famous School of Athens, where the blue of the sky is visibly muted with distance (fig. 59). If we observe Raphael’s rendering of the sky color, we can see that it is a deep rich azul nearest the foreground, lightens considerably in the distance viewed through the second archway, and by the time we glimpse it through the third archway at the end of the long colonnade, it is as much grey as blue. The painting is an absolute tour de force in its creation of an illusory space, but it diminishes the impact of color in order to create that effect. Compare the expressive means of Raphael with those of Giotto (fig. 60). Observing his massive fresco The Last Judgment, we can readily see how the

intensity of the color is maintained throughout the composition and how notably the river, although presumably in the background, runs a chilling blood red. Giotto is not interested in creating visual space. Instead he is interested in communicating the magnitude of his subject as powerfully as he can. To this end he makes the figures the size they need to be to serve their expressive purpose, no matter where they “exist” in the composition. Color, similarly, remains vivid and saturated throughout, not fading in response to the “needs” of other compositional elements. My father’s argument is far more detailed, but ultimately he champions the directness and honesty of Giotto, deploring the sway linear perspective held in art for centuries. His own quest for the real will stem from Giotto’s example, as he seeks to create an art that does not simply engage our eyes and minds, but one that grips us in a more wholly sensual experience; one that takes us closer to that place of unity.

fig. 60 giotto, the last judgment (c. 1305)

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fig. 61 henri matisse, harmony in red (1908)

Following the lead of Matisse, Rothko will ultimately, in the classic sectional paintings, dare to make color his primary expressive means, using it to move activity to the frontal plane. One can see Matisse put this readily into practice in the masterful Harmony in Red, where table and wall—foreground and background—are hardly distinguishable, each rendered with the same intensity of color (fig. 61). Even as we gaze through the window at the bucolic scene beyond, there is no hint from the color tones that we have moved away. Already in Rothko’s figurative painting of the 1930s, however, before he knew Matisse’s work (figs. 62, 63), one can see the flattened perspective and the intensity of color that is maintained into the “background.” In the interior scene, the figures are painted in strange muted tones that meld them into the table around which they are seated, while the brilliant red of the wall behind them pushes to the front and grabs our attention. There is a similar ambiguity of background and foreground in the scene on the subway platform, where walls and floor merge together in a murky sea of foam-colored wash, while the most saturated color emanates from a figure in red, well away from the “front” of the picture. Rothko would continue to explore the expressive possibilities of color in each successive development of his style: in the neo-surrealist works of the 1940s (see fig. 16) and the fully abstract Multiforms (see fig. 5) that follow them. By 1949, however, my father would fully realize what he speaks of in the book. He will

fig. 62 untitled [three women talking], 1934

fig. 63 subway (1938/39)

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show how color “intrinsically possesses the power of giving the sensation of recession and advancement” (p. 59). By juxtaposition and variegation of color he produced movement, yielding that intriguing ambiguity of space, depth, and superimposition we find in his color-field works (see fig. 31). These paintings bring to fruition Rothko’s philosophical insights of a decade or more before, the message clearer and more powerful than he was able to convey in words. At the outset of this essay, I suggested that the sectional canvases of the 1950s and ’60s were essentially not different from the figurative, neo-surrealist, and Multiform works of the preceding decades. I hope that by this point I have convinced you that what is happening in Rothko’s best-known work was happening years before in his earliest work. Rothko’s philosophical preoccupations in the different periods were the same. The centrality of ideas is equally present throughout the various periods of his career. Even my father’s views concerning form and color were largely the same. The classic abstractions are simply the boldest, clearest statement of those several beliefs. And this is why I speak of this book, The Artist’s Reality, as a crystal ball. It tells us, in fact, what the earlier work was telling us all along: that for Rothko, the ideas were paramount. But like the classic paintings, the book clarifies and amplifies what the earlier work demonstrated. It is also remarkably prescient. In many places the text reads like the words of a man who had been painting those luminous abstractions for decades. It makes one wonder how much collecting and wrestling with those ideas contributed to the development of the styles that would allow him to express his thoughts more fully. Mark Rothko’s classic color-field paintings are an intersection—a union—of two central ideas I have examined in the context of his book. They are, on the one hand, an objective stripping away of cultural and artistic clutter to get to the essential philosophical and pictorial elements, and on the other, a direct sensual communication of human emotion. The elemental ideas are generalized, abstract ones, not ones caught up in situational specificity. Similarly, the emotional plane is a universal one, not one beholden to individual experience. Coming to this understanding, along with the process of editing the book, has led me, strangely enough, to a new appreciation of the term Abstract Expressionism. Like most such labels, it was one imposed on the New York school painters by critics and art historians. My father neither used nor accepted it, and I had typically dismissed it as saying very little. But in fact I think the term captures exactly the two elements that my father’s paintings combine. Ironically he discusses the two—abstraction and expressionism—in sequential para-

graphs in The Artist’s Reality without knowing that he will soon bring the two together. In so doing, he will combine, on the one hand, the intellectual, objective rendering of a reality based on abstract philosophical ideas, and on the other the expressionistic realization of that rendering through contact with essential human emotions. The paintings are, in fact, my father’s abstracted notion of reality—his generalization of the truth—communicated through emotional, sensual experience. In Rothko’s classic work, reality has been broken down into the simplest elements of color, space, and basic form; but in this very reduction to the simplest constituent elements, he is striving for something universal. It is an ultimate application of abstraction, of the generalization of ideas and emotions to the broadest human level. The paintings become an attempt to unify his atomized world. The classic works are encyclopedic as, in their simplicity, their seemingly ever-expanding forms reach outward, trying to encompass all possible meaning and experience. Each Rothko painting seeks to create its own unity and, within the frame of its painted borders, becomes its own small universe.

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Stacked

Stacked

Stacked

I had thoughts about making this a one-sentence essay: never ever use the forbidden word. The lure of verbal excess was far too strong, however. Indeed, ultimately I succumbed to my most un-Rothko-like urges: 1. I elected to write many paragraphs where a simple statement would do. 2. I am explaining a thought that perhaps does not need to be explained.

From my perspective, in any case, it certainly should not need to be explained. Rothko’s rectangles are not “stacked”; this seems several orders of magnitude beyond self-evident. What is readily apparent to me, however, is clearly less obvious to other people, even people with substantial training in the arts. A bit of research done in preparation for this publication found no fewer than 119 instances of this descriptor in scholarly journals, 68 in published books, and 98 in the rapidly growing categories of journalistic and Internet-based pieces. Real numbers are likely to be at least double those. Clearly an epidemic is afoot. Here is a small sampling of some of the choicer uses: Those who cannot agree on Rothko’s shape: “stacked block format,” “stacked stripes and layered blocks,” “stacked cubes,” “stacked fuzzy squares.” Those who intuit that Rothko’s forms have no mass but proceed to mass-load them all the same by means of “The Word”: “stacked weightless fields,” “stacks of color,” “stacks of ethereal hues,” “rectangles of disembodied color stacked one above another.” These writers want it both ways; much as they might wish it were otherwise, you cannot stack color. Those who would keep Rothko’s rectangles permanently earthbound: “two dark green rectangles stacked heavily over a smaller white rectangle,” “placed one 112

above the other in a tall and massive stack.”

Over the next several pages, we shall see how each of these characterizations  undermines an appreciation of the spirit and expressive means of a Rothko painting. Let me begin by apologizing to a number of academics, curators, and writers whom I respect as well as countless art lovers, who should ultimately be free to talk about a painting any way they choose. I have been poking a bit of fun at all of them while I am certain their use of the forbidden word was casual, a trifle careless, and surely nothing more. They do not spend their time obsessing about one artist as I am (un)paid to do (although at least two of the perpetrators were associated with Rothko for a significant portion of their career, and there was a third with an apparently obsessive fondness for the term). Why am I so driven to distraction by this word (you may note that I have thus far been all but unable to commit it to type)? It is not simply that I focus excessively on details, although it could be—ask the project managers, registrars, and art handlers in my life, or my poor children, who, when they hang their coats at all, do not hang them on the hooks that have been divinely ordained to hold them. Lightning will surely strike them. No, there are reasons less grounded in my own insanity that cause a hiccup in my reading each time I encounter the word, and that nearly provoke me to pen an admonishing letter to the author (I have a file drawer waiting for these letters, which I truly would write if I had the time). I recoil from this word because the concept of stacking is antithetical to how a classic Rothko functions, how it is conceived, how it is composed, and how it interacts with the viewer. Stacking is also contrary to my father’s philosophies about art, both in his writings and in its expression through his paintings. I am tempted to simply continue griping about stacked. It is a great deal more fun than writing something constructive. I am sure most of those stacking journalists would agree. This time, however, I will keep my selfish desires in check and instead use the wrongheadedness of stacked as a springboard for understanding my father’s compositions more thoroughly. How are the works constructed (construction itself being a somewhat stackian concept)? How and why does Rothko create his spatial effects? What are the roles of weight and tangibility in the painting? What does the image of rectangles afloat bring to the work that stacked would take away? Let us begin on the most empirical level. Examine a Rothko and how its rectangles relate to the rest of the piece. I was tempted to speak of how the rectangles are arranged on the canvas, but that is moving us toward the physicality that “stacked” imposes on the work. One does not need to look particularly carefully. The rectangles are not stacked—they simply are not. It is not an

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accurate description. It is not typical for the rectangles to touch, and rare for one to rest upon another. But so what? Stacking the rectangles imparts to them a succession of distinctly physical qualities that are not congruent with the way they operate in the painting or with Rothko’s aesthetic. The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following three definitions for stack: 1. Piled together. 2. Piled into a “stack”

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3. Piled with goods

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Piled? This is hardly consonant with our experience of a Rothko painting, and it seems entirely at odds with the laborious contemplation that was a hallmark of my father’s process. The verb also imparts a rough, haphazard quality, an arbitrary approach to placement not in keeping with Rothko’s meticulous attention to scale and apparent weighting in his composition. Piled—or, indeed, stacked? Inelegant at best; sloppy, to paint that inelegance in its true colors. One must not mistake the lack of surface perfection in the paintings for a lack of aesthetic criteria guiding their creation. One glance will reveal all the care that produced the balance of forms and colors that makes the works convincing wholes. What are the hallmarks of a classic Rothko painting? First we must note that, with the exception of his Rothko Chapel–related works, my father’s rectangles are never geometrical. They are softer, rounder, often unfinished. When one stacks them, they become hard and foursquare, which conveys a very different sensibility. Second, Rothko’s paintings are always hand-painted and feel that way. There is an overtly human quality to their rendering, one that makes them live and breathe, and which explicitly undercuts any severity in what might first appear to be a modernist and minimalist style. Stacking the rectangles implies that one is working with something machined, with objects mass-produced and more or less identical that can be hoisted and set one upon the other with a forklift (then shrink-wrapped, palleted, and shipped cross-country). Per the OED, “piled with goods.” Again, we may be tempted to say, “So what?” But we must remember that for Rothko, how his paintings look is not simply a matter of aesthetics. Beauty or harmony or balance is never an end in itself. Form always follows function for my father, not because he is an adherent of Bauhaus principles but because the function of his painting is to express an idea, and his form is carefully crafted to maximize this expression. Thus when we misperceive his form, we interfere with our own ability to have a powerful and concrete interaction with the work. When we

make the additional misstep of misrepresenting Rothko’s forms in writing, we visit our misperception on others and distort their understanding of the paintings and how those paintings transmit their message. However they are made, and whatever their shape, Rothko’s rectangles when stacked become grounded, yoked to a physicality from which my father has worked hard to liberate them. They become decidedly material objects, with palpable mass and an ineluctable subjugation to gravity. Rothko paintings really do not need this. They are weighty enough in their own right. Whether one is referring to the large scale, the deeply saturated colors, or the tragic content that speaks through them, there is already enough to keep the viewer rooted to one spot. To see the rectangles as stacked is to keep the paintings stationary as well, and to miss precisely how my father has counterbalanced their apparent mass. By contrast, seeing Rothko’s rectangles as afloat undercuts their weight, imparting movement to the forms and loft to the shapes. It is Rothko’s means of freeing them from the material world and giving them expressive powers that function not just in compositional terms but in philosophical, emotional, and perhaps spiritual terms as well. It is what enables us to say, when people argue that it’s “just a bunch of rectangles,” that indeed it is so much more. Even the sound of the word stacked, with its hard consonants, elicits a sense of corporality, of physical properties that must be addressed. Items that are stacked must bear weight, as their weight in turn must be borne. They are inherently locked in a specific type of interdependence to which Rothko’s rectangles are not subject. The forms of a classic Rothko are allowed to float free, their interaction with each other dictated neither by their own mass nor by the mass of the other forms around them. This is critical, as my father creates energy and usually, though not always, tension, in the space between the rectangles. The ways in which he handles these areas—the interactions between colors, the appearance and disappearance of layers, the relative proximity of the rectangles to one another—is an essential source of vitality for the painting. One can sense the electricity, the seemingly magnetic attraction and repulsion of the rectangles across these gaps—a magnetism that would be defused if the rectangles were simply stacked one upon the other. There is a plasticity to the way Rothko manages this aspect of the composition but also a clear intentionality, a compositional force that communicates very clearly “not just rectangles.” Contrast this sensibility with the rigidity inherent in items that are stacked, as well as the unidimensional nature of their interaction. This rigidity carries over to the way we see the rectangles them-

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selves—solid and dense rather than filled with the dynamics of color and brush. Indeed to perceive the rectangles as stacked renders them objects in a way that undercuts their very abstractness. They are locked into being one thing rather than a thing that can be many things, a thing with the power to suggest and to interact in myriad ways with myriad viewers. Stacking pushes the rectangles dangerously close to the role of representation, and impedes their consolidation into Rothko’s universal abstract language. Finally, I will reiterate that “stacked” communicates an air of casualness, of offhand arrangement, that is completely at odds with Rothko’s if anything overworked preoccupation with balance, proportion, and alignment. The simplicity of Rothko’s work nearly obscures the artistry required to make such simplicity compel. Limited material requires that those few materials interact with immediacy and by design. Stacking will not do. I have dissected, I believe, all the damaging distortions wrought by “that word,” save the most important. For if we see Rothko’s rectangles as stacked, it interferes with the singular magic of the works. My father understood that the role of the artist is to take the familiar in the world around us and transform it into something new, something unexpected, something that makes us look again at what we thought we already knew. What can be more pedestrian than a rectangle, and what shapes transcend their pedestrian origins to a greater degree than Rothko’s rectangles? He turns the most ordinary building block into something that supersedes its form to function in many dimensions simultaneously. These are forms that aspire to the infinite; rectangles so transformed that they imbue us with those aspirations as well. No mean trick, but it cannot work when the rectangles are stacked. They will just sit there. They collapse back to simply being rectangles. And our vision collapses with them. The antidote to stacked? I have already mentioned it in passing—to recognize that the rectangles float. By causing the rectangles to float, my father conjures something otherworldly from the ordinary; it is the compositional mechanism by which Rothko creates a Rothko. The float of the “figures” is what separates the classic works from the brilliantly colorful Multiforms, and it is what separates a great Rothko from a simply good one.1 For Rothkos of the flesh-and-blood variety, this is not a new discovery. My sister and I understood this when I was a teenager and she still in her twenties. As we went through dozens of paintings to determine which would grace the collection of the newly reconstituted Mark Rothko Foundation, which might come to us and which the taxman would taketh away, repeatedly our determi-

nations revolved around what we called “float.” Some version of “The colors are beautiful [or bold, or stimulating], but not good float” issued from our mouths repeatedly. Ultimately the taxman, or the collectors who purchased unwittingly on his behalf, got some pretty good float too. “Float” within a Rothko painting operates on a number of different planes. First there is float between rectangles, the way they appear to levitate, one above the other. That magnetic pulse between them pushes them apart, not only lifting the upper rectangle but seemingly reducing its mass as this outwardly weighty object hovers effortlessly above those below. Second, the rectangles float not only above one another but also above the background, these most planar of shapes creating, in concert, a palpable sense of three-dimensionality. The depth that my father creates in these two-dimensional works is uncanny and is a large part of what gives them their ethereal quality. Those background depths and the colors that float freely above them impart a searching or spiritual feeling to the work; a personal and psychological space not yet explored, a world as “other“ as the three-dimensional space born from the two dimensions that failed to contain it. This space is what makes a Rothko painting a world unto itself: an emotional world, a philosophical world mirrored by the complexity that issues from the simplicity of the composition. Nor is it a static world; the rectangles that appear to hang weightlessly are filled with their own sense of motion, most often expanding outward, at times falling inward, but always in dynamic interplay with the periphery of the painting. Stacked rectangles could have no such motion. They would be contained, married to their place in the pile. I will add that stacking is something you do to rectangles. Float is something the rectangles do on their own. When a commentator stacks the rectangles, he or she is not merely grounding them but undermining the autonomy that is essential to their sense of motion and their ability to sidestep the Newtonian realm. There is great specificity to Rothko paintings, but it is a specificity that dwells quite comfortably in the company of ambiguity. If my father painted his works with clear intent, it is an intent that you must discover experientially—one that you must make your own, rather than simply receive in the course of a lecture or treatise. The idea must have specificity for you, one that is born of your own internal processes as much as Rothko’s. The space of a Rothko painting creates a realm of ambiguity that allows for personally relevant meaning. It is a place—and not—one that we must define by making sense of it for ourselves. Rothko’s concrete shapes rendered ethereally, his two-dimensional space that blooms into three; these elements bring a particular tension to his work, a

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present-absent dichotomy always in flux. His forms, and ultimately his paintings, are both here and not here, real objects that elude their physical properties. He creates a thing in and of itself, not a depiction of another thing, and yet that concrete object effectively melts away into a suggestion of someplace else. This invitation to look beyond is the product of “float,” its implied movement and depth. “Stacked” cannot give us this space. It has no ambiguity. It is only here. By floating his rectangles my father creates a physical object that defies its own physicality. On one level it is magic, but is this not also a metaphor for our very humanity, an element my father insisted he was trying to capture in his work? For whether one looks east or west, nearly all religious and philosophical traditions celebrate the ability of mind and soul to go beyond the bounds of the body as our great human achievement. My father never spoke to this, so I cannot know the specifics of his beliefs on the transcendental. He was quite clear, however, that he looked to move his viewer out of the world of trivialities and into new realms of exploration.2 He certainly suggests what is possible and what is necessary by means of the images he creates. In this regard, my father’s paintings put me in mind of the work of a sculptor I very much admire, Joel Shapiro (see fig. 64). Shapiro’s best-known works depict the human figure in blocky, sticklike forms. Elongated, square-sectioned members are used to suggest both head and limbs, the compositions usually notable for their simplicity. Shapiro’s materials are very material indeed, woods and metals that communicate mass and solidity. Until they come together, that is. Then Shapiro’s artistry animates them, bringing Pinocchio to life. He creates a remarkable sense of movement from an ostensibly static figure. As a result of that motion, the figure is transformed; where there was weight, we now find remarkable lightness. Like my father’s paintings, Shapiro’s sculptures escape their physical parameters, finding movement where none should exist. In Shapiro’s hands, we would dance in spite of ourselves. Both of these artists deal in potentialities—not so much what is but what may come into being. Their works are essentially vessels for greater things that can be born from them. This is the beauty of their art, a beauty that draws on the human spirit—its ability to change and adapt and see what further change may come. Their work suggests there is something else, more than initial appearances and physical properties. They invite us to engage with that dynamic exploratory part of ourselves. If these two artists create a sense of transformation in their work, it is with the suggestion that we can do the same in ourselves and in the world.

fig. 64 joel shapiro, untitled (2005–6) ■ ■ ■

We have traveled a great distance from stacked, and perhaps that is the point. Stacked is static—if we are to have a transformative experience with art, we cannot let stacked and its relatives bound our horizons. Movement and change are essential. Just as artwork cannot be trapped in the confines of its material, we must be ready to move beyond the “what is” to the “what could be.” Can one little word interfere with that? Absolutely. Hence the motivation for what I am ready to admit began as a rather silly diatribe. I believe in the magic of my father’s work; its ability to move people as no collection of rectangles should. Yet I know that effect is fragile, and this is why so much of my work, and my sister’s work as well, centers on preserving the right atmosphere to let that happen. It is clear to us that you cannot build a magic edifice from stacked rectangles. Those rectangles must be left to float free in unexpected ways. At the time of my writing this essay there had been, as I mentioned at the start, roughly 285 uses of the word stacked applied in print to my father’s rectangles. If I achieve nothing else by writing this volume, then it is my dearest wish that one hundred years from now, that number will still be 285. And although I am not sure the mathematical relationship is linear, it is also my hope that a world where Rothko rectangles are no longer seen as stacked is a world where the possibilities for understanding in new ways are also proportionally greater.

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The Rothko Chapel OUR VOICES IN THE SILENCE

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Sometimes it is best to acknowledge that one has lost before one even begins. Writing about the Rothko Chapel is not so much an exercise in futility; it is simply beside the point. The old adage that writing about music is like dancing about architecture comes very much to mind. For trying to capture the power of art in words is a hopeless enough task, but when that art is contextualized in a sacred space where the art and the spiritual experience are all but inseparable, it becomes unclear what one would even aim to accomplish through verbal discussion. The chapel must be lived. So if you have not been to the Rothko Chapel, please go now. Especially if you think you know Rothko well, because it will shake your preconceptions and, at least in part, recast your understanding of his earlier work. And do not bring this essay along as a guide, because it is not one. Rather, these are reflections that I hope will resonate with those who know the chapel and who, like me, are in the dynamic process of learning what and how and why it is. There has been a tremendous amount of ink spilled on this topic that inherently repels it. Some of these thoughts have been published, others codified in lectures, and much of it comes from the finest and most questing of minds. So I offer this essay not so much with the idea that I am breaking new ground but rather in the hope that this bringing together of the threads of my experiential learning at the chapel will strike chords with those who actively engage with that space, spurring them to look further. To appreciate the unique world of the Rothko Chapel, one must first grasp and welcome the contradictions the murals present and ultimately inhabit. The chapel murals exist at the intersection of everything and nothing. They are silence and a full-voiced shout. They are concrete and yet hardly there. They speak simultaneously of the never was and the ever shall be. In short, they live in the realm of the paradoxical, of the mutually exclusive.

This Cheshire Cat state operates on many levels, but it begins on the physical and formal. These are not paintings in the typical sense of the word. Rothko did not consider them as such, as, to the best of our knowledge, these are the only works not wholly painted by his hand. The fact that he had assistants paint the background colors indicates that he treated these works differently, more as functional pieces than as aesthetic experiences in themselves. Indeed, while the murals are in one sense tangible painted objects, at the same time they have no clear identity, little individual vitality, and are not fully viable outside the environment of the chapel. They were not intended for museum walls, and to place one there would simply render it lost, as it lacks the wholeness necessary to engage the viewer or communicate an idea.1 Each panel’s meaning, and the process by which that meaning is voiced, only comes into being in the company of the other panels and the space for which they were designed. In that sense, these murals are both here and not here, physically present but without purpose or function outside the context of the walls they help define. Technically these works are not murals at all, as Rothko did not paint them directly on the wall. Rather than an intentional avoidance of the mural, however, I believe this choice reflected the luxury Rothko could afford himself as artist and, for all intents and purposes, architect, of the chapel. He was able to work in the medium that most suited him, on the schedule that most suited him, and in the place that most suited him (he traveled from New York only with great reluctance). The fact that he could work on canvas, using his accustomed amalgam of media, meant that he could bring forty years of expertise to bear on this critically important project rather than learn new techniques of applying pigments to walls at such a crucial moment. He could paint, ponder, and revise in the broad rhythms that had stood him so well for decades without the haste necessitated by fresco and other pigments applied directly to the wall. And by painting in New York, he could pursue the spiritual journey of creating the chapel rather than preoccupying himself with the long physical journey to and from Houston. In truth, however, these works are married quite directly to the walls that bear them. They are designed to fit snugly to the surrounding proportions of their supporting walls (see fig. 23), only the south wall granting breathing space around its canvas. This work, not coincidentally, reads most readily as a painting, and this wall, not coincidentally, is the portal through which we enter and exit, remaining at our backs as we first walk in and easing us out of the confines of the space as we leave. Thus on seven of the eight sides, the distinction between wall and painting becomes minimized. The painting essentially ceases to have a separate existence, covering such a large percentage of the wall as to

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almost become a wall itself. Moreover, the works’ current deep stretchers, which push them proudly from the wall, appear to be a departure from Rothko’s original intent: that the canvases, initially mounted on very thin stretchers, should hug the walls closely and became more nearly one with them.2 These panels then truly are murals in spirit, at one with the space that houses them. To remove them would render both building and paintings sterile. My father acknowledged that the paintings were “all a study in proportion,” and it takes only a short while in the chapel to appreciate that the primary mode in which these panels operate is architectural.3 Though they do not in fact function structurally to support the roof, they appear to do so. Their massiveness and monolithic form lend the illusion that they are indeed bearing weight, in contrast to the more ethereal feel of most Rothko paintings.4 At the same time their ability to disappear into the wall, to become an element of that wall, provides the sense that they themselves have no substance but are simply a part of the structure. Ironically, this effect is the very opposite of the traditional mural, which is decorative and hides the structural function of the surface it covers. It is also a significant departure from the goal that Rothko strived for so many years to achieve: the painting as a real object in and of itself. Thus these works inhabit the contradictory space of what I would like to call a trichotomy: neither mural nor painting nor architecture and all three at the same time. This blurring of categorical lines is in part an outgrowth of the breadth of the commission my father received from Jean and Dominique de Menil. Their vision was to create a sanctuary where art would enhance, and indeed facilitate, the spiritual experience of all those who came. Devout Catholics, the de Menils were strong advocates of the broadly inclusive principles that issued from Vatican II, and they sought an artist whose work was at once questing and honored the human spirit. Selecting Rothko, they put their faith in him to create something of deep meaning and religious resonance. Sensing that he had found kindred spirits, my father took a holistic approach to the creative process, feeling free to paint essentially what he wanted and to design the building that would accommodate it. Having spent decades seeking a space that was sensitive to, and in harmony with, his painting, Rothko was now able to design it. And by painting for a specific locale, he was able to make pictures that not only would work effectively in that space, but ones that would essentially create the space. And yet the panels are also completely dependent upon that space, the building giving them form, dictating their interaction with one another, and defining their purpose. The Rothko Chapel is thus not a building, nor is it a group of murals that are housed there. It is a building whose interior is defined

by its contents and whose exterior is largely designed in response to the demands of that interior space. The relationship between building and paintings is reciprocal, interdependent and symbiotic to the point where distinctions between the two have little importance. The chapel is truly a gestalt. It is not a building with murals, nor paintings in a chapel. It is a thing. It is a place. And how do we enter that place? Its appearance on the outside is simple, even unassuming. No grand staircase to climb, no portico, no cupola or tower, doors very much human-scaled. We simply walk in. But once we enter, a great transformation occurs. Everything has changed. We have been transported to another place, a world apart. The rules are different here, and if we knew who we were and how we were and even what or why we were before entering, now we are no longer quite so sure. Everything is suddenly open to question. Though the chapel’s interior is striking, it is unclear exactly where the blow comes from or where it lands. It takes our breath away, not in a way that enraptures but in a way that demands that we remember how to breathe. It is a rebirth—one that does not immediately offer new vistas but instead requires our development to start anew, from the beginning, with nothing taken for granted. Why is it that the chapel has such a profound effect on our psyches? Part of it, no doubt, is the dramatic atmospheric shifts and the corresponding sensory adjustments we must make. It is as if a curtain has come down—there is essentially no transition between the outside world and the interior of the chapel. The low, diffuse light brings us into another realm, even when the Texas sun is not blazing, and it takes several minutes before we can begin to see the color of the murals. Already our tempo has shifted, our pace controlled by the limitations of our sight. Nor are we prepared for the hush, a space not only far quieter than the ambient noise outside, but that also looks and feels quiet. Even the moderate interior temperature contrasts starkly with the environment we left just outside the door. And then there is the scale, which is at once both soaring and contained, much taller than it would appear from outside but ultimately limited by the horizon of the mural panels. Rothko has created a highly intentional space designed to hold you in direct conversation with his work and his purpose. We are surrounded by his canvases so that there is nothing else to see, and nothing offered to our other senses. Unlike his easel paintings, the murals are clearly not tactile works. There is little sense of touch, nothing sensuous in the chapel, indeed so little offered the body that my father seems to be drawing on those religions that would have us free mind and soul by removing the body as much as possible from the equation. Nor are our eyes presented with the allure of the sensual;

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the shiny black surfaces of the triptychs instead reflect our gaze directly back upon our selves. These effects are far from coincidental. Our experience has been minutely controlled. Rothko sculpted every parameter of the chapel with an obsessive eye for detail. In much the same way as the construction of the Tabernacle is described in Exodus 25–27, every cubit of wood and every thread of tapestry mapped with the greatest precision, Rothko specified each component of the project with insistence and intention.5 Nothing was left to chance; every angle and surface was anguished over for months on end. And while my father did not live to install the chapel himself, he did communicate fastidious instructions about the precise hanging metrics for each of the panels, dimensions measured to the quarter inch. A quarter inch for a fifteen-foot-tall panel.6 Certainly too fine an adjustment to lie outside the margin of error for the mocked-up walls and homemade pulley system that allowed him to experiment with such questions in his studio. But it all mattered. It was necessity, a matter of life and death. There is a certain irony to such precision applied to massive, essentially blank panels, ones that he did not even paint entirely himself. Such a project would seem more the product of sweep and gesture. But as so often, the truth lies at the heart of the irony itself. My father exerted such fastidious control precisely because he was working with such apparently blunt tools. He had to be exact—there was almost nothing there. It takes a lot of effort to make nothing. Seriously. He was trying to make something so omnipresent for the viewer that it would all but disappear. It is like a properly set-up pair of stereo speakers, which cease to be perceived as the source of sound and instead spread a proscenium of sound in front of you. Or like the perceptual exercise in which you stare intently at an object directly in front of you until it drifts out of focus and the things beyond it become clear. The chapel murals need to be there in order for you to see other things plainly. But again, the chapel cannot quite be nothing. It needs to create an environment that engages us, that makes us want to look and stay. Renzo Piano understood this and put it into practice in his finest museum designs (e.g.,the Menil Collection, the Fondation Beyeler). This is architecture that is mesmerically quiet, that steps out of the way, and yet possesses an organic beauty that envelops and invites, that keeps our attention focused in the present. In such an environment the artwork becomes insistent, calling for interaction. Since the building holds its own subtle allure, the artwork does not have the additional task of retaining paying customers. The works of art are free to sing, knowing their voices will sound in this sympathetic acoustic.

My father was no Renzo Piano, but he understood (perhaps before Piano did) that he must create a space that was in no way distracting yet which remained compelling; one that insists upon our attention and intention, even if in a way that involves no narrative and no program. But make no mistake— there is a direction, a prescribed task at hand, when one enters the chapel—and it is not merely a suggestion. It is an imperative disguised as a caress. Everything has been precisely choreographed; everything in that room requires you to pause and engage. After that, the dance is yours, but dance you must. It is your stage and your auditorium, with a troupe and an audience of one. The process is not arbitrary, nor is it optional, and unless you choose the exit, there is nothing else to do. Rothko provides the where, the who (you), and the when (now). You must provide the what and the how. And if you find that your time in the Rothko Chapel helps you to explore places in yourself rarely glimpsed, then you and my father are in synchrony about discovering why. While entering the chapel clearly unsettles and challenges our senses, the effect on us is greatly amplified, I believe, by the single-mindedness with which the chapel was created. There are many transformative places throughout the world—Machu Picchu, Amiens Cathedral, Ryoan-ji (insert your favorite here)— but they are typically the product of many minds and hands working together, often over the course of centuries. No matter how uniform their purpose, no matter how much the resulting place may reflect cultural values and priorities, for clarity and directness of impact they cannot match the vision of an individual, realized in a few short years. Even such through-conceived triumphs as the Sistine Chapel were mediated by the close monitoring of patrons and the backdrop of canon law, regardless of how much Michelangelo flexed his will. The tremendous freedom Rothko was granted allowed him to hone and hone again his artistic expression to the uncompromising focus of his idea. In the Rothko Chapel we find a single voice, singing a melody of its own composition. A song Rothko has written just for that time and place but representing the culmination of all he has sung before; a distillation of a lifetime of music echoing forever in its own vessel, a conch shell with Rothko’s voice. And yours? The Rothko Chapel is thus not for the faint of heart. It is all-enveloping and concentrated—a pure extract that admits no other flavors. The experience is intense. And yet that intensity stems not so much from the insistence of what surrounds you as from its insistence that you bring it into being. For as powerful as the chapel’s voice can be, it ultimately says nothing. Walk into the chapel alone—the silence is deafening. It is the most present of absences, an all-pervading spectre that must be acknowledged. And most perplexingly, it is a silence that

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must at once be observed and filled, honored and overcome. The chapel is replete with the nearly palpable air and atmosphere that my father said gives a painting life and a sense of reality, and yet it can feel as if there is nothing to breathe.7 I will digress momentarily from this look at listen to silence to consider Morton Feldman’s seminal composition Rothko Chapel.8 I do this only because to do so is no digression at all. The two works inhabit the same world; to be immersed in Feldman’s music is to be inside Rothko’s space. This is not to say that Feldman’s piece is simply an imprint or likeness of the Rothko Chapel. Rather it is that the two artworks are cut from the same cloth canvas, with a common spiritual sensibility mediated through silence. We can learn from Feldman’s Rothko Chapel because it is a piece where the silence is truly felt, before it became a near-dogma in his later work. Listening to Feldman’s Rothko Chapel may help us not so much to understand the chapel better as to understand it differently. In this work, we recognize a fellow traveler, someone who has really lived in the space and revels in the experiential journey: someone for whom silence does not impose limits but instead offers possibilities. What the Feldman piece also makes explicit and concrete is the temporal element in viewing the chapel. This is a property inherent to music; that the work evolves horizontally, unfolding necessarily as it moves through time. Art generally does not function by this same principle; instead it is laid bare to the viewer all at once, even as details emerge more slowly with longer attention. The Rothko Chapel, however, is not typical artwork, and like Feldman’s piece, it hits us with a change of ambience, a change of priorities, and a need to retune our senses in order to adapt to those changes. Then Rothko’s music begins. Or rather, it is your own music, shaded by plums and burgundies and black. Feldman is in direct synchrony with this process; what he does is suggest a tempo—a tempo by which the chapel experience might take shape over time. He intuits the room’s natural rhythm, incorporating sounds both human and otherworldly, with notes carefully chosen to punctuate and shape the silence that is the canvas on which the piece is painted. Listening to Rothko Chapel, it is clear to me that Feldman felt very much at home in the chapel and that it must have both reaffirmed and influenced what he believed was possible using only the simplest means, sparingly. And although we have no record that Rothko acknowledged it, one must wonder if Feldman’s music of the 1960s did the same for him. Feldman, like Rothko, is architect as well as artist. Just as my father realizes in the chapel that the space around the paintings shapes them as much as they do themselves, so Feldman shows us that it is the space, the silence around

the notes, that shapes the form of the music. The silence does not change the notes themselves, but it gives them a context that defines their function and purpose. It is the silence that gives the notes their meaning. In this way, Feldman’s piece and Rothko’s chapel operate on the same plane of the mutually exclusive. Feldman teaches us that silence is sound, just as Rothko shows us that emptiness has substance. Both are part of the fabric of the absolute; both are absences that boldly trumpet their presence. Silence. Both Morton Feldman and Mark Rothko understood it so well. For silence may be a thing in itself, but it is one that calls our attention to the absence of other things. It is only truly registered when all the noise stops. Then we can appreciate just how rich that absence is, and just how much voice, how much music, there is within us. Yet it can be so hard to hear those voices, and so easy to avoid them when to hear them is perhaps disturbing. This is why the chapel is Rothko’s gift to us, and also why it is not a gift that all are ready to accept. He creates a space that is dedicated to silence, that creates silence and only lives by silence. It offers the clarity that can only be gained against a backdrop of silence, an opportunity to reassess in the context of unamalgamated experience. But the chapel also enforces silence—note how our voices drop the moment we enter. Either we dwell in the space, embrace the quiet, and listen to what is inside us, or we will find nothing. We must learn to hear, or rather to listen, before any real vision can occur. The murals will reveal nothing until we find the fullness of that silence. It is no small task. The chapel makes great demands on those who enter. We must fill the silence with our voice, we must make pictures on the walls, we must give a shape to the void. It is as if each of us needs to create the world anew, albeit a personal world. For as sure as Rothko’s hand has been in the chapel, it has only been to fashion an arena, to establish the theater in which we will play out our own dramas. He has created a backdrop that will allow us to paint our own scene, but a backdrop that refuses to withdraw. “Presences,” Brice Marden calls the murals, and indeed, their participation in our experience in the chapel is profoundly concrete, even as they adeptly stay out of the way of our own exploration.9 They are so elusive and so there. These blank paintings are intently active, doggedly insistent with their silence, as if each one were continually asking, “So?” My father, whom so many commentators seem determined to turn into a rabbi, is far more of a psychoanalyst, providing the obtrusive silence of the analytic hour; the silence you must fill with you. This imperative stems from the unwavering focus of the murals. They do not gaze out blankly from the walls, each one engaging us individually. Instead

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they work in concert, all fourteen staring at the same central spot. Whether you choose to step into it or not, you are the only one who fits that space, you are the one whose face is reflected in all those dark mirrors. The sheen of the seven black canvases, the unyielding solidity of the seven monochromes, both reinforce that you are both subject and object; you are the one who must tell the tale and about whom the tale is told. Of course, Rothko makes it “easy” for you. He has filled every vista entirely; horizontally and vertically, he has created a contained universe. And yet the very impenetrability of the panels evokes the infinite. They are like staring into the darkness, which reveals nothing but holds everything. The space of the chapel is confining, but it is also limitless; a true panorama that encourages venture. Thus what may seem onerous and threatening to some will be welcomed as opportunity by others. If I have presented the chapel only as a challenge to this point, this may be in part because of my own initial experience, for which I was unprepared and by which I was taken unawares. Many, however, make a type of pilgrimage to the chapel, seeking peace, enlightenment, a place for contemplation, a glimpse of the beyond. The chapel offers all of these to those committed to finding them. Those who have done their psychological and spiritual homework will possess the openness that makes the chapel a point of departure, a place to gather the clarity to seek further. It invites one to look beyond the apparent confines by gazing resolutely inward. What the chapel makes more explicit than Rothko’s other paintings, however subtly, is that the process we engage in with his works is a mirror of what we engage in more broadly in our lives. If we find the chapel only limiting, then we are probably not ready to explore the possibilities of our own natures; and if we see only boundless freedoms, then we may not recognize the burdens of self-definition. The panels reflect and re-echo the insistence of our own psychological needs. Ultimately the chapel encourages a quest for meaning, a larger understanding of our world, our lives, our purpose, our humanity. This is the stuff of being alive, the very stuff of which the chapel is constructed. While we may undertake this pilgrimage with other travelers, in the end the Rothko Chapel is a place to be alone. This is how Rothko conceived it, how he painted it, and how he himself experienced it (fig. 65). Even when you are among others, you are very clearly alone, just as one ultimately is at any rite of passage. Alone, facing self and God. It is lonely and at times frightening but ever so necessary. It is a place to encounter and perhaps confront your you-ness, something only you can do, and in which other voices are only a distraction. You

fig. 65 [mark rothko, 1964] 69th street studio with chapel murals. photograph by hans namuth.

need all that silence, all that focus, to hear your inner voices; to recognize your needs, your fears, your fulfillments. Although it is not a very large building, the chapel space makes you feel small, like the tiny dust particle in the endless carpet of the universe that in fact you are. Your task, as you face the infinite suggested by the fourteen murals, is to reassert—to find new credibility in—your uniqueness, your reason to exist, your greater-than-dust status. You must pass through the existential crisis and emerge, perhaps not victorious but reinvigorated, and certainly with new understanding. It is a moment, however brief or extended, of taking account, facing the questions you work hard to avoid, of judging and accepting. It is a psychological and spiritual journey and parallels the archetypical ones of our faith traditions: Christ’s temptation in the wilderness and Jacob’s extended flight before he wrestles the “angel” are Judeo-Christian examples, but such journeys are endemic in the worlds of religion and myth. It is passing through the tunnel before emerging on the other side. We must face the darkness before we can truly appreciate the light.

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If I make this sound ominous, forbidding, filled with foreboding, I am misrepresenting. The process does not subject one so much to darkness and fear. Instead it is a process by which to uncover that which is—in the true sense of the word—awesome. One that makes us face the profound, to live in the momentous and not shrink from the big questions so easily obscured by the noise and static of our lives. Our journey may be solitary, but we are hardly alone in treading its path, for we are all faced with the uncertainties brought into focus in the Rothko Chapel. Even as it makes demands of the individual, the chapel is a public space, a place where others take their own journey beside you. It is a great place to be alone together. For there is a commonality to our existence, to our aims and our quest, to which my father addressed all of his work. This need to ask who and where we are is universal, even as the process of exploration is unique and personal. Asking, and attempting to answer, this question is a major part of what defines each of us as a human being. And it is also what defined Rothko as an artist. We are at a place, then, with a purpose so elemental, so essential to our makeup, that we have entered a realm only of questions, not of answers. True to this spirit, Rothko crafted the chapel in the form of an octagon—a space that does not point us in any particular direction for spiritual enlightenment. Modeled on an ancient Byzantine plan, it does not orient us toward Jerusalem or Mecca or any other seat of learning. Instead, it places us in the center with an unoccluded view of the horizon in all directions. It launches us without trade winds to push us, currents to pull us, or compass to guide us. Daunting and humbling, perhaps, but strangely optimistic about the strength of the human spirit and its ultimate need to find its own way.

The Seagram Murals THE EPIC AND THE MYTH

Myth envelops the Seagram murals in a swirling mist. Not so much an obscuring fog as an overlay through which we view the works; a substance at once extraneous to them and directly distilled from the genesis of the works. This veil of notoriety—perhaps deserved—exists for no other works in my father’s output. No other Rothko painting, or set of paintings, comes yoked to a story, a real-life monumental struggle that reveals core elements of the artist’s temperament, his values, his priorities, and perhaps his psychology. Much of that story is even true; myth need not be manufactured. Still, it remains essential to recognize that to regard the mythic is inherently to undertake a shift in perspective. For here the action vaults to the stage, causing the events we perceive necessarily to inflate and propelling what may be ordinary to a grander and more universal scale. The Seagram commission provoked Rothko’s strongest statements on record. The project clearly sparked the artist’s imagination, and the story of how he wrestled with it has touched a very human nerve for many people to a degree that has warranted, even demanded, its retelling. Thus it occupies the lion’s share of two documentary films on Rothko and even spawned a play that garnered the highest awards in both London and New York. To see the Seagram murals clearly, so that we can pursue our analytic task, will entail no small stripping of veneer to free the paintings from the discolored varnish accrued to them and their intended home. But we will not wholly discard those layers, because they can tell us a great deal not only about the artist but also about our culture and ourselves. What is the relationship between the patron and the artist, and how may that affect the relationship between the artist and his viewer? And what narratives do we construct to understand, reimagine, and reify those relationships? In what roles do we cast the artist, and how do those roles reflect on our own attitudes?

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Despite distractions from the notoriety, a brief history of the commission is in order. In 1954 the Bronfman family, heirs to the Seagram’s Gin fortune, contracted with legendary German architect Mies van der Rohe to design an office tower that would serve as Seagram corporate headquarters at the prime locale of Park Avenue between Fifty-First and Fifty-Second Streets in Manhattan. Built diagonally across from the architecturally no less seminal Lever House, it quickly became an iconic building, a paean to modernism in a district known largely for old money and conservative tastes. American architect Philip Johnson was chosen to design much of the public space on the interior of the building, including a restaurant. He in turn hired Rothko to make paintings to populate the smaller of the restaurant’s two dining spaces. The nature of the restaurant and that particular dining space became the source of much misunderstanding between Johnson and Rothko, and ultimately a good deal of acrimony. Johnson was designing the decidedly upscale Four Seasons restaurant, now in its sixth decade and still a high-end destination eatery. It would include a somewhat more intimate, private dining space (the main room is monumental), with paintings by Rothko. Despite the site, the scale, and the dollars involved, my father, a committed socialist, somehow came away with the impression that he was making paintings for the workers’ commissary. At least as the story has come down to us, it took a remarkably long time for him to be disabused of that notion. Having rented an old gymnasium on the Bowery that could accommodate the vast size of the panels he was painting, Rothko spent most of 1958 and a good portion of 1959 executing three distinct, if related, series of murals for the room, selecting a portion of the last group for the walls of the dining room. Soon after returning from a trip to Europe at the end of the summer of 1959, he and my mother went to eat at the newly opened Four Seasons. Distraught by the lavishness of the restaurant, he called Johnson shortly thereafter and withdrew from the commission, refusing to install his work and returning the advance he had received on the $35,000 fee, a fortune to him at the time.1 So much for “The Facts.” “The Myth” renders the mere facts much more flavorful—spicy in a way that burns itself into memory. While the grand commission of a famous artist for an iconic building sets the stage for drama, and the ultimate spurning of the commission at the eleventh hour makes for a compelling denouement, the myth also requires a colorful character to bring the play to life for us. And Rothko obliges, impelling the story from archetype to a living struggle very much of the flesh. Had Rothko simply returned the money and walked away from the undertaking, there would be mystery and at least the

beginnings of a narrative attached to the mural series. But by means of a few careless remarks, the artist renders Seagram a war of ideals and passions, rather than simply a business venture gone sour. He puts a megaphone to that narrative and amplifies the mythic elements to the point where they threaten to drown out the quieter tones of the paintings themselves. “I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room.” Makes for good copy, doesn’t it? And so it was when this quote from my father appeared in Harper’s Magazine, shortly after his suicide in 1970, fully eleven years after the words, or something like them, passed his lips. But the reported pronouncements contained other provocative sound bites, Rothko calling the Four Seasons “a place where the richest bastards in New York will come to feed and show off” and asserting that he “accepted this assignment as a challenge, with strictly malicious intentions.“ As for how he would produce his off-putting effect, he invokes Michelangelo as a fellow traveler, noting how in the Laurentian Library in Florence, “he achieved just the kind of feeling I’m after—he makes the viewers feel that they are 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.”2 We will examine my father’s psychological maneuvering in more detail later, but for now we should note his attempts to deny his own personal involvement with any of the work he is creating. It is all made for effect, and a spiteful one at that. Despite his dissimulation, however, his passion for the project becomes strikingly evident. This diatribe, evoked by the mere mention of the Seagram commission, indicates an artist who is completely bound up in his enterprise, hardly one who feels that “If the restaurant would refuse to put up my murals, that would be the ultimate compliment.”3 What becomes patently clear is the complexity of the relationships at hand: between artist and client, artist and viewer, artist and patron, artist and society, artist and his own work. Ultimately, because of his ambivalence about all these relationships, Rothko is wrestling with his own demons trying to find a workable intersection between what he believes, what he feels, and what he needs. With this public commission, my father joined a tradition of knotty and contentious relationships between artist and patron, immortalized in some of those artist’s greatest works—Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, Rembrandt and The Night Watch, Rodin and The Gates of Hell, to cite the tip of the iceberg. In so doing, Rothko entered a realm where his art could no longer be viewed simply as work in and of itself; its interpretation would always be mediated by the myth surrounding its creation.

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Myth typically grows where facts are lacking. Certainly with artists’ projects executed centuries ago—Rembrandt et al.—we can only speculate about how much we truly know. But we should not mistake the comparative thoroughness of modern record keeping for an assurance that all the circumstances of more contemporary commissions will be knowable. In the case of these statements by my father, the record through which they come to us is highly compromised on many levels. As I mentioned, the article in which they were quoted was written fully eleven years after the author heard my father hold forth, and was published in light of my father’s suicide, the other great myth-generating event of his life. The tendency for suicide to provide sudden clarity about many things previously obscure should in itself give us pause. Rothko’s comments were made to a stranger (as it so happened, a journalist) in a ship’s bar and apparently recorded hours later, after he had spent the evening with my father in the bar. It is hard to imagine that no alcohol passed journalist John Fischer’s lips (although not as hard as to imagine no alcohol passing Rothko’s lips!). Equally sobering are the factual errors that riddle the article, most notably in Fischer’s discussion of the genesis and disposition of Rothko’s three series of Seagram murals, which immediately follows the diatribe. It is entirely confused. Was Fischer equally casual about the more quotable portion of what Rothko tossed him? We should, therefore, remain fully conscious that we are hardly presented with an urtext in the case of these remarks. And yet, whatever the proportions of this Rothko/Fischer cocktail might be, I am not ready to entirely discard what Fischer gives us. It may not be precise, but the tone rings true. There is an overheard verisimilitude in these comments completely lacking from the highly selfconscious and at times overwrought statements my father published in the 1940s.4 Whether my father was shooting straight in the bar of the USS Constitution is one question, but shooting he was, with a rare insouciance that he no doubt would have regretted had he known to do so. We must remember that Rothko never intended these statements as statements, never dreamed they would become public at all. Ultimately our job as readers and viewers is not so much to try to disentangle myth from fact (probably a hopeless task in any case) as to observe how the myth informs our relation to these paintings and to this artist. Examining the effects of received truths and the roles they play in shaping our perspective helps clarify not just our interaction with Rothko but more broadly the ways in which we approach works of art. We will thus try to understand the Seagram paintings on their own terms but also in relation to the history that surrounds

them. And that history we will examine in its own right, for what it tells us about this artist caught at the moment of his most public encounter. As I have indicated, the intricate dance between Mark Rothko and Philip Johnson (and between Rothko and Rothko) around the Seagram commission escalated to the level of theater. Yet somehow, despite those convolutions, or perhaps in part because of it, my father produced wholly original works that would redirect his creative aims and the course of his output for the rest of his career. So, while we have the “facts” of the commission still clearly in mind, let us take a close look at the works themselves. That will give us a better perspective from which to evaluate the received myth; what may or may not be true, and what aspects may prove enlightening regardless of how credible they may be. The Seagram project was my father’s first commission.5 Rothko had longed for such an undertaking and viewed the project in monumental terms even before it began. The murals were painted as explicitly public works, something of which my father remained very conscious. No matter how large and dramatic his works of the previous ten years had been, there was still something more intimate, if not actually private, about the colorful, iconic works recognizable today simply as “Rothkos.” If not quite easel paintings, they were solitary, self-sufficient works, painted to be viewed in any context, most likely a private one, since Rothko had not yet received direct commissions from museums. If the museum wall was a glimmer on my father’s dream-filled horizon, if posterity was his ideal audience, this was not yet the reality for which he was painting. In the case of the Seagram murals, however, Rothko seized on the opportunity to create a dramatic installation. A series of works of size and impact to capture and hold the individual’s attention in a public space and then, ironically, to draw them into an intimate experience. The intimacy is perhaps the most important aspect, but we must not overlook the sheer weight and scale of these paintings. These are works on an epic scale, created to wholly occupy what is, in fact, not an overlarge room (56 by 27 feet). Even the largest canvases from the mid-1950s (e.g., 105 by 90 inches) are dwarfed by the largest Seagrams, which, at 105 by 180 inches, fill the horizons nearly beyond the scope of one’s vision. These were (as best we understand Rothko’s unrealized plan) intended to run in a series of three, side by side, essentially creating a wall of burgundy. Rothko intended an environment that would envelop the viewer, effectively appropriating the room and dictating its ambience. Although we can never know if the murals would have created their intended effect at the Four Seasons, we can know, from museum installations,

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the ways they interact with the viewer and the surrounding room. Their ability to define a space is almost uncanny, an effect strikingly on display at the National Gallery in Washington in 2003–4. Here the paintings succeeded in creating a cohesive room in an awkwardly asymmetrical polyhedral space, with three or four unevenly distributed entrances on different levels and a double elevator bank in the middle. It became, despite the distractions, indisputably the Rothko mural room. Even with paintings plucked willfully from different mural series, the works forged a distinct art environment from a space that had repeatedly frustrated curatorial attempts to make of it anything more than a passageway and meeting spot. Visitors to London’s Tate Galleries have, meanwhile, witnessed something close to my father’s vision, as rooms created from the mural panels he gifted to the Tate have voiced a cohesive utterance despite many changes in presentation in more than forty years of display. Similarly, the seven Seagram murals displayed in a dedicated room at Japan’s Kawamura Memorial Museum speak with a concentrated and unified eloquence despite the fact that this collection of works was selected in the 1970s without my father’s input. We can garner from the visual effect of his congregated murals one of the primary attractions of the commission for Rothko. Much as he had previously insisted on hanging his works together, creating an atmosphere by gathering individual paintings in a room, here he recognized the power of the integrated statement. At Seagram he had the opportunity to create works that would speak in unison in an environment that admitted little visual distraction, and could thus channel his own voice with great clarity. A room allowed him to be resolute and absolute; to utter a single truth, uncompromised, unequivocal, unadulterated. For Rothko the primary goal was communication, and the opportunity to command attention, from those willing or not, must have been nearly irresistible. With his own room, Rothko did not need to shout. His understated intensity could seep into the viewer slowly, building its crescendo from pianissimo. The murals create their own silence, one in which they can speak eloquently, in modulated tones and at their own pace. These large works are anything but bombastic. They do not need to be—the viewer has to listen. But this is not the work of egomania. This is a passionate and earnest desire to speak with us—about us. What Rothko has to say is complex and nuanced, so he knows we probably won’t listen unless we have little choice. But to have us in a room—his room—to have an hour with us, or two or three . . . A rare, almost impossibly fortuitous, set of circumstances, and enough to make even the most self-possessed diner pause. And enough to make even the most idealistic artist forget whom he is painting for, and what else is taking place in that room.

From his sources of inspiration we can know some of Rothko’s goals— and how far removed they were from the reality of the commission. He looked to some of the world’s great public buildings as a way of thinking himself into the process, and then visited them in the wake of his creation. Classical examples dominated. Greek and Roman temples; Paestum and the Hall of Mysteries in Pompeii, we know with certainty that he visited in 1959. But Italy, always a strong pull for him, also held the lure of the Renaissance—the classical reawakened and reinvented. And despite the cynicism expressed to Fischer, Rothko was clearly moved by Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence, and used it as a touchstone in his conception of the Seagram space. The temple is certainly the loftiest of architectural structures, intended, depending on the culture, to mimic the divine, glorify the divine, express the divine, appease the divine. Its grandeur is intended to help us feel our participation in the greater achievements or aspirations of our culture, and at the same time expose our solitary state, indeed our insignificance, in the world. Temples make our spirits soar and reduce us to nothing in the same moment. More modern cultures have made a virtue of that isolation, finding in the lone individual the opportunity—perhaps even the imperative—of contemplating a world larger than the self, but a world whose significance is distinctly personal. My father certainly tapped this understanding of our relation to the universe when he designed the Rothko Chapel a few years later. He distilled the grand, that which is larger than life, to the intimate and distinctly human. Rothko did more than capture the spirit of the temple in the murals he painted in the Seagram series; he made use of its architectural forms. All but abandoning the floating rectangles that had served his expressive purposes so faithfully for a decade, he opened the forms, creating distinct vertical and horizontal elements that clearly defined the painting space and gave the illusion of bearing weight. Rothko even painted a frieze-like mural to fit over the entrance doorway to the dining room where the rest of his murals would be housed. Columns capped by pediments, large vistaless windows—we should not become overliteral in our view of these forms, and yet their architectural function is undeniable. This was made clear by installations in the Tate Gallery and Kawamura Memorial Museum in 2008 and 2009, where close setting of a large group of murals gave the impression that the panels were indeed the structural elements of the room. Abutted one against the other, the murals did not so much overpower the room as make it redundant. Their means of communication became less an expression from any panels or group of panels and more the creation of a space in which meaning could come into being.

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As much as my father looked to evoke the classical, or make use of its expressive forms, he was also keenly aware of the modernist aesthetic of the soaring building that would house his works. Of course, Mies’s modernism was rooted in classicism, the Bauhaus school espousing a simplicity in direct reaction to the academicism of the École des Beaux-Arts and the frankly baroque elements of Art Nouveau. For this project, Rothko stripped down his style even further than his norm, siphoning off the more emotive, expressionistic elements in his color and forms and embracing more linear and muscular forms reminiscent of Mies’s own. There is also a boldness and strength to Rothko’s painted gestures in these works. Applying paint in broad, vigorous strokes, the artist captures some of the sheer thrust of the Seagram Building, even if the brushwork reveals a more passionate approach than Mies would allow. Rothko thus creates an image with a marked physicality to its presence, and ironically, through that very act, causes the panels to all but disappear. For in their architectural role, as elements that appear nearly structural to the building, he makes the murals essentially a part of the wall. The paintings are there, but they are not there: or they are there but it is not clear they are paintings. They live in space somewhere between material and immaterial—strikingly embracing each pole. This allows the murals to continually engage us without explicitly declaring that engagement. The architectural function of the murals is readily apparent to anyone who spends time in a Seagram room, but it is also evident from the way my father approached these works, both when he was creating them and after they had been orphaned from the Four Seasons. Rothko painted the works in intentional series, for the first time in his career—each panel with a specific or at least probable locale within the installation. The panels function as a unit, interacting with and supporting one another to create a synergistic overall effect much greater than the sum of its individual parts. Unlike in the Rothko Chapel of a few years later, where the building is an integral part of the work and the mural panels have minimal viability as works in and of themselves, here the individual Seagram murals still read as paintings, but their expressive weight is diminished outside of the group. It is clear that Rothko understood the means by which these works communicated, and the importance of letting their collective voices speak as one. Following the break with Johnson and his return of the commission fee, my father could certainly have sought buyers for the individual panels, in the hopes of recouping some of his considerable costs—now unpaid. Instead, however, he insisted on keeping them together, and made a bespoke room for them at his 1961 MoMA retrospective a central focus of the exhibition. At least twice in the

1960s he tried to find homes for the series, first through New York collector Ben Heller, who already owned a seminal 1950s work, and later through the Italian count Giuseppe Panza, whose substantial Rothko collection now resides at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Neither of these discussions bore fruit, but my father still pursued the idea of a room where he could install a group. Finally, in 1966 he opted to gift a set of nine murals to the Tate Gallery in London, where they would be installed in their own space near the galleries of William Turner paintings. The Seagram commission ultimately began a new phase in Rothko’s career, pushing him to think, even more than before, about how his works interact with the viewer, particularly as mediated by the room as a whole. His painting of the next decade is dominated by series and commissions for public spaces, where he focused more and more of his compositional energies on proportion and the architectural function of his painting. The Harvard murals of 1961–62 (alas, another dining room) show a further extension of the solidity and verticality of the rectangular “figures” that my father first established in the Seagram series. And with the Rothko Chapel, the “figure” has all but disappeared, the human drama turned inward toward more meditative ends. All through these projects and the intervening and preparatory works, Rothko is concentrating on creating atmosphere, creating space where his paintings interact with each other and with the viewer in a symbiotic process that, when optimal, produces a single chord from many voices. Color, the expressive medium most associated with Rothko, was of course a central player in his quest to produce what is essentially installation art. The Seagram commission pushed Rothko to create a new color scheme that was cohesive yet varied enough to stimulate the viewer, an overall effect that maintained areas of local interest. With the known proportions of an exclusively Rothko room, he could harness color and form to create an experiential unity whose power lay in its simplicity and its understated, unwavering presence. Rothko had begun darkening his palette in 1957, the year before he began the Seagram series, but the rich burgundies that would become his hallmark began in earnest with the murals. Saturated and just past ripe, this color would form the background for all three series he painted. Sometimes veering more toward wood tones, occasionally with a hint of purple, it is the very flesh of these works. As with his forms, Rothko found a robustly physical color; deeply sensual, never flamboyant. Although Rothko himself noted the shift in his color palette, he never indicated the reason for it. A determination that his works not be viewed as decora-

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tive was likely his chief motivation. This insistence is perhaps ironic in the context of a commission whose end was specifically artistic decorations for a restaurant. Ironic, but clearly all the more urgent—the patron might have his priorities, but Rothko clearly had his own. He needed to work particularly hard in that context to rise above a setting that called for the banal if he were to produce a public work whose value and meaning transcended its function. He would have to harness not just an architectural sensibility but also an appropriately imposing color if the dining room were indeed to become a Greek temple. Although his work had garnered largely positive press for the previous decade, there remained a number of viewers and critics who either dismissed the paintings as wall decoration or appreciated the work but did not see more than surface beauty. My father, it would appear, deliberately began to make his paintings a little “tougher,” not so immediately appealing, not mistakable for pretty, and decidedly so in the case of the Seagram panels. While there is, again, a Mies-congruent masculinity and functionality to his color choice, Rothko’s palette for the murals does not read simply as a response, nor as an expression of an aesthetic philosophy, but instead as an attempt to start a new conversation. To some degree the nature of a public commission necessitated that my father seek a new level of engagement, but this challenge also granted him an opportunity to interact with the viewer in a new way, through different channels and at a different tempo. The installation allowed him, more than ever before, to make work whose beauty was not particularly sensed by the eye but which, over time, could be absorbed more wholly. With the Seagram murals, Rothko pursued this aim, and these means, doggedly, giving us not merely darker colors but a grouping that veered toward the monochrome. He paints burgundy rectangles on burgundy backgrounds, and when he slides toward orange figures, the background shifts as well, the resulting browner tones maintaining family ties to the orange overlay. A black almost as sensual as the burgundy comes frequently to the front, lending a bit of contrast but yielding no color. “To get the oppressive effect he wanted,” Fischer tells us, Rothko reported using “a dark palette, more somber than anything [I’ve] tried before.”6 With “oppressive,” I think Fischer is taking Rothko too much at his own word and, never having seen these paintings, misunderstanding Rothko’s darkness, lending it a sinister cast it does not necessarily contain. As for “somber,” however, I will correct my father and suggest that the better word is quiet. How can such massive paintings be quiet? This is a question my father, no doubt, asked himself over and over, and one that I think the results answer decisively. For other than their size, there is nothing impressive about these

panels—nothing sensational, nothing effusive, nothing that readily catches the eye. There is no shout here, only a steady tone, one that does not demand to be heard but which ultimately cannot be ignored. Rothko could dare all this, could create works of such decided specificity, because he had removed the variable of the room. He knew the venue for which he was painting. Or so he thought. To put this in twenty-first-century terms, the painter creating work for the commercial market, for a gallery or even a museum wall, is involved in a type of speed dating. The artist needs to produce something that will capture attention and quickly win interest in the hope that this may lead to a deeper or meaningful interaction. But if the artwork lacks that hook, the artist risks the drive-by or, at best, a conversation that never really gets started. The interaction changes entirely, however, when an artist has a whole room. For when an artist has a room, the need to engage the viewer through the immediate is reduced, and he or she buys time. The artist has significantly longer—even if the calculation is in seconds—to draw the viewer into conversation. There, any given work does not need to pack immediate drama but can be a piece in a potent gestalt. Hence Rothko’s strong preference for groups of his work hung together, where the paintings can speak in concert to produce not so much enticement as resonance. When that room is a dining room, the parameters shift further. With a meal, with a social gathering, the arc of the interaction with the viewer flattens to the point where it is only the gentlest of curves. Time, which to this point had been the most precious commodity, becomes abundant, even overabundant. To many artists, these conditions would be challenging or intolerable (think of the Pop generation), but for Rothko they are ideal because he has a captive audience. Still, even my father understood that he couldn’t simply lecture the patrons in these circumstances. He needed to quiet his tones and slow the coursing through the veins. His voice ceases to be one of overt drama and finds instead subtly shaded, almost monotonic colors that whisper and suggest rather than declaim. And with that change in tone comes a change in tempo, as he recognizes the need to pace the evening, eschewing the scherzo for a more meditative étude. Rothko controls that pace primarily through color. Although we have noted how the open, vertical forms make his panels almost a part of the wall, it is his elemental, earthen colors that keep them there. Not too pretty, not too attractive to the eye. He has an audience whose stay will be measured not in seconds or minutes but most likely in hours. Now, not only can he control the viewing experience, he must control it, and his more meditative colors reflect the necessity of a more meditative interaction. They reflect that interaction, and they help bring it into being.

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Oh, but it is a narrow tightrope to walk, for the viewers sit, surrounded by the omnipresent panels, yet they are highly distracted, by conversation, by food, by drink. The artwork cannot be overinsistent, but it must penetrate. In the 1980s industrial psychologists first made us aware of the types of colors employed by American fast-food restaurants in their seating areas to manipulate the dining experience. The colors were chosen after in-depth research, selected to make their dining rooms appealing to eat in, but not conducive to an extended stay.7 Attracting diners was only part of the job. They needed the customers to leave promptly in a business driven by rapid turnover. Rothko found himself with parallel if inverse challenges, needing instead to begin and maintain a slow-burning conversation over a long span of time. He sought, in contrast to McDonald’s, colors that are not immediately appealing but instead soak into you slowly, a deep warmth that makes you look, consider, and interact in a more bodily, multisensual way. Rothko cannot have your eyes and your attention all the time, and so he shifts to a long-term approach, relying on a cumulative effect, creating an atmosphere that necessarily becomes a part of your experience. And we should note that the colors are indeed warm. The palette darkens, but it does not push you away or shut you out. These paintings envelop you; if anything, they close you in. Their colors are like those of the inside of the body, deep aubergines the color of organs and reds the color of dried blood. Far from trying to shock, the panels hold us in a strangely primal embrace, an intimacy that predates consciousness. Here one can feel the influence of the Hall of Mysteries in Pompeii, which Rothko may have visited in 1950 and where we know he spent significant time just before completing the series, in 1959. The site, ancient in its own right, evokes something still earlier, rooted in history and prehistory, the colors speaking of origins in the earth itself, long embedded in memory. Rothko draws upon the feel of this place, in an attempt to create something that is so much a part of us that we are unaware of it, something we cannot quite name even as it remains vaguely familiar. And is this not ultimately one of the most central roles of the artist: to present to us that which remains unseen because it is before us all the time? I will add, by means of a coda, two notes about the importance of these murals for the rest of my father’s career. First, as I have alluded to elsewhere, the Seagram commission was the first of three, perhaps four, public commissions that occupied my father for most of the next decade. This meant, first, that he would be painting the majority of his paintings on canvas during the 1960s as parts of series, always mindful of the interrelationship between the works; each

distinct but a piece of a whole, like different movements that interlock to form a larger musical work. Crafting and recrafting the Seagram murals made him acutely aware of the dynamic relationship between his artworks, and between his art and the viewer. By the same token, wrestling with the Seagram project gave him a deeper understanding of the interaction between his paintings and the space they would occupy. The ways the art and the space redefine one another, the constraints and the opportunities that issue from the bounds of the room and the bounds of the commission itself—all these would come into play in the forthcoming projects, his answers to the questions posed by the Seagrams providing a gateway and a framework for Rothko’s thinking as he approached the particulars of each commission. The Seagram murals were also where my father developed an expressive device that would become a primary tool for much of his work of the 1960s. This tool is the use of reflectivity, dramatically demonstrated in two enormous burgundy-on-burgundy panels from the series (see fig. 22). While my father had previously painted numerous canvases with close color relationships between “figure” rectangle and background, the rectangle had always stood out—however subtly—by means of differences in hue and value. In the case of several of the Seagram murals, the Blackform paintings, and the Rothko Chapel murals, however, it is only the greater reflectance of that rectangle that allows it to appear as something distinct. This technique is another manifestation of the different relationship to time that these installations have relative to the individual canvases in my father’s output. With the extended, slowly evolving interaction between painting and viewer in the Rothko rooms, the artist can make use of subtle and barely perceptible distinctions. They do not strike us at once but only come into being as the differences burn into the retina, even then remaining Cheshire Cat–like, there and not there. These rectangles function very much like the solo voice that incrementally emerges from a choir, always maintaining that juxtaposition of individuality and its participation in the whole. Whether “intended” or not, they become a metaphor for a core tension in the human condition, the push-pull between our identities as individuals and our participation in the commonality of our species. While our primary task is to understand the murals and their unique place in Rothko’s oeuvre, it is hardly less important to understand my father’s motivations—his motivations for accepting and undertaking the commission as well as his motivations for renouncing it. Through such an examination we can understand more broadly his ambitions, his goals and aspirations. We can also better

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understand his sense of himself as an artist and as a man, and how those feelings interacted with and shaped his artistic vision. The reasons that my father accepted the commission are complex, but they began with something rather straightforward—he was honored, and he was flattered. The 1950s had been a highly successful decade for Rothko, launching him to prominence, but that prominence was still in a small sphere. The art world was largely self-contained, and New York, although in the ascendant, only recently recognized as the leader in contemporary art. While my father had found success after decades of struggle, he was not truly famous, and he certainly was not wealthy. To be offered space in a landmark building, designed by an architect with Mies’s towering reputation, was certainly a muchneeded endorsement of his work. And Philip Johnson, although younger, had established a substantial reputation, so to receive the nod from him was also a boost for my father’s ego. Having worked for years in obscurity, Rothko was hungry for recognition, and much as we might like to believe that his decisions were made solely on the basis of artistic values, he was no doubt swayed by the offer of far more money than he had ever received before. It was, all the same, a plan destined to fail. It began with the relationship between Johnson and my father, one that would end badly in 1959 and end worse in 1967, as they tried unsuccessfully to collaborate on what was to become the Rothko Chapel in Houston. We do not have much documentation of their Seagram interaction (none from Rothko), and we do not have any evidence that my father was in any way demanding. Nonetheless we can infer, from the grand way in which he approached the project, the high seriousness with which he envisioned the work to be installed, and even his mental repurposing of the function of the room, that Rothko thought of himself as the client. He was the one whose needs should be met, he was the one who was producing something truly important, in comparison to which all other aspects of the Four Seasons were secondary. Keeping this in mind helps us understand why Rothko walked away from the commission so incensed, for in the end he realized the stark reality that nothing about the Four Seasons project was about him, or more accurately, that nothing about the restaurant was designed to let him or his artwork speak. We must, in turn, put ourselves in Johnson’s shoes. However much he appreciated the artist’s work (he owned a superb 1950 painting), Rothko was, likely, first and last, an overpriced subcontractor. His role was functional. Johnson chose Rothko presumably because, unlike Pollock or de Kooning or Kline’s, his work, however meaningful, could remain in the background: beautiful, dec-

orative, and uplifting for those who entered the space. The last thing he wanted was for my father to attempt a breakthrough magnum opus upon the walls of the Four Seasons. He expected, no doubt, a series of typical paintings, a group of “Rothkos” to enhance the walls. Rothko was simply to supply a commodity. Johnson was not interested in providing my father an opportunity to radically rethink his style, reinvent the dining experience, or transform the relationship between artwork and viewer. We will never know what was the initial understanding between Johnson and Rothko about the nature and purpose of the room where Rothko was to install his work. It is hard to believe that Johnson ever told Rothko it was intended as the workers’ cafeteria, although perhaps he threw my father some type of bone to that effect. And it is hard to believe that Rothko would have accepted a commission for the private dining room in New York’s fanciest restaurant. In truth, neither option seems like it would inspire an artist of Rothko’s artistic ambitions. Whatever the “truth,” we do know that from the very first moment, Rothko began to transform the space, chafing against the setting and the function. With significant mental gymnastics involved, no doubt, he convinced himself for some period of time that he was painting for the proletariat. Meanwhile he must have worked hard to deny the realities of painting for a dining space. Animal appetite is tough competition for the artist. Could he really outduel this most primal of needs? Nor has banquet hall art fared well throughout history. Many great works have been installed in these most public of rooms, no doubt, and very few of them have come down to us. Rothko was clearly desperate to create his own space, to tackle new relationships between his work and the room that contained them. He convinced himself that the Four Seasons would be a workable venue, and set about to address the broader difficulties of the commission, in whatever way he was imagining the specifics. What remains beyond question is that he was always focused on the interaction between his work and the diners that would view it. And it is precisely that interaction that can help us understand his relation to this project. Whatever its genesis, the notion that Rothko was painting for a workers’ dining room can be readily dismissed. Despite his protestations, my father must have discarded this fiction relatively early (we certainly know that by the time he met Fischer in the spring of 1959, he understood all too well how “his” room would be used). We can know this simply because his plan is too grand, too monumental, for a workers’ cafeteria. He was not creating an ambience for a lunch space, and while one can argue that great art is for everyone, there is a

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scale and high seriousness to what he produced that is out of sync with any eatery, and certainly one for the most casual diner. Moreover, we have discussed at length the quiet, slow unfolding process by which the murals communicate. The bustle and short stays in a commissary are not at all congruent with the way these paintings work their effect. Perhaps Rothko was seduced by the notion of the large numbers of people who pass through a public lunch space, compared to the relative trickle of diners who spend the evening in a private room. And yet he was hypersensitive to his paintings’ need for a quiet, reflective, and preferably solitary viewer in order to be understood. If we can accept that Rothko knew for what and for whom he was painting, it allows us to examine more closely how he worked to take the many compromises of the commission and use them to his own advantage. If the plan was for private dinner parties in an artistically decorated room, he would make sure to rework that experience on his own terms. And this not because of his self-professed malice or malevolence but simply because as an artist (and particularly one named Rothko), this was his job—not to present the viewers with pretty images or a recapitulation of the quotidian, but to speak meaningfully with them and make them think more deeply about much of what they simply assumed. On some level, and I think not too far from consciousness, my father understood that attempting to communicate something profound in a restaurant setting was an undertaking doomed to failure. Talk distracts, food distracts, and the milieu offers little opportunity for contemplation despite the length of stay. Still, if Rothko could not make the Four Seasons into an optimal setting for his art, he could use his art to reshape what transpired in the dining room, pushing us from the ordinary to the essential, changing the discourse from the social to the philosophical, moving us from sated to unsettled. For Rothko not only refuses to paint something decorative, he paints an environment that is antidecorative, one that is rich in substance and virtually bereft of ornament, one that refuses to disappear into its own background. How could one simply eat in a room dominated by these panels? They would have bothered you—not in an annoying way, not in a nauseating way, but in a way that would disrupt you from your usual distractions. They would frustrate the attempt to keep them out, seeping into you over the course of an evening, refusing to be ignored, dislodging other more superficial things. Engaging with a Rothko work is disturbing—literally. It does not necessarily cause upset, but it necessarily upsets the workaday course of things, interfering with the rhythm and willfully changing the topic. In that sense, a room full of Rothkos would upset anyone’s dinner. And a room full of these Rothkos would

upset anyone’s dinner all night long, my father having concocted the extendedrelease version of his artist’s serum. Rothko, however, had one more path by which he hoped to gain entry to the lower layers of his viewers’ psyches. He sought not simply to overwhelm them with the power of his art but to give them no other choice. Hence the famous or infamous Laurentian Library statement that he would have all the diners bricked in and butting their heads against the wall. There is a certain irony to Rothko’s idea, as a primary task for New York architects—particularly ones who work on restaurant interiors—is to make interior spaces with no windows appear as if they were in fact open to the outside world. Rothko takes the opposite tack, making perhaps a virtue of necessity but emphasizing the sensation of being closed in, the task in fact much harder, as the room actually had a window. Putting aside for the moment Rothko’s self-proclaimed malicious intent toward his diner/viewer, what does he achieve in sealing the room by means of his artwork? We have spoken already of the architectural aspects of his mural forms, but this desire to close vistas extends beyond the sense of restricted space he creates. It appears that he is trying to maximize what is already the greatest advantage of exhibiting in a dining space—the likelihood that the viewers will stay for an extended period of time. But this is not enough for Rothko. He wants, within that room, for his paintings not to be everything; he wants them to be the only thing. Depending on who sits at the table, this is likely to be experienced as the artist’s excessive control, and indeed as claustrophobic. For Rothko’s dreamed-of “sensitive observer,” it would be an aid to truly seeing the artwork, a way of blocking out distractions to increase one’s internal focus.8 There would certainly be no gazing out the window. Sounding angry but also disillusioned, Rothko remarks to Fischer, “If the restaurant would refuse to put up my murals, that would be the ultimate compliment. But they won’t. People can stand anything these days.”9 My sense is that, having made the investment, the Four Seasons would indeed have put up the mural panels, but I do not think they would have stayed up very long. They really are not conducive to dinner-table conversation. Knowing the locale was not ideal for his murals, Rothko effectively ignored the intended purpose of the room, looking to maximize the impact of his artwork in those environs, whatever the consequence to the meal. Again, this was not because he bore the diner ill will; he simply was not interested in providing a pleasant dining experience. He was interested in providing the ultimate Rothko experience, and when he could no longer ignore the function of that room, he withdrew. He may have succeeded at creating artwork of impact

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regardless of setting, but he also must have recognized the impact of that setting on the vitality of his creations. He might have won the battle but he knew he would lose the war. Ultimately, Epicurius and his close comrade, Hedonis, would win.10 But why is Rothko so angry? This is certainly a prime focus of John Fischer’s article, which is subtitled, “Portrait of an Angry Man.” In “Rothkos’ Humor” in this volume, I discuss just how seriously we should take my father’s bluster, but there is no denying the deep resentment underlying the farcical bombast of his pronouncements. Loss of his father for all intents and purposes at age seven, relocation from Europe to a foreign culture at age ten, life as a Jew in a Gentile world—these are the explanations most typically trotted out, not least by Fischer. All, no doubt, shaped my father significantly as he developed. “Rothko as artist,” however, is a persona that he did not begin to try on until his midtwenties, and I would argue that most of what we are encountering in the case of the Seagram commission is an artist’s deep-seated frustration. While I do not truly believe that we can peel off layers of personality from the whole, I think we can readily understand his emotional struggle in this situation without having to delve speculatively into his poorly documented past. Rothko knew that his classical structures and high seriousness were out of place in a restaurant. He created the space he wanted, trying to deceive himself about its ultimate function. When he could ignore that truth no longer, he withdrew, not so much in anger as in defeat. Whatever anger he directed outward was really a frustration with himself, that he could allow himself to believe simply what he wanted to believe; that he could deceive himself and spend two years pursuing largely his own fantasy. Was he angry? Certainly, but one of the core lessons I learned as a psychologist is that the times we most vehemently express anger toward others, we are most angry with ourselves. The amount of anger is directly proportional to our own feelings of culpability. We externalize because the self-blame is intolerable and cannot be rebutted. It is a closed and vicious circle, and if one would escape, that circle of self-recrimination must be broken. His anger is not really directed at those “rich bastards”—they are merely the end users for a project that was flawed from its inception, or rather, conception. Did he really think clerical and janitorial employees would have a more meaningful interaction with his paintings during their lunch break? His frustration is with an escapist world where people—rich or poor—occupy themselves with trifles and pleasantries rather than essences. The Four Seasons is simply a particularly conspicuous, and therefore offensive, example: for Rothko fine food is trivial, a procession of bonbons rather than a necessity, something that dis-

tracts us from engagement with life’s existential meat. Rothko consistently wants to recenter our focus precisely on that which we would choose to push to the background: our core human concerns, those persistent, insistent questions of life and death that form both a leitmotif in, and the essential rhythm of, our mortal world. This is what mattered, and it infuriated him that, having presented him with a grand stage, “they” would simply have him decorate. “Their” attitude only clarified and reinforced for him that it was his role to disrupt the comfortable, to penetrate rather than decorate the facade. This understanding addresses Rothko’s discontent on matters of principle, but his dissatisfaction roils him on a more personal level as well. In many ways it is the same anger we encounter in his essay “The Artist’s Dilemma,” with which he begins his unfinished book The Artist’s Reality; he was already fighting this battle in 1939. From the opening salvo, it is clear that my father feels the weight of his artist forefathers upon his shoulders. He is reliving the entire history of the artist’s battle to be taken seriously, to be noticed, to fight through the natural human tendency toward complacency, superficiality, and hedonism. He longs for (his idealized notion of) ancient Greece and Renaissance Florence, where artists could speak truths—those of their times and those more universal—and find a public that would not only listen to but venerate them. But more than thirty years as a painter have taught him that he cannot say what he wants and expect anyone to heed him, let alone hope to find someone to actively engage in conversation. Much of my father’s anger stems, in the end, from thwarted ambition. On one level, this was personal ambition. If there were ever an artist who wanted to be loved and admired and praised, it was certainly my father. Those who saw him as cantankerous were viewing the part of him that always felt like a jilted lover. Rothko took his many artistic rejections very personally—how could he not? There was so much of himself in each of his works. If we have any doubt about that personal vulnerability, we need but listen to what he proclaims to Fischer just before his famous denouncement of all the “sons of bitches”: “I’ll never tackle such a job again,” he said. “In fact, I’ve come to believe that no painting should ever be displayed in a public place.”11 Clearly, this intent to withdraw, this threatened refusal to show his work, speaks to how exposed Rothko feels—it is the public aspect that unnerves him. And if we wonder how seriously to take his comments about his “malicious intentions” in this project, we should notice how closely he adhered to these other expressed intents—to never “tackle such a job again” (two subsequent mural commissions and the promise of a third) or display a painting in “a public

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place” (his landmark MoMA retrospective two years later was only the beginning of many high-profile exhibitions). Rothko is making sweeping statements— some defensive, some offensive—but they all reflect his sense of exposure and its concomitant potential for shame. Thus it is hardly surprising that, in the case of the Seagram murals, he essentially ensures his own rejection, painting something so difficult that it (he) is likely to be loved by only a very few. Listening to his anger, we can hear that Rothko is rejecting “them” before “they” can reject him, a position he secures by withdrawing altogether. Still, it is on the professional level that his greatest frustration lies. Finally, he has been entrusted with a public space, a platform from which he can proclaim something specific and profound—but it is so compromised. One can almost hear the air escape from the briefly inflated balloon. A public space with highly limited access, where only the best-heeled dare enter. A temple for contemplation that comes with a side salad and dessert. And once the business deals commence and the liquor starts to flow, he knows that his temple will be desecrated beyond redemption. Rothko bears the wealthy and the powerful such ill will not only because they are his sometime adversaries but because they are his patrons as well. As an artist, he feels he should create what he would create, what he must create. But the wealthy will dictate taste, selecting with their dollars who will savor success and who will know none. The artist must eat, and so, as Rothko noted decades before in The Artist’s Reality, he is beholden to the patron. Which leads to that crucial, uncomfortable point where principle and the personal and the practical intersect: money. The large sum offered in his contract undercuts Rothko’s autonomy, and makes him feel, on some level, enslaved. He is controlled by his needs and not solely answerable to his artistic principles. His artistic decisions are not his own because he is painting at someone else’s pleasure. At the same time he is painting to fill his belly rather than empty his soul. This compromised position is always present for artists, whether they have a patron a priori or no. If they would support themselves by means of their art, they must make something that they can hope to sell. And if they would sell their artwork, it must be a piece of themselves that they feel can represent them in the world. For my father, however, the Seagram commission made that compromise all too palpably present, and the large sum he received in compensation made it unbearably so. And so he crafted a compromise with himself, guaranteed to make everyone unhappy. Rothko really needed “their” money, but that meant he was working for them, for what they wanted. Not free to do what he felt he must, he defiantly did not only what he wanted but what he hoped they

would not want. He would have it both ways and neither. He was courting their rejection, having essentially rejected them before the fact. The project was most likely untenable from the outset because of its poor premise, but Rothko’s nonposition—that is, his dual position—ensured that one way or another, it would get scuttled. He could not resolve the fight within himself, so he fought with the external world that would have him compromise what he truly believed in. The fact that I have referred to his adversaries as “they” and “them” is indicative of the scale of the battle in which my father was engaged. It is not even so clear who the enemy was in the Seagram situation. The commission had simply brought a lifelong conflict into sharp focus. If Rothko was tilting at windmills, then they were windmills that had tormented him since the 1920s; windmills that have tormented artists for as long as there have been artists. When my father regained perspective, he withdrew from the commission and kept the murals for a better time and place. He did so with great frustration, having invested so much of himself and won only the contest of undermining the decorative intent of the commission—a contest he was having with himself and that was ultimately not worth winning. That the project produced monumental works and launched perhaps the greatest period of his career is, of course, the understanding of hindsight, and would not have been available to the artist. At this point, he knew only that it was better to find the right home for this new and more profound expression of his artistic and philosophical ideas. Rothko had duped himself, but he would not subject his murals to failure. He was humiliated, but at least wise enough not to be so publicly. As intently as my father was focused on the problems inherent in the Seagram project itself, at some point he must have become aware that the struggle was larger than himself. As he moved toward his final decision to withdraw, he was no doubt conscious of previous generations of artists faced with similar decisions; great public works born in controversy, ones that fail in context or succeed despite all distractions on site. This was the myth he inherited and to which he added, wittingly or no. Can we view the Sistine Chapel without imaging Michelangelo on his back high above the floor, or enter the Hall of Mysteries without seeing the devastation wrought by Vesuvius in our mind’s eye? And so it is with the Seagram murals. Sensitive installations, like those at the Tate, Kawamura, and the National Gallery, leave no doubt that the murals succeed on their own terms. And yet to understand how they represent a triumph over circumstances lends them an additional energy and interest. They are almost inseparable from the lore that surrounds them.

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That lore reflects on Rothko as well. Just as our ideas about Michelangelo are shaped by his most famous commissions, so too is our notion of Rothko in part a product of the conflicts he faced and the controversies he stirred in the context of the Seagram project. As I indicated above, however, these ideas about Rothko’s character extend beyond him, beyond Michelangelo and other masters, to a deeper idea of what an artist is and does, and the role he or she plays in society. What Rothko plays out with Johnson, Seagram, et alia taps into larger themes in modern culture, and has him playing roles representative of those themes. I will simplify these into three primary threads:

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establishment; • The artist as the embodiment of the narcissism embedded in the contemporary mindset—the spoiled child who throws tantrums when faced with the realization he can’t have his way; and • The artist as the torchbearer of the philosophical—the triumph of principle over expediency.

I will not break down these categories overmuch—they are mostly self-explanatory. They are mythic roles we see routinely acted out on stage and screen; archetypal, often stereotypical figures who represent our best and worst impulses—the bold, the selfish, and the ethical or noble. They represent types, but they also represent core, universal human motivations, and much as we would like to make them distinct, they typically need to intermingle for matters to move out of the realm of the idea into the realm of action, where there is the possibility that they will register on history’s radar. Philip Johnson has, of course, placed my father decidedly in the second category (watch him wax apoplectic on the subject in the bbc documentary film Rothko’s Rooms).12 Art, it seems, is not just a subject for drawing-room dramas. Of course he is right. What are the Seagram murals, if not one elephantine act of defiance, a toddleresque insistence on Rothko’s part that he will do just what he wants to do, even if he is not allowed? It is selfish and silly and ultimately self-destructive, but like a two-year-old, he will not be told what to do. But ultimately, as an artist, this stubbornness is absolutely necessary. Artists are selfish—they need to be (I will no doubt be inundated by hate mail from beleaguered artist’s partners). They must exercise their singular vision without regard for the rules or other people’s needs or practicality or especially reality. Greatness ensues only when the work launches from a place of no compromise. Anything less will engender a croak rather than a song.

And yes, creativity requires boldness, if it is to move from the place of single-mindedness to a place of productivity. Vision must be actualized, and the artist must be ready to fend off or answer all those other considerations they left for later, as well as all those who would say “nay.” They need to push through resistance—not least their own—and bring others to their cause. They need to defy convention and convince others of that necessity. Most of all, they need to motivate themselves, to believe they are not simply making something, they are fighting for something, a victory that will be more glorious for defying all odds. If the artist’s boldness is what provides drama for the stage, it is the principle behind their fight that brings it there. It is not enough to do something or to do something well—it must be the right thing, the ethical thing. We all respond to noble sentiments, and particularly to noble actions. It is what we all aspire to, and when we see it lived out in public, it becomes more than noteworthy; it becomes a matter of lore. When Rothko produced a great mural series despite all the limitations of the venue that would house them, he gained respect for his artistic prowess. But when he walked away from this careerenhancing commission and returned all the money, he created a myth that resonates across time, because he acted on principle in a way that is consistent with the highest human aspirations. He became a model for human behavior. And here we must ask, more generally, what role the artist plays in our culture and what role we would have him or her play. For most of us are all filled with good intentions, with bold inclinations, even with the idea that we will be more stubborn about getting what is ours. And yet how many of us follow through on such desires to produce anything that approaches our aspirations? That is the role of artists. They not only pursue their own visions, they take on the roles we dare not act out ourselves. Generally they pursue a solitary mission, but sometimes they gain a prominent stage and create not only the work but also the lore that continues to inspire us. How many of us could fill the shoes of Diego Rivera, standing up to Nelson Rockefeller over the subject matter of his enormous Rockefeller Center mural? And how many of us could have done so, knowing that two years’ work and a magnum opus were about to crumble before our eyes? Yes, we ridicule artists for the impracticality of their ideas, the idiosyncrasy of their dreams, the doggedness with which they pursue apparent dead ends. “Better them than us,” we may say. All the while, they function as our conscience and a source of inspiration, leaders who demonstrate what can result from the tenacious pursuit of what one truly believes. Theirs is the stuff of heroes, mythic in the truest sense. And we should beware, for when we engage solely in the expedient or the pleasurable, and leave the artist to pursue idealism alone—on our behalf—

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then some of Rothko’s invective may apply to us. The artist may be willing to labor in ridicule only so long. He or she will not always be inclined to do all the heavy philosophical lifting for us. There is a point where the artist will extract his or her cost—most likely from our conscience. Wealthy or not, we may be those “rich bastards,” the targets for the artillery Rothko launches at all those who would consume his art as conspicuously as they consume their dinner at the Four Seasons. Are we also culpable in rendering his works little more than playthings of the wealthy—tokens of power—trophies of the establishment? Are we simply the consumers of a generation or more later? It must give us pause before we interact with these murals or with any of his work. There is an uncompromising imperative there for us to look and think and feel. Anything less, and Rothko’s work is simply empty calories that we will wear around our middle, reminders that perhaps we are as empty as his paintings appear. I will leave this in-depth consideration of the Seagram project with one further look at our relationship to the murals and my father’s creative process in producing them. Throughout this examination, we have focused on the mythic elements that surround the commission, in the process retelling some of what has been received. One of these elements is the name itself, which refers neither to the place where they were made nor the places where they now reside. It refers to the place where the myth surrounding them was generated. On another level, and in a slightly different sense of myth, Rothko was engaging with that place—a mythical place—from the start. The Seagram Building, when Rothko began his work on the murals, was still an active construction site. The name was redolent of liquor, money, and power, but it did not yet have a fully formed physical presence. The building that would bear that name would be a symbol of modernism and progress of some sort, but what else, my father could not know. Seagram was an idea, an idea with valence and substance, but it did not actually exist. And this conceptual aspect— a place and a purpose not quite real, a place and an idea coming into being— played a major role in the final fruition of the process, that is, the success of the murals and the collapse of the project. It gave Rothko the freedom to create something of epic impact and importance. By the same token it made the crash from those Olympic heights all the more resounding when the reality he initially could not see, and ultimately would not see, asserted itself before him. The hypothetical status of the building allowed my father to imagine the room that would hold his paintings as any type of room he wanted. We know the lengths to which that fantasy wandered, whether fueled by Johnson or not.

Rothko had the dimensions, but everything else was malleable, including the ultimate purpose. This tells us that painting to nauseate the rich bastards, however serious that intention, came later. My father’s initial goal was simply to engage his viewer, and this is how he began to paint, imagining something he had never painted before for a place he would not see until after his work was completed. Rothko was thus dealing with a virtual space, a mythical space, more an idea than something real, something that he could dream into being and whose purpose and ambience he could manipulate freely, since the glass-and-steel reality of its flesh and bones was not yet so concrete. It was also a project whose importance he could inflate infinitely, the wished-for public forum rather than something functional and largely inaccessible. There is, of course, a great deal of irony in all the flexibility that Rothko allowed himself, irony particularly palpable in the face of the iconic Seagram Building we have come to know—a monolithic black slab, an all-business Bauhaus statement of uncompromising resolution. It is hardly a place where dreams are made, and perhaps not one where they are even tolerated. The Seagram Building continues to be a notable public space, still one of New York’s best known. Architecturally highly influential, it has helped spawn hundreds of other spare, rectangular towers around the city and well beyond. It remains a prestigious address just as the Four Seasons remains one of New York’s highest-profile restaurants. And this status enfolds one further irony, one final way in which the murals and their destination were completely at odds from the first. For despite Rothko’s yearning for a public venue, despite the grand scale on which he painted, he could not help but paint something decidedly intimate and intensely private. He was painting a temple, but instead he produced one of the roadside chapels for the solitary viewer that he had once conceived. He created a space not for public gathering but for private contemplation. It is unlikely that he knew how to do anything else. This understanding reawakens for me a disturbing distortion in Red, a play that is successful in many respects, particularly in capturing my father’s conflict around the commission. As a theatrical conceit (and one perhaps necessary from a dramatic standpoint), the author places an assistant to my father at the center of the drama, where in fact none existed when he was painting the works. A small point, but one that undercuts an essential element of my father’s creative process that he imparted to every canvas: Rothko’s journey is an inherently solo journey. It is an existential journey, where ultimately he, like each of us, is alone. This solitary tread through human existence is an aspect fundamental to that tragic human condition he spoke of so often. And nowhere is this

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more true than in the mural series. The fact that he reduces his palate to essentially one color to create an apparently vacant landscape is his metaphor for this solitude. And Rothko would have us walk that solitary path just as he walked it. My father’s work is a rare instance in the visual arts where a re-creative act is involved—much as in music or dance—in order for the work to be fully actualized. In his or her encounter with the work, the viewer is reenacting the solitary process my father embarked on when creating it. He or she must bring the work into being as if from the first; bring it into being for him or herself. It is unlikely to happen in a restaurant, nor is it likely to happen in an office building, and yet there is a special resiliency in these murals that allows them to affect us almost anywhere. Rothko has fashioned his own virtual space, a very private space for just such a solo traveler, one that invites each of us into that re-creative process.

Untitled

It was the fourth request I had received that week for a transparency of Untitled, 1969. This sort of appeal often elicits a howl of frustration from me, but today I muster all my patience, and ask just which Untitled, 1969, they might have in mind. As there are nearly 150 Rothko works that share that “title,” I know that we are necessarily delving into the obscure. Even if they could give me dimensions, it is typically of little help, since there are multiple series from that year painted on nearly identically sized canvases or sheets of paper. And reproductions? More often than not they come out black on black. We are truly on “an adventure into an unknown world”—just not exactly the one my father envisaged. This particular junior editor seems especially unprepared, having clearly not seen the artwork before and having little to offer me other than the fact that they are on the tightest of deadlines, and she needs the image today. If I can unknot the mystery for her, I do—as self-appointed custodian of Rothko, all such questions become my problem. I will confess to my reader, all the same, more than a little frustration that I am expected to upend my life to do so. In this context I harken back to the sign that hung on the wall of the one bindery for dissertations in fabled college town Ann Arbor, Michigan: Lack of prior planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part

The syntax could probably induce motion sickness, but the sentiment rings true. Having stood in that office, I remember readily the endless queue of doctoral students who bellied up to that counter: smudged stack of paper they wish were just a little bit thicker locked in a death grip between their fingers, smeared glasses shading black-rimmed eyes, hair clearly not thought about for weeks, and face broken out in a last fit of postpubescent acne. Yes, they know the

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minimum binding time is three weeks, but their dissertation defense is in four days—couldn’t the binder make an exception just this once? We may appear to be at several removes from the world of Rothko paintings, but in truth the distance is not so far. My father had a clear rationale when he left the question of his works’ titles to be my problem—and your problem. Indeed, the matter of titles in Rothko works is of the utmost importance. On the most basic level this is true because there is a practical need to identify and distinguish the paintings, and doing so is often fiendishly difficult. There are far deeper reasons, however; reasons that have to do with the very essence of the paintings and how a title can significantly alter our ability to see that essence. Despite its peripheral nature, or more accurately because of its peripheral nature, the title of a Rothko painting lies near the heart of how we view, understand, and interact with that work. I will explain how this is so, but I want to note here that this statement proceeds from the premise I touch on throughout this volume: classic Rothko paintings are fragile—or rather, their effect is fragile. Their very simplicity makes them so. On the most immediate level they are nothing more than large rectangles of color on a colored background, and they can be very easily restricted to such. Much of my work as the guardian and champion of my father’s legacy revolves around trying to ensure that this happens as rarely as possible. Hence I take up my lance against titles. The first thing to understand is that after 1946, my father never titled a single one of his works. A great deal of noise just erupted in my head, a general clamor that there must be exceptions, and I have indeed immediately thought of one: Homage to Matisse from 1954. If there are others, I can assure you they are exceedingly rare. The moment Rothko moves to full abstraction in 1946, his paintings all become Untitled. This cannot be a casual occurrence, a random event, or simply a function of apathy. My father, who was so concerned with communicating with his viewer, who toiled for decades to find a language of direct engagement, would never leave a matter like this to chance. Nor can we believe for a moment that removing the titles from his paintings was a sign from the artist that his new abstractions functioned purely in the visual realm, with no extravisual content. Anyone who is even peripherally acquainted with Rothko’s work knows that he sought to express grand themes and probe deep, timeless questions in his paintings. If anything, my father has been faulted for wanting his paintings to say too much. Nineteen forty-six was also just a few years removed from his and Adolph Gottlieb’s well-known statement, “There is no such thing

as good painting about nothing.”1 Clearly Rothko actively chose to remove the title from the interactive process between art and viewer. Despite this deliberate move away from titles, in 1948 titles begin to reappear, attached to a subset of works. Why 1948? Because in 1948 my father showed, for the first time, wholly abstract work at his exhibition with the pioneering Betty Parsons, whose new gallery had swept up the remnants of Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery. Here there was the possibility that some of his work might actually sell. Now that he was firmly a part of Parsons’s “stable,” there was undoubted pressure for him to identify his work to facilitate buying and selling. We do not know if my father had a direct or specific reaction to this need to title his works, but the way the process initially unfolded makes patent that he wanted to steer as far clear of titles as possible. The titling began as numbering, as generic and antiexpressive a method as he could have selected. According to my sister, it was our mother who actually numbered the paintings, which would seem to indicate a truly arm’s-length relationship to the whole question on the part of my father. Then there is the matter of the numbering itself. To call it random would be generous. The numbers seem to cycle on an annual basis; thus there is a No. 10, 1949 (actually, two), and a No. 10, 1950. In practice, the numbers were probably not assigned annually but instead placed on the works at the time of exhibitions, which occurred roughly once a year. This would help explain why the numbers often do not indicate the order in which works were painted, why many paintings that were not exhibited never received number titles, and why many paintings have multiple numbers attached to them. Typically, when a Rothko painting has two or more numbers, it is because it was exhibited in multiple gallery exhibitions. If the number title had been of any importance, it would have traveled with the painting, so to speak. Instead, if a painting were exhibited a second time, it apparently needed to get back in line with all the works that had not been exhibited before and take a new number. No special treatment here! This bit of data serves as an unambiguous indicator of Rothko’s disengagement from the matter of titles. Sometime around 1954, when Rothko moved to the Sidney Janis Gallery, color titles began to attach themselves to the paintings, although the number titles also continued into the 1960s, paralleling and sometimes overlapping with the color titles. Orange and Red on Red and its close color-based brethren, although not in absolute terms much more common than the numbers, are the way most viewers typically think of Rothko titles. How this method began— titling works by a list of their color combinations—is not known with any certainty. It is easy enough to surmise that Janis or whoever was preparing the

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exhibitions yearned for something more memorable, something more descriptive and evocative by which a viewer (read: potential buyer) could actually remember and identify a painting they had seen. It can be fairly certain that my father had little or no involvement in this process. Why he allowed it in the first place is the more perplexing question. The fact that Rothko drawings and paintings on paper are essentially never titled gives further indication of who was doing the titling. These works were much less often exhibited in museums or galleries,2 and even when included in a show, they were frequently not identified in the accompanying catalog, the primary conduit through which these titles have flowed and traveled in tandem with the paintings through time. Thus virtually all Rothko works on paper remain untitled. On the occasions that they do bear titles, they are almost without exception accretions that date from after my father’s death, when the increased value of these works tempted the hand of the dealer or auctioneer to impose a title prospective buyers could hang on to. While the matter of titling is inherently problematic, the choice of title can definitely exacerbate the problem. The colors in the titles often don’t ring true, and either document how a painting’s color has drifted over time or, more frequently, call into question the much-heralded eye of some legendary dealers. Ironically, in these cases the titles serve as a source of confusion rather than providing the clarification that is their raison d’être. And finally, the titles themselves are frequent sources of irritation, typically either too clever by half (Saffron) or not half clever enough (Orange and Yellow). In fairness, whoever created the color titles was trying, I believe, to remain sensitive to the works’ abstract nature, and to select a scheme that was as neutral as possible. The problem is that adding a title, especially one that describes what the viewer will see or has seen, inherently interrupts the discovery process involved in coming to terms with a Rothko painting. We cannot be told, in even the most rudimentary way, what it is. We must understand it for ourselves. That is a large portion of the journey. It is the difference between writing an essay on an assigned topic and writing an essay on a topic that we have created, one that we have gleaned from the text. It is the difference between addressing the question: Discuss the early piano works of Sergei Prokofiev.

Or addressing the question: 160

Discuss the early piano works of arch-provocateur Sergei Prokofiev.

Coming to the question with predetermined information, with another person’s framing of the issue at hand, will significantly alter our approach, even if we already harbor knowledge and viewpoints on the subject. And this is the crux of the issue concerning titles. Reading a title inherently biases how we read the painting. It causes us to prejudge the visual elements, as a color title presents these to us as a fait accompli. Seeing the title, we know what the colors are supposed to be; more critically, we know that color must be the primary or determinative factor in how the painting functions, as it is the element that has been called out. One could assume, in fact, that color is what the painting is about. Those relatively rare painting titles that include a reference to form (e.g., Mauve Intersection) are hardly better in this regard, necessarily focusing our attention on a small subset of the formal components of the painting, of which color is again the primary. Titles therefore distort, on the most basic level, what is presented in the painting, refracting our vision through a particular lens that is neither the artist’s nor our own. In the case of Rothko, however, the effect of color titles is much more destructive than mere distortion because titles shift the entire level of discourse to the surface level. A title that simply describes the colors presented in the painting implies that that is the level on which we are to engage with it. With artwork that is more inherently substantial, such an effect can be easily shrugged off, but Rothko works are so ethereal, so dangerously close to empty, that misdirection of this type can seriously impede the viewer’s ability to see what lies behind, and speaks through, the surface color. When a viewer does not know how to approach a painting or begin to understand how it works, it will be natural for that viewer to make use of whatever aids are at hand. A color title provides such a crutch and gives the misleading suggestion that maybe the painting really is just a wash of colors after all. A title that reduces the painting to simply color (or occasionally form) undercuts the work’s almost tangible attempt to free itself from these boundaries, and in turn traps the viewer within those same bounds. Titles also grab our attention and can create popular recognition where otherwise it might not have grown. Thus works that bear titles with a hint of imagination, like Light Earth and Blue or Four Darks in Red, garner a type of attention that is above and beyond their undoubted quality as paintings. A fitting analogy can be found in the world of classical music, given that instrumental music is one of the most abstract of art forms. Take, for example, Haydn’s symphonies— all 104 of them. Those with names receive far more performances and recordings than their unnamed counterparts, while not inherently possessing greater merit.

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A title is something to hang your hat on, a way of identifying a work and making it immediately familiar. But it may have nothing to do with the music. Composers seldom attach the nicknames themselves. Instead the music is stuck with associations applied by some pundit who may then influence the experience of generations. So whereas Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is specifically program music with a bucolic theme that accompanies it, his Pastoral Sonata for piano has nothing to do with sheep, shepherds, or even grassy hillsides. It is simply a gentler (and glorious!) piece of music. But did we really need the nickname—the nineteenthcentury equivalent of an album cover or a music video—to suggest how we picture the work in our mind’s eye? The color titles of Rothko paintings are perhaps subtler and at first brush more neutral, but function in much the same way, leading us down interpretive paths that we may not wish to tread. Most critically, color titles lead us astray because they short-circuit our experience with the painting. Viewing a Rothko is a process. It involves rethinking how to look, a quest for understanding, and a recognition of our own inner workings at play in the undertaking. It is an experiential endeavor where the process of interacting with the painting is a large and essential part of what one takes away. It cannot be bypassed or abbreviated, or that elusive thread of understanding will remain elusive. We as viewers, as people with our own perspectives and histories, must come to our own conclusions of what the painting is about and what makes it work. Otherwise the painting reverts back to just that group of colors and rectangles glossed in the title. A title interferes with that intensely personal journey, and can misdirect the viewer from the process of discovery that will lead to her own understanding of what the painting is about. Although hardly my primary concern, the viewer’s reaction to the title also colors her view of the artist, as most will assume that the titles reflect the artist’s perhaps deep thinking on the subject. Some artists engage profoundly with the process of titling: Dalí, Miró, and my father’s dear friend William Scharf are three who leap to mind. These are painters actively engaged with poetry and fantasy, and who help bring the viewer into that world with creative titling of their art, while also revealing a bit of their own whimsy in the process. My father was not such a painter, and those who understand something about him based upon the imagination—or lack thereof—reflected in the titles have in fact understood something about someone else. While I discourage biographically driven interpretation of art in any case, to view art with misconceptions about the artist at hand, and where he has applied his hand, certainly can not be helpful. As is so often the case, we can perhaps learn most about the place of the title in Rothko’s oeuvre from his earlier work. That incredibly fecund, dynamic,

even chaotic decade of Rothko’s painting, the 1940s, is where his primary engagement and disengagement with the title occurred. By tracking that evolution we can see in a more focused way how my father came to use the title for his own artistic ends, and how he discarded it largely for the same reasons. From the dawn of his painting in the mid-1920s through the end of his direct relationship with the figure in 1940, my father rarely titled his paintings beyond simple descriptors such as Interior or City Scene. With his abrupt move into a neo-surrealist style around 1941, Rothko embraced the title with an enthusiasm absent elsewhere in his work. Most of the paintings (but not the works on paper) from the next few years boldly announce the myth of their genesis in their titles (Oedipus, Omen of the Eagle, The Syrian Bull). He gave the viewer a context and lens through which to view his particular take on a universal subject, much as Shakespeare or generations of opera composers would see familiar stories touching on deeply human themes as fertile ground for the expression of their own art. Rothko used myth as a way of reflexively moving the discourse with his viewer to a different level, one that branched broadly and deeply on both social and psychological levels. Thus many of Rothko’s canvases from this period bear flamboyant titles that loudly declare their mythological origins and content. Through mythological material and association, Rothko sought a pathway to the human psyche, a language that was native and immediate. Removing titles from his paintings was an extension of this same quest for direct and profound interaction with his viewer, and reflected a new emphasis on communication unimpeded by spurious or external elements. Rothko realized in the mid-1940s that the mythological themes then current in his work represented a veil between the painting and the viewer. Paintings such as Intimations of Chaos announced their frames of reference in their titles and gave the viewer a key to enter the world of the painting, but it was necessarily a bounded experience. Although Rothko originally employed myth as a universal language—one in which most reasonably well educated westerners were conversant and one which also spoke on an unconscious level to all—he soon found that the narrative elements, specific references to time and place, and the dictation of particular graphic images all limited the breadth and depth of the viewer’s interaction with the painting. Much of the process had been prescripted, or at least the landscape already painted and the unique, truly personal response unnaturally constrained. Rothko wanted an encounter that arose from the ether and perhaps finished there as well; a meeting colored only by what artist and viewer brought to the painting. Thus Rothko stripped the overt references to myth from his paintings, and with their departure his titles waned to

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simple monikers like Personage and Fantasy. These too would fade away as the last embers of figuration in his work smoldered and died in 1945/46. Despite the light shed by my father’s developmental process as a painter, we are still left with nagging questions about his relationship to titles; as we have noted, titles found their way back to his work in the last two decades of his life. Given how powerful an effect a title can have on the way in which we view a painting, and given how hyperattuned my father was to a viewer’s interaction with his paintings, why did he let the titles become more or less permanently attached to them? There is no simple answer to this, and it is a question that has long puzzled me. I can, however, hazard a guess based on years of experience with my father’s work and my interactions over these years with many other artists. Artists are often not fastidious about matters such as titles because they lack historical perspective on the importance of their work. I am often startled by the way artists will throw their works about the studio, grabbing a painting with greasy hands, cramming it unwrapped in an overcrowded rack, stacking canvases twelve deep against a filthy wall. These are works that they may have poured their hearts and souls into for months or years, works in which their egos are completely bound up. And yet to them, they are just objects, ones that they could easily reproduce—or not—if they so chose. Of course, not all artists indulge in this type of behavior, and yet even a painter who fretted over his work as much as my father could be casual about the storage of his paintings, careless in how he ripped masking tape from their borders, and so on. In short, the artist lacks the historian/conservator/curator’s sometimes overprecious sense of awe, of history made, of meaning in the smallest details. The artist’s is a truly lived experience, lacking the reverence that comes from deep study. My father knew how essential the presentation of his work was because he could see how it functioned, or failed to function, on the wall. He became deeply involved in questions of hanging, lighting, architecture, and atmosphere in a quest to maximize his paintings’ impact through controlled environment. But he could not directly experience the viewer’s interaction with the painting, which included mediation by the title. When he saw the painting, he was already looking past that; he could not put himself in their place faced with something new or even alien. He had no need to identify the work for himself, no need to contextualize by title or date or medium. Nor could he know how time, exhibitions, and the process of art history would cause the titles to accrue to the paintings, building up layers on top of the works like so many barnacles. Had he been able to see this, he would, I believe, have fought his dealers about

titling the works, and struggled to end the association between painting and title for those works already out before the public. To protect the essence of a Rothko work, the sacredness (to use a truly overburdened word) of our interaction with it, we must keep our interpretive process from being undercut or forced by a title. The titles are spurious, and they bias the interpretive process through which we come to know the work. But what of the basic human need to identify, sort, classify, and order? What of the professional’s requirements when faced with my father’s huge, unnamed output? Despite my cynical tone at the beginning of this essay, I am very sympathetic to those impeded by this dilemma. In fact, regardless of my position of in-depth knowledge and ready access to detailed data, I am the one caught in the conundrum more frequently than almost anyone else. So when I am asked, “You know, the big pink and white one,” I am of two minds. The phrase expresses an undisputed lack of engagement with the painting and misunderstanding of how it functions. At the same time, it encapsulates the very real need to find a way to identify the works, to distinguish one from another when so many paintings share a common form. Much as I bristle at the bogus title, I am not insensitive to this genuine problem and the confusion that results from not having it addressed. I wish there were a ready answer. The sixdigit Rothko estate cataloging numbers with which I work daily, while providing a certain basic functionality and allowing me to codify Rothko’s output, hardly bring me closer to the work, instead rendering each painting just one of many cards in a file box (will anyone under thirty know what I am talking about?). An additional trouble with numbers is that they inherently imply a sequence, a series, development, variations on a theme (whether or not one exists)—all categories that will create a false frame of reference for viewing the painting. They imply history and even impart a type of narrative to how the works came to be that undercuts their individuality and uniqueness (and the uniqueness of the viewer’s experience with each one). Ironically, when Rothko came to paint series late in his career, he did not number them, much to the frustration of his would-be cataloguers and those who would present his work in a sensible, meaningful arrangement to the public. Many of these paintings are works on paper, presented on identically sized sheets in an almost tranceinducing similarity of color schemes, inviting an often comical (and sometimes not so comical!) game of mistaken identity. Although hardly a perfect solution, one way I have come to think of the works is by where I saw them (and in the context of which other paintings) and to which collection they belong. The advantage of this approach is that it does

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not impose any characteristics or prejudices upon the work itself. All the codifying information is extrinsic to the painting. But this approach requires a voluminous knowledge of the work and its travels, and relies on memory retrieval skills that often exceed my own. Ultimately, there is no easy solution. We are confronted with a collection of spurious titles that interfere with our experience of the paintings, but often they are all that at least a nonspecialist has to work with. The titles irritate me daily—even though I should hardly be surprised by them at this point—and I eliminate them from publications wherever appropriate. Not that I would erase all the titles if I could—all right, perhaps I would—but what I have learned instead is to mentally erase the title when viewing the work. This is important for me, and it is even more important for you. When looking at Rothko paintings you must start with a blank slate. This is part of the premise of the pictures. You interact with them on their own terms and on your own terms, not through someone else’s conception of them. In the end, we must all make our own titles for the paintings.

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Mark Rothko and Music

I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetry.

This statement is perhaps Rothko’s most quoted, and it is not difficult to understand why. Beyond its immediate aesthetic appeal, it expresses a poignancy of its own that reveals my father’s poetic engagement with his subject. More crucially, however, this one sentence communicates directly not just Rothko’s aims but the level on which his paintings function to realize those aims. He is on an artistic quest, one that seeks the beauty and emotive power of other art forms. He embraces them in a way that speaks not only of a pursuit of the beautiful but also of his own dedication and sincerity in his endeavor. Painting is not some casual venture, not something that simply came to him or an avocation that he adopted. It is a mission he takes on with intentionality and a clear end in mind. And he communicates an uncompromising attitude that looks to the new in its embrace of the old. This is only the tip of the iceberg, however, and I will tease apart this statement at some length because I think it is highly revealing of my father’s artistic objectives, and the emotional and intellectual impulses that drove them. Music was central to my father’s world—to his own aesthetic sensibilities certainly, but also to the structure and expressive modes he found as a painter. And, perhaps surprisingly, if we can understand a bit about how we interact with music and how it affects us, we can understand a parallel process that occurs in us with Rothko paintings (while I think much of what I will say about music applies to poetry as well, I will not be treating poetry directly, both because I know a great deal more about music but also because my father listened to music far more than he read poetry. Further, while much of the spirit I discuss here is common

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to music and poetry, there are particular qualities of music that offer especially intriguing parallels to Rothko paintings). It is not uncommon for painters to embrace the other arts, to express their admiration for them, to reference them in their paintings, or to join in collaborations with artists from other disciplines. This, however, is not what Rothko is telling us. He wants to make his painting like these art forms, to incorporate their spirit, to ingest them whole and have their essences ultimately seep through the pores of his canvas. While this may sound primitive, that is the level on which desire functions and also the first level on which his work engages us. Quite simple and beautiful on the surface, Rothko’s declaration about music and poetry is more complex and troubling when considered at greater length. For what do we make of a painter who announces that he would really rather be something else? How seriously can we take his artistic output when it would appear he is trying to capture a spirit that stands outside the purview of his chosen medium? Furthermore, has he truly set a challenge for himself, or is he registering, a priori, his disillusionment with his own genre as a means of artistic expression? Certainly this yearning for music and poetry indicates a certain wariness and dissatisfaction with his chosen art form—a dissatisfaction apparently stemming from his earliest involvement with painting. There are expressive, affective limitations to graphic art that Rothko is simply not willing to accept. But more than actual displeasure with art, his longing for the greater poignancy of music and poetry testifies to my father’s restless soul, to a need to push boundaries, to a desire to make a virtue of fitting square pegs into round holes. He makes problems where it is not clear they existed before; he is an artist ready to ask questions to which there are no immediate answers. His paintings encompass both question and response in a dialogue that is as central as the questions and answers themselves. And that dialogue is perpetual, creating a tension within each work that is re-created in the interaction between the painting and the viewer. Rothko may be seeking an absolute, but the path he treads—that we must tread—remains dynamic and evolving. Painting as a medium, therefore, seems to have been something of a compromise for Rothko, but it was hardly the type of compromise that led to complacency. It was a compromise that left him in an unstable place, filled with a restless disquiet, packed with nervous energy. Rothko was a great painter, in part, because he pushed painting to do things it wasn’t necessarily designed to do. Just as a climatically stressed grape often produces the richest wine, Rothko’s paintings sing forth with an intensity born of their balance on the very edge of what can be

achieved through paint. He makes his paintings vehicles for his philosophy, while at the same time insisting that they speak with the eloquence of poetry and the raw emotive power of music. His paintings move us because they are bursting at the seams with intellectual content and, at the same time, with an expressive imperative. Yet they leave us uneasy, as we sense the internal friction between the limits of what they can convey and what Rothko insisted they impart anyway. I have suggested previously that Rothko was a philosopher who painted; that is, his ideas were primary, but he found he could express them most effectively in paint. I think it is no less true to say that he was a painter who aspired to be a musician. Had he received the training and been blessed with the acumen, I have little doubt that music would have been my father’s expressive medium. I draw this conviction, in part, from my own personal interactions with him. When people ask me what my father shared with me, what I received from him, I answer, without hesitation, a love of music. While I can hardly ever remember us discussing painting, from my earliest days he filled my world with music. This was typically in the form of record after record on the stereo, chamber music or opera, typically Mozart, Mozart, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, or Mozart. I am hardly the only one to have noted my father’s love of music. Anyone who came to his studio in the 1950s and ’60s was greeted by a chorus of recorded sound, typically opera. I have had such reports from many people who knew him personally as well as art historians, notably Katherine Kuh and Dore Ashton, both of whom have spoken about the importance of music to Rothko.1 My sister, Kate, tells similar stories and adds that when, in the 1950s, a muchabused upright piano found its way into the apartment, presumably for her lessons, our father commandeered the instrument and taught himself Mozart’s Sonata Facile by ear. Apparently he needed to break the piano in properly before allowing my sister to play it. If we accept that music was very close to Rothko’s heart, that still leaves us with several questions. How is his love of music reflected in his artwork? More specifically, does his gravitation toward certain types of music reveal parallel preoccupations and communicative strains in his painting? Finally, by understanding how music functions in our perceptual and emotional worlds, can we identify more precisely how Rothko paintings interact with those realms? Let us begin with Mozart, the alpha and omega for Rothko. Certainly not the most obscure of composers, but why so lionized by my father with such an exclusive, even monogamous, zeal? What is it about Mozart’s music that so appealed to Rothko’s soul? Certainly there are few parallels in their biographies. Mozart the wunderkind burst, fully formed, from his father’s thigh, composed

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large-scale works at age five, toured all of Europe as a phenom, only to see his fame fade as he grew to manhood. This was hardly Rothko’s trajectory (not that my father read much biography anyway). It was Mozart’s compositions that moved my father and in which he found stylistic and formal principles, and more especially, means of articulating ideas, that would influence the development of his own artistic language. Most notably, Mozart (shameless imitator that he was) adhered to the maxim set forth by Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb in the mid-1940s: “The simple expression of the complex thought.”2 Ironically, the two artists made this declaration not at a time when they were painting the expansively scaled, pared-down abstractions for which they would become famous in the following decade, but during their neo-surrealist periods, when both were painting works of no small complexity. No matter, I have found time and time again that my father’s writings on art prefigured the development of his painted work by several years; that he had generated and internalized the ideas before discovering how he could realize them in paint.3 The fact that Rothko and Gottlieb produced more readily Mozartcompliant works a decade after their manifesto does not change our understanding of the aesthetic and philosophical targets they were seeking. Mozart, in his compositions, is the very model of how much can be wrought from the simplest of ingredients. Rendering a type of musical nouvelle cuisine, he allowed the different instrumental flavors through without covering them in sonic sauce, facilitating the interplay of the basic components without resorting to garnish. Mozart is the master of the short phrase; his themes invariably sing, even at their most compact. His developments then derive from those original melodies in the most natural way, rather than from extended contrapuntal machinations. Sonata form, inherited from Haydn, gave structure to the process, granting each musical phrase gestural freedom within its prescribed role in the development. Transparency of texture was a means to greater expressivity, where the relative paucity of notes permits each one to sound and register with greater import. His work is the very embodiment of economy. Absolutely nothing unnecessary is added to the recipe. While it is undoubtedly naive, even distorting, to suggest that classic Rothko paintings are the visual embodiment of a Mozart composition, there is a clear correspondence in the communicative means the two types of work employ. Shorn of frame or anything that would hint of the merely decorative, Rothko’s sectional paintings are simply pigment on canvas or paper. There is no varnish, no wax, no foreshortening, no linear perspective, no title. There is no story. It is merely the materials themselves, left to present the message of the

work, unadorned and unobscured. Rothko’s colors are remarkably like Mozart’s melodies, put forth without decoration, at liberty to resonate within the sonata structure of the rectangular forms. The transparency that is the hallmark of Mozart’s compositional language permeates Rothko’s as well, the artist thinning his oils and temperas to allow the “inner voices” of his paintings to radiate through. Surface simplicity admits vistas into layers that would otherwise remain concealed. That simplicity is therefore deceptive, cloaking even as it reveals something deeper, something more complex. This realm of the seen and not-seen serves as a metaphor for another place of contact between Rothko and Mozart: the world of emotional contradiction. When asked about his feeling of kinship with Mozart, my father replied that he understood Mozart because the composer was always “smiling through tears.”4 This image, like a rainbow that shines while the rain is falling, captures precisely the knotty emotional world where Rothko paintings dwell. Joy is sweetened by the memory of the pain endured to reach it. Pain is intensified by the lingering taste of the cherished things that have been lost. Rothko’s work— and, he argues, Mozart’s as well—is fired by this admixture of feelings. No matter the simplicity of their means, they know no such simplicity of feeling. Feelings are always complex, tinged with the many components that combine to form them; those connected to the situation at hand and those that should have no relation to it yet seem to demand admittance all the same. My father’s insistent, but paradoxical, focus on the tragic often manifested itself in the same manner as Mozart’s “smiles through tears.” Rothko maintained that even his most apparently sunny canvases of the 1950s spoke of the human tragedy. “Tragedy, ecstasy, doom”—that was the essential content of his work, he told critic Seldon Rodman in 1956.5 But note, again, the coexistence of ecstasy and doom, these incompatible conditions combining necessarily in his work to communicate sensibly with the irrational world of our psychological states. And lest one think we have left the domain of Mozart behind in search of Rothko, a listen to the Adagio of the Divertimento Trio, K. 563, or the first movement of Piano Concerto No. 26, K. 537, will assure us that Mozart belongs to this world too. The decorum of classical utterance can only barely contain the emotive content that wells up to burst forth; sadness, bitterness, and passion in the former (divertimento, hardly!), and the knitted-brow seriousness that repeatedly emerges to frighten away the merriment in the concerto. Here we come to a third point of intersection between Mozart and Rothko, their espousal of drama as an essential analogue to the human experience. We need to take care here, for we are not speaking of dramatic gesture or the empty

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emoting that is mistakenly labeled drama. We are speaking of the human drama, drama as understood by the Greeks, who portrayed our fundamental existential concerns through actors upon a stage. Drama, yes; flamboyance, no. For Mozart, as it did for the Greeks, drama inherently involved narrative, story used as a vehicle for the essential ideas. For Rothko, however, who indeed spoke of his paintings as “dramas,” it is the interaction between human figures that is the primary thrust of the drama rather than the story itself.6 And while Mozart was certainly adept at illustrating a story through music, we find his most profound operatic writing in the interaction between characters. He is the master of the duet, the trio, and the quartet, where the musical argument and interplay is every bit as compelling as the theatrical give-and-take between the characters. Through the emotional contours of Mozart’s music, they sing not just of their own troubles but of the larger human dilemma. It is very tempting to see my father translating their declamation, as it echoed around his studio, into the action of the colors and shapes—his performers—upon the canvas. What we have learned from my father’s relationship to Mozart, we can apply more generally to his interaction with music. Let us begin with the question of form. I think it is no accident that Rothko was drawn to music of the classical era, where there is indeed great clarity of form. Even composers like Beethoven and Schubert, who stretched classical structures to their limits, still worked primarily within the bounds established by Haydn. And outside the classical period, my father tended toward Brahms, the great classicist, and Mendelssohn, the champion of Bach, rather than echt-Romantics like Wagner or Liszt, whose works are structurally far looser and seldom adhere to classical models. This espousal of classical form carries beyond the realm of music, as Rothko was also greatly inspired by the cultures of classical societies, particularly the Greeks. While we should not conflate the term classical, as used to describe the arts of the late eighteenth century, with the same term as used to describe the pre–Common Era cultures that form the bedrock of Western civilization, we can still appreciate that the later period was characterized as such because it harkened so readily to the examples and styles of antiquity. Rothko looked carefully at Greek and Roman and Egyptian art and architecture, and he read Greek drama and philosophy, but he was hearing it distilled in Mozart as well. In developing the compositional structure of his work, we must note how actively Rothko was influenced by the examples of classical architecture, particularly the temples he quipped he had been painting all his life.7 My sister learned the extent of our father’s preoccupation at the age of nine, when the family spent most of the summer of 1959 in Italy, exploring Greek and Roman

fig. 66 sketch for seagram mural no. 7 (1958–59)

sites, or as an antidote, discovering the ways the masters of the Renaissance created their own variations on the classical through their art and architecture. It is hardly a coincidence that when it came time for Rothko to build his own temples in the form of his mural projects, he clearly evoked Greek columns and colonnades in the first two (fig. 66), while turning to an ancient Byzantine design for the octagonal plan of the Rothko Chapel in Houston. The simple, elemental geometry of classical architecture has been referenced, imitated, and appropriated for centuries in part because there is an intrinsically organic and harmonious rhythm to its forms and proportions. It thus lends a thoroughly grounded foundation for ornamentation and reinterpretation, a formal consistency that gives the artist of whatever stripe unalloyed freedom to improvise and re-create. This is certainly the way in which Rothko made use of classical forms—architectural, dramatic, and musical—and it helped him move toward a new expressive language in painting. As I have argued elsewhere, it was the stability of a natural form that my father sought and worked actively to develop throughout the first three decades of his career.8 His classic canvases do not represent, for him, a new expressivity via the language of color, but the culmination of his efforts to structure his works in a new simplicity: a formal simplicity that sets clear parameters while permitting, nay almost demanding, dynamic and unequivocal declamation. His color-field paintings are like a Mozart aria, where the purity of form and the harmonic landscape established by the sustaining strings frame the vocal line but also liberate it, making possible the most passionate communication.

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This embrace of structure for expressive ends is not by any means unique to Rothko’s classic period; it is only a question of degree. The manner in which he shapes the scenes in his figurative work of the 1920s and ’30s is repeatedly indicative of an eye carefully attuned to form. The works of the late 1930s in particular show a preoccupation with architecture, with geometry, and with how figures relate in space (see figs. 12, 56). The formative role of space will remain constant through his artistic development, and while Rothko’s works will become increasingly symphonic in scale, they will continue to evoke the intimacy of chamber music so frequently captured in the interior scenes of the figurative work. The communication remains personal no matter what the size of the work. In the neo-surrealist canvases and watercolors of the 1940s, we find a similar preoccupation with underlying form, the works typically divided into biand tripartite backgrounds that define the terrain (see fig. 50). Figures burst forth from the landscape or dance upon the surface, tethered in a rhythmic interplay that helps establish the structure of the work. Where Rothko’s works are less explicitly formulated on classical examples, we should still note that his paintings are composed, they are structured, they are meticulously considered. The product of lengthy thought and then lengthy review, his paintings are not the spontaneous capturing of a moment nor, in their haziness, expressions of entropy and the dissolute. We should not mistake the lack of clear depiction or his rapid, gestural application of paint for a casual approach to art. Like the instrumental works he loved, his paintings are carefully honed attempts to be as specific as possible about subjects that often defy specificity. They are constructed with unwavering intentionality toward that goal. The structure of Rothko paintings is also notably musical in nature. I am referring to the harmony and balance within each painting that, in works of such apparent simplicity, is absolutely essential to them sounding clearly and sonorously. As regards harmony, there is an essential verticality to the fabric of Rothko paintings, their colors and shapes layered and arranged atop one another as the notes in a musical chord. Like those notes, the painted elements exist individually but are perceived as a whole, and their impact on the viewer/listener is the result of their interaction with one another. That visual chord, whether sweetly harmonious or peppered with dissonance, is the sensual offspring of a fundamentally musical juxtaposition. For like a musical composition, we experience Rothko paintings as gestalts: they cannot be broken down meaningfully into different figures or scenes, and to segregate by color is an equally hollow exercise. Like musical works, they are truly more than the sum of their parts, all their diverse elements working together to produce the larger effect (and affect) of the painting.

To this point we have mostly focused on Rothko the classicist, the Rothko who loved structure and who realized the profundity of earlier eras by emulating their embrace of basic compositional principles along with the expressive potential of simplicity. But we sell Rothko well short, and misapprehend an essential part of his language, if we do not recognize his decidedly romantic spirit. Numerous art critics have noted this core vein in Rothko’s work, perhaps none so movingly as Robert Rosenblum, who speaks of how “the Romantic search for an art that could convey sensations of overpowering mystery was vigorously resurrected, at times, as in the case of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, with explicit religious overtones.”9 In many ways, this aspect of Rothko’s temperament is more readily apparent to the viewer than the classical side. The saturation of color leads to a sense of lushness that we associate with the romantic aesthetic. There is a sweep to the paintings, sometimes stemming from their size, and other times from the suffused radiance and bold combinations of their colors. Similarly, a feeling of unrestrained declamation emanates from both the sumptuous glow of layered paint and from the dynamic manner in which the color pushes all the way to the edge, often producing the impression that it will continue to expand beyond the borders of the painting. All of these factors speak to the sensuousness of the work, underscoring Rothko’s insistence that art must communicate with its viewer on the sensual level. There is often an unbridled esprit, but more centrally, there is a depth to the expression, a solidity and fleshiness that make the paintings objects in and of themselves rather than depictions of something else. They are embodiments of that expression, prompting direct interaction with the internal world of the viewer. Thus, for all their classical formality, these works communicate in the language of emotionality, creating an experience that is inherently personal. This emphasis on the emotional, on individual experience as a path to truth, is the very essence of romanticism. While perhaps most manifest in his classic canvases, this current was present in Rothko’s work in all media from the beginning of his career. His figurative work of the Depression era depicts not the suffering of the poor as a class but the suffering of the individual rendered anonymous by his environs. Similarly, he never truly embraces surrealism because its dream world is too divorced from human experience. He uses instead what he can draw from the mythic realm to touch, more centrally, the emotional core of each viewer. In both of these cases, he saw himself as particularly modern in adopting means apart from the current fashion, yet we cannot mistake the essential romantic notion that underlies his expressive choices. While Rothko may not have set out explicitly in pursuit of a romantic aesthetic, he learned early on that communication on the level he felt was essential

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could occur only with the individual. His embrace of the subjective was not necessarily philosophical at its core. He did not champion phenomenology, nor did he believe that truth was an entirely personal matter. If he had believed as much, then his own attempts to pursue and express more general truths about human existence would have been futile. In fact my father’s espousal of subjectivity was far more practical. He may have been speaking of universal truths, but he understood that it is only on the individual level that truth can become meaning. Truth must be personalized, it must be digested to become relevant, to become consequential, to each person. Music again serves as a helpful guide in understanding Rothko’s process. I have already indicated that my father only reluctantly ventured beyond the confines of classicism, but the composers he listened to did not feel any such restraint. Nor is the classical period by any means uniform. Hence I turn to Schubert, his second love after Mozart. To examine Schubert is to look at a man who was born a classical composer but who, in a period of time so short it defies credibility, sowed all the seeds of romanticism. Beethoven, too, was breaking through the bounds of classicism—and on a much more public platform. But Beethoven’s is a far more heroic temperament—Schubert, by contrast, is the musical embodiment of subjectivity. This is codified, on the most basic level, in his unprecedented outpouring of song, where individual experience, and a poet’s perspective on the world, is inherent to the form. But I am thinking more actively about Schubert’s chamber music, both because this is what my father and I both knew and love(d) so well, and because it captures, on a more expansive canvas, the emotionality inherent in his music. The parallels of Schubert’s music and Rothko’s paintings are palpable. The composer’s outpourings of feeling are indeed just that, their intensity barely contained by the form of the composition. Poignancy and passion are the currency of Schubert’s work no less than they are of Rothko’s. The lushness of sound is notable, whether the tone is bright or somber, a characteristic reflected equally in the saturated pigments suffusing Rothko’s works of all periods. Schubert’s works are notable for their jarring, unprepared dissonances, which occur amid an otherwise harmonious and sweetly melodic tonal picture. Shifts of key happen with a corresponding suddenness that creates friction at the points of transition. These techniques yield effects very similar to those found in the interplay of Rothko’s colors. Hues of deep intensity rub shoulders with distant relatives, creating in their contrast a great sense of movement and energy. And the borders between colors— the often-roiling regions on the edges of the rectangles where many layers of color come to the surface—are similarly dynamic foci of emotional expression.

Despite this feeling-impregnated articulation of the subjective, Schubert remains a classical composer in his adherence to sonata form. Much as we find in Rothko’s color-field work, however, that form is pushed almost beyond what it can contain. This is seen most particularly in Schubert’s last works, where the expressive scope becomes so broad that the works themselves seem to become engorged, bloating in disproportionate bulges as the composer struggles to incorporate a lifetime into the confines of a given movement. Much as we see in Rothko’s classic paintings, the scale of the works tends ever larger, the individual movements or rectangles swelling and contracting based on their emotional function, creating the need for considerable artistic sleight of hand to maintain balance and structure. That structure is nearly transcended in the slow movements of Schubert’s very last works—the opening of the B-flat Piano Sonata, and the Adagio of the String Quintet in C Major most notably—where the space Schubert allows himself (or rather that his music seems to demand) diffuses the argument to the point where the music takes on a nearly abstract quality, ethereal in a way certainly reminiscent of Rothko. Rothko the classicist, Rothko the romantic—we are beset by contradictions, but primarily because we are most driven to classify when artistic expression cannot be neatly placed in boxes with labels. Artists reach for and grasp the means necessary to carry forward their argument, regardless of period or modality. And, dare we ask, Rothko the modernist? The answer—surprise!—yes and no. On a primary level, Rothko is a modernist whether by choice or no. As he tells us in his brief treatise on modern art, “We know that all art is inescapably entwined with all the intellectual processes of the age in which it is functioning.”10 A cursory glance at a classic Rothko certainly supports this notion, with its unabashed, nonobjectivist stance, the large scale that became a hallmark of his “school” (and which has continued largely uninterrupted as a current in the visual arts), and the greatly simplified means by which it conveys its expressive content. While none of these qualities are unique to Rothko or to Abstract Expressionism, they do place Rothko squarely in the progressive vanguard of his generation. A Rothko painting, therefore, certainly gives the viewer a modernist handshake, sufficiently modernist, in fact, that many viewers still find the works offputting, even indecipherable, half a century after they were painted. But as we have been discussing, that modernism may largely function as the wolf’s clothing on the sheep, for the works’ simplicity has close kinship with the classical and is also a means by which the romantic sweep of Rothko’s color palette is empowered to speak unequivocally. Rothko’s work wears a modernist guise, but it is a newfound route to ends that are quite familiar.

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Music, again, may help clarify Rothko’s stance. The rhythms of bebop stimulated Pollock as he dripped and flung and poured, its syncopations cutting new paths as audacious as his. Not so with my father. He listened not to the music of his time but to music that was timeless. Does that place his paintings out of joint with the moment in which he painted them, or does that timelessness help the paintings float free, evoking the past while speaking to the future? The large size of particularly his classic work, while conforming to the modernist aesthetic in the visual arts, is more foreign to modernism in twentieth-century music. Rothko’s work is truly symphonic in scale and ambition, but the symphony became unfashionable and, some would argue, nearly irrelevant during the twentieth century (with very important exceptions), particularly among the musical avant-garde. There, beginning with Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, the forms became shorter and more tersely argued, even as the language became more and more abstract. On the other hand, developments in jazz more closely paralleled Rothko’s trajectory, even though he never listened to it. In the 1950s jazz increasingly shed its relation to the concrete as it moved away from song as the content and organizing principle for its improvisations. In the two subsequent decades jazz musicians ventured further, spawning larger and more discursive compositions from material that was often entirely abstract. Monumental yet abstract, romantic yet minimal, Rothko—conservative and modernist—stands between two worlds. In this way he is like some of the greatest composers in music history—Dufay, Bach, Mahler. These were all composers who stood on the cusp of a stylistic revolution but, instead of making that break, pushed their art to the absolute limit of what could be expressed within the existing forms. Dufay, for all of his sophistication and daring, was the last medievalist, not the first composer of the Renaissance. Bach took the complexity and chromaticism of the Baroque to unprecedented heights rather than embracing the new simplicity of the emerging classical style, while in Mahler, romanticism found a champion to usher it out in a final blaze of glory. Each of these composers was highly progressive in his own way, but each refused to reject what had come before. Rothko too is no revolutionary. He is the classicist with a romantic soul, prepared to use modern techniques to achieve his aims but always seeking to capture an emotive, essentially dramatic spirit that is foreign to the modernist ethos. What may initially appear stark is actually the classicism of his form, the works’ inner radiance revealing the lushness rather than any coldness in his apparently empty fields of color. He is declaring himself in ardent rhetoric, composing a sweeping tone poem, no matter how simply expressed. Rothko is not turning his back on what he sees as a great tradition. He is a radical enamored of

fig. 67 morton feldman

art history. He is an artist at the end of an era, singing an impassioned final aria, even as Pop art looms just outside, beginning to tear down the opera house. The Abstract Expressionists, and perhaps Rothko chief among them, represent a last flourishing rather than the beginning of something entirely new. Theirs is a final rethinking, or rather, reworking—a distinctly twentieth-century American view of the European tradition. Until now we have examined the connection between the music my father loved and his own art. What more can we learn from the relationship between his art and the music of contemporaries who were drawn to it? I am thinking in particular of Morton Feldman (fig. 67), who would go on to compose Rothko Chapel in 1971.11 Where—how—does that fit within this framework of Rothko’s classical and romantic sensibilities? Feldman, perhaps the only man in New York who could outsmoke my father, was part enfant terrible, part intellectual. A radical who embraced the seriousness of high modernism but rejected its techniques, he created a new minimalism that blazed a trail for the next generation of composers, even as the content and principles of their work remained entirely different. Feldman befriended many of the Abstract Expressionists and collected their work, something to which my father, no matter how friendly he and Feldman may have been, did not respond in kind. Indeed, I have long wondered about the nature of their intellectual exchange. Feldman’s works seem in so many ways attuned to Rothko’s, and yet I cannot imagine my father making the hundred-year-plus leap forward from the music that most moved his soul. Perhaps, as befitted a younger man, Feldman simply deferred to Rothko and spoke with him only about his painting. We do not have to be so constrained, however, for once again I think we can learn something about Rothko paintings when viewed through the lens of music, in this case Morton Feldman’s. The affinity is, first and foremost, aspirational. Feldman’s work is ambitious, and like Rothko’s, it is founded on strongly held philosophical beliefs. Similarly, like the Rothko he knew, Feldman created on a grand scale (and how!),

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although the full extent of his longueurs were not realized until after my father had been gone for a decade. Perhaps more important, however, the more I listen to Feldman, the more I find him, like Rothko, an artist on the brink of a sea change; an artist who, for all of his radicalism, remained true to long-held principles. His ethereal sound world, stripped to absolute essentials, is still a comment upon, a continuation of, Western art music. If he differs strongly with European modernism, he is still in conversation with it, rather than rejecting it entirely. He is simply offering an alternate path, drawing from the same principles and tradition. There is also a decided sensuousness in Feldman’s work. Hardly less abstract than that of John Cage, Feldman’s music still meets us on an emotional level. Nor is his minimalism the mathematically derived, electronically stimulated work of Glass, Reich, Adams, and their cohort (much as their work has diverged with time). It is both spiritual and of the flesh. It gets inside us and touches a deep aesthetic core, no matter how slowly. As with Debussy, the effect is haunting—otherworldly and familiar. Listening to Feldman’s work, one can feel how deeply he understood Rothko’s painting. Perhaps ironically, the place that understanding is most patent is in his extensive use of silence. This silence is by no means empty but deeply resonant, echoing with what has come before and the possibilities of what may happen next. It is essentially congruent to Rothko’s use of space. Feldman’s Silence = Rothko’s Space

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Like Rothko’s expanses, Feldman’s silences are not voids; they are pregnant with ideas in the process of becoming. And if the listener is an integral part of bringing those ideas to fruition, it is by no means a matter of free association. Feldman has, like Rothko, suggested directions, set an emotional tone, begun a discourse that is highly specific even as it allows for many responses and asks a great number of questions. The sense of space Rothko creates in the paintings functions in a similar way, serving as a point of entry for the viewer, a (non-) place to fire the imagination, an invitation to explore. Space as both a structural and expressive device became more and more central to Rothko’s work over the course of his career. As his “images” simplified, the space carried more and more of the movement and defined the emotional arena in which the painting operated. Consequently, it has been Rothko’s rendering of forms in space that has ultimately inspired musical realizations, reactions, and commentary. In the case of every “Rothko” piece I have heard (with the exception of one folk-style tune that references his biogra-

phy), the music has been expansive, developing slowly, and filled with purposeful, if diffused, movement. Each of the pieces is focused on the space around the notes as much as on the notes themselves. Rothko’s spaces define the tempo and the rhythm of his works. Beginning with Morton Feldman and continuing to this day, composers drawn to Rothko’s painting have adopted this tempo and focused upon the parallel relationship between silence and space; that is, how each of these shapes the activity around it. The spaces in Rothko paintings are filled with music, and indeed they readily serve as nurseries for the creation of music. These seeming voids yield particularly rich material for musical ideas, composers repeatedly finding great substance among the nothingness. I called Feldman’s music “abstract” above, yet I am not sure that that is the right term (nor is it in some ways for Cage, whose work is often a faithful musical transliteration of what began as an abstract concept or random event). In most ways Mozart’s instrumental work is actually more abstract than either Cage’s, which is often linked to specific graphic or physical models, or Feldman’s. Many of Feldman’s best-known pieces, including Rothko Chapel, are in the form of an homage, looking to capture some essence of the art or music or poetry of someone he admired. And yet, though Feldman establishes links that we can perhaps grasp, the association between the composition and the referenced artist’s work, between the music and the idea, is undeniably abstract. It is important to remember that abstract does not mean void of content; it means that the relationship between the content and its rendering is not in any strict way representational. In essence, the connection between the idea and the work is itself an idea. This abstract rendering of ideas is ultimately not just the fundamental link between Rothko’s painting and Feldman’s music. It is the fundamental link between Rothko’s painting and all music. For what is music—when freed from text—if not the most abstract of art forms? And what freed Rothko to express his philosophical ideas most clearly and universally? Abstraction. Ironically, the power of abstraction lies less in its flexibility and more in the concreteness with which it is able to realize a concept. This is certainly true of instrumental music as well, which rarely represents anything, yet is filled with substance. And this is the very language that Rothko paintings speak; the language of the idea expressed vividly and absolutely on its own terms, unbeholden to external referents. That language is, at its foundation, the very reason that music and art exist. Music, better than any other medium, expresses the inexpressible. And Rothko painted as he did precisely because he was trying to capture what cannot be communicated verbally. Music, he found, conveyed the ineffable so richly, so clearly.

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He wanted his paintings, like great music, to articulate and evoke those feelings or ideas that are keenly familiar but are too fundamental to be translated into words. The “just is” was much more immediate and much more powerful. That, for him, was irrefutable truth. That, for him, was a path to the absolute. The abstract, Rothko found, was what best captured not so much the indeterminate as that concrete part of human experience that defies description or even depiction. It is the thought made experiential: it is bodily, sensual, and, in the same moment, emotional, even spiritual. Music offered the most direct route to that place—to an emotional level that precedes conscious thought. Rothko sought, through abstraction, access to this same realm, where he could address the whole person not subject to divisions into different sensory domains or modes of thought. Rothko paintings, at their most affective, do engage us in a full-body experience touching all the senses. On the most basic level, we see the paintings, but if you suspend the experience at your visual receptors, you have not really seen a Rothko. Like music, Rothko paintings offer a gateway to our inner selves. They evoke a visceral reaction that in turn sparks feelings and engages our minds, one that offers great riches because all can recognize it. In this way they provide a basic level of human connection that starts between the artist and the viewer but extends to how we speak with the world around us. I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetry.

For Rothko, this was not a philosophical goal. It was not a technical challenge. It was a need to make his work speak with the greatest possible affect. Art should bring us to the realm of the chill down the spine, the longing ache in the pit of the stomach, the sweep of exhilaration that takes away our breath. This is how music and poetry touch us most powerfully. For Rothko, painting must too.

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Rothkos’ Humor

Whether they celebrate him for his vision or castigate him for his grandiosity, historians and critics have rarely (never?), in my experience, cited Rothko’s humor, wit, or even playfulness. The apparent consensus is that Rothko consistently aimed high and did not trifle with light matters. His public, too, comes to his paintings seeking the transcendental, an interaction that will be necessarily profound and soulful. And though I will go on to portray a more mischievous Rothko, here I am inclined to agree: in my father’s art there is no humor—it is all deeply earnest and unremittingly serious. My father was not about to waste his time committing banalities to canvas (or paper). If he was going to say something, he wanted to do so honestly and directly. He did not have time to bandy about or make small talk—there was urgency in his need to communicate with us about the essences of our existence. The “timeless and the tragic,” that was the language of our souls, the common experience that bound us all together and spoke across generations. That was, by his own assertion, his subject matter. What has resulted from this is an assumption, particularly when filtered backward through the lens of his suicide, that my father was morose, unsmiling, almost inhuman in the weightiness of his attitude. If his paintings were humorless, then he must be humorless as well, scowling and a bit relentless in his insistence. How pivotal, then, that rarest of birds—an example of humor in my father’s graphic work. Not a painting, it is a pen-and-ink caricature of himself (fig. 68). Small and casually done, the sketch did not even warrant a separate sheet, the image buried instead in the center of a motley assortment of grotesques. Yet in contrast with his one formal, rather dour, self-portrait, painted at age thirty-three (fig. 69), the little drawing shows plainly that, however he may have wanted us to think of him, Rothko did not always take himself so seriously.

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fig. 68 untitled sketches, c. 1940–43

fig. 69 self portrait, 1936

The significance of this caricature should not be underestimated. Humor is a complicated matter both emotionally and interpersonally. To tell a joke is almost always, on some level, an aggressive act. There is a dark side, a nasty edge, that inevitably leaves someone shamed, injured, or at a minimum a fool. Jokes always have a butt end, and humor that does not in some way involve self-deprecation has no other avenue but to belittle others. If we were to find that Rothko’s humorous aggression was strictly externally focused, it would not sit well with the notion of a man who reached out to us actively as fellow humans involved in shared struggles. It would undermine the essential impression of empathy that I insist is central to our understanding of the man behind work that is deeply soulful. Thus, while I have argued that one can only understand Rothko by understanding his work, in this essay, I make an exception. Where our approach to the work is colored—not to say tainted—by what we “know” about the man, a corrective may be necessary. It is, after all, a very different matter to paint serious paintings because that is what is important to you than it is to paint serious paintings because that is the limit of your emotional range. So I break my own rule where it would benefit us to know Rothko a little better. My father taught art for seventeen years at the Jewish Center School, where he was much beloved. There the man of the self-portrait, glowering behind the dark glasses, was known to faculty and students alike not as Mr. Rothkowitz but instead as “Rothkie.” Affectionate, and not the sort of name a man in a stuffed shirt would cotton to. Rothkie to his students and Bunchy to his second wife, my father was certainly able to take on silliness and to be made familiar in ways that did not immediately command respect. Nor did his deeply philosophical approach to painting necessarily carry over to other pursuits. Spaghetti westerns were his preferred genre of movie, and his all-time favorite film, Around the World in Eighty Days, a tour de force no doubt after a fashion, is not renowned for its profundity. Similarly, cooking was not an art form to him but simply an impediment to being fed. Why wait for a soufflé to rise when a cold hot dog from the refrigerator would serve just as well? And even in music, the form he placed at the pinnacle of the arts, The Magic Flute trumped all other compositions. Admittedly this “opera” contains some of Mozart’s most inspired writing, but many of its finest moments are comic and the plot is often frivolous even by operatic standards. Mozart, with whom my father was essentially monogamous, is also a notably playful composer. No Wagner and little Brahms for Rothkie. If my father could revel in the lowbrow, perhaps it was because it was in decided contrast with his more serious bent. One could dismiss his humor as

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simply an antidote to his existential and philosophical preoccupations, but in fact it played a more active role that dovetailed well with the intensity he brought to most activities. I think my father reveled in contradiction, in the sparks that fly when unexpected neighbors come in contact. Nietzsche in one hand, a garlic pickle brandished in the other, my father delighted in the unlooked-for, in the hint of subversion that stems from confounding expectations, whether societal, artistic, or intellectual. Perhaps there was more than a bit of anger in his subversiveness. A Jewish scholarship student among the young gentry at Yale, he resented the entitled, disdainful attitude he witnessed firsthand on a daily basis. Whatever other expression he may have given his bitterness, as he waited on his classmates’ tables in the dining hall, he channeled much of it into the Saturday Evening Pest, the underground campus magazine he cofounded his freshman year and for which he wrote satirical depictions of the sorry state of scholarship among his fellow Yalies. Here the edge of his humor was honed as he took aim at those who did not see fit to notice him and whose seriousness about the subjects he held dear left him unimpressed. Rothko was hardly the first self-styled intellectual to carp about the ruling class and rue its lack of rigor and dedication (and intelligence). Rather than simply complain, however, he turned to satire as a satisfying, perhaps necessary, outlet for both his resentment and his restless intellect. Its close relation, irony, would eventually become the primary channel for his wit. Although the strain of resentment that characterized the Saturday Evening Pest never wholly left my father, his tone became less petulant, and his humor not simply an expression of his unappreciated earnestness. It came out in reference to collectors, critics, and to a lesser degree his viewers—all the people in front of whom he bared himself repeatedly on canvas. It survived in that uncomfortable edge between the need to show and the humiliation of being seen. Rather than biting those hands, or sycophantically kissing them in hopes of a caress, he used humor as a means to charm and growl at the same time. The humorous side of Rothko comes into even clearer relief in his letters and writings—some published, some unpublished. My father had a close relationship with his eldest nephew, Kenneth, one that is happily chronicled in a group of twenty-plus surviving letters from the 1940s to the 1960s. While some are very pragmatic, simply trying to arrange a rendezvous or a money transfer, others are filled with genuine warmth and wit. Several of Rothko’s center on the joys (and otherwise) of parenthood—Kenneth, despite being a generation behind, having beaten him to fatherhood:

The ecstasy of fatherhood is keeping me awake 20 hours a day. One might resent so much of it, but strangely enough I don’t, and that’s what frightens me. I know that I am lost. (January 10, 1951) Kate is thriving. The little beast is cunning, cumbersomely active and full of unruly charm. We do like her. (early 1950s)

My father also kept Kenneth updated on his exhibitions and always made sure he was invited to any openings. A letter from 1951, however, gives a rare glimpse of his hopes and frustrations as an artist, and again shows Rothko’s ability to mock himself: Monday A.M. too early (because of baby Kate) My show is limping along. If you saw the Times yesterday you will note that I have been already saluted as a pioneer and the tomb-stone is ready and in their mind, the sooner the better. So far much talk, no gelt, but the sun has not yet set. (April 9, 1951)

Rothko had old-fashioned attitudes toward women, and if some of his comments make us cringe, they also reveal a lusty attitude, happy to plunge into the duality-rich world of sexual innuendo. For example, in 1943 when Kenneth’s brother Milton came to New York for technical training during World War II, my father wrote his sister, Sonia Rabin, to reassure her that he would take good care of her son, including finding some “fluffy young things” to keep him entertained. His letters to Kenneth often have much the same tone: . . . having fully finished Paris. We are now on the Riviera à cote de Rita Heyworth & her Pshaw [?] (Postcard, 1950) I’m sorry that you cannot see Mell in her present state, for me having gained in concupiscent appeal. This presents a double difficulty. First the temptation to keep her in this condition as constantly as possible which is economically unsound; and second the unhappy drought of 12 weeks which is about to begin. Of course, I have my art, but don’t think it can carry that load, too. (October 29, 1950)

My parents had a twenty-year friendship with the New York painter William Scharf and his wife, Sally, a stage actress of striking beauty. Her charms were not lost on my father, who was certainly not above flirting, and once told her in the middle of a crowded diner, “If half of New York was not watching, I would goose you.”1

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Fellow Abstract Expressionist painter Barnett Newman was particularly close to my father during the 1940s (their friendship, sadly, would not survive the next decade). At times their correspondence reflects the high seriousness of their art and the philosophies that drive it, while other exchanges are more impish and candidly survey the New York art scene. Your letter indicated that you have an ideal set up for work and play and I hope that you are doing considerable of each. I thirst for gossip. Send it without delay.2

Rothko the gossip? This from the man poet Stanley Kunitz called “the last Rabbi of Western Art”!3 A 1945 letter to Newman perhaps best captures my father’s wit—as well as his love of women: I have produce[d] a number of things since I’ve returned. I have assumed for myself

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the problem of further concretizing my symbols, which give me many headaches but make work rather exhilarating. Unfortunately we can’t think these things out with finality, but must endure a series of stumblings toward a clearer issue. I hope that you are jealous and will be spurred to greater labors. Remember your promise of two chapters, one of which I expect by mail in a week or two. Most of all I am interested in Annalee’s new haircomb which I hope that Dianne is continuing in spite of her bad back (which I hope is not bad anymore). I want both of us to have the most beautiful wives in captivity, both of us seeming to have an untenable romantic attitude about this shady business.4

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Note how the high seriousness about art is immediately followed by a bit of playfulness as he introduces the notion of jealousy. Then Rothko pulls the rug out with a jarring juxtaposition of the everyday—avowing that the comb is what he is most interested in. This is on one level tongue-in-cheek, and yet he is telling us that he really wants to engage with Newman on a purely social level. This is the beauty of irony, which inherently poses the statement and its negation in each utterance. The social is the most important—really and not really. And note that the and is not a but. The humor in irony resides precisely in the fact that the and cannot exist, and must. So too with the captivity comment. The notion of a spouse kept like an animal in a zoo is absurd to the point where it cannot be taken seriously, and yet this is deeply sexist humor. It reveals not only an objectifying and possessive attitude but perhaps also my father’s discomfort with the male/female power dynamic, highlighted particularly by the mysteries of pregnancy. This juxtaposition of the banal and the grand, each made more striking by the presence of the other, is the hallmark of my father’s humor. It tells us, at the

same time, not to take what he is saying too seriously, while in fact highlighting its seriousness by placing it in stark relief against a triviality. It is what can make Rothko seem unbearably pompous, while at the same time—if we know how to read him—allowing us to see how readily he makes light of himself. A delightful example is the way he describes his process of composition for his classic canvases: “ ‘This kind of design may look simple,’ he said, ‘but it usually takes me many hours to get the proportions and colors just right. Everything has to lock together. I guess I am pretty much of a plumber at heart.’ ”5 When a woman was involved, as here, my father went to greater lengths to be clever and charming. Observe how he goes on to respond to her notion that he was a mystical artist: “Not a mystic. A prophet perhaps—but I don’t prophesy woes to come. I just paint the woes already here.”6 This is a classic Mark Rothko comment, grandiose and humble at the same time. He calls himself a prophet, but he prophesies nothing and distances himself from the mysticism that is the prophet’s language of trade. The statement is canny and ironic but also very serious. He is genuinely dismissive of the notion of mysticism, and emphatically grounds his artwork, not for the first time, in the real and concrete. But he does need to have a bit of mischief with it. He is clearly flirting, and one can almost see the wry smile on his lips. The image of Rothko as plumber-philosopher and failed prophet may give pause to those who think of him as erudite without relief. In fact Rothko was quick to turn to irony when asked to describe his painting process. He includes irony in his well-known laundry list of ingredients that compose his paintings. The irony, however, resides not in the paintings, but in the notion that they could be created using such a formula: But producing a work of art is another thing and I speak of art as a trade. The recipe of a work of art—its ingredients—how to make it—the formula. 1. There must be a clear preoccupation with death—intimations of mortality. . . . Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death. 2. Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationship to things that exist. 3. Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire. 4. Irony. This is a modern ingredient—the self-effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else. 5. Wit and play . . . for the human element. 6. The ephemeral and chance . . . for the human element. 7. Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.

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I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of

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these elements.7

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Similarly, my father was able to find some perspective on himself, even in the context of his breakthrough exhibition at MoMA in 1961, about which stories of his nervousness and testiness are legion. Lynn Schneider, my sister Kate’s babysitter, found my father in a lighter mood when she visited the exhibit. Strolling through the exhibition one afternoon, she saw Rothko walking toward her, and with a big smile on his face he asked, “So, what do you think of my new . . . shoes?”8 However much on edge he may have been about the exhibit, he was able to diffuse Lynn’s discomfort and his own by playfully confounding expectations. He acknowledged the elephant in the room by instead talking about the mouse. In this situation, my father used absurdity to generate relief from tension even as he threw light on the discomfort at hand. But Rothko’s ironic sense of humor also got him in trouble, chiefly because he would joke about things which seemed so serious. Irony is a dangerous tool because the humor is often missed, or because it may not translate well to paper. So if the art historian to whom Rothko quips does not register his playful tone, his thought will be passed on to the generations with a meaning far less nuanced than intended. As a result, many of my father’s best-known statements have been wholly or partly misunderstood. How do I know this? Because I knew my father and I am very much his son. While I bear a few more traits of my mother than my father, my sense of humor I received entirely from him; a direct injection of the full-strength serum. I read my father’s statements and comments, or hear his jokes retold, and I am often amazed that they did not tumble out of my own mouth. It is all there: the love of the absurd, the embrace of the uncomfortable when paired elements do not fit, the pronouncement of the patrician that can only feel true to self when immediately placed in the context of the plebeian. And I too get myself in trouble with my attempts at humor—as you may have noticed. My editor certainly did. This overlap of personality puts me in a unique position as interpreter of my father’s statements because I can unpack many of their levels of meaning instinctually. I do not make this statement lightly, nor do I make it with an overinflated sense of my own importance. It is simply an area where I realize I can contribute most to sorting out aspects of my father’s personality that have remained confused, obscure, and as a result, ultimately distorting to our under-

standing of him and his work. I can see his writing and know with confidence what we should take literally and what not, when he was being disingenuous and when he was simply being silly. My father and I are not the same person, but I can sense his areas of discomfort; where he uses humor to express that, and when he uses humor in an attempt to hide it. I share my father’s love of irony—to my mind the highest form of humor. But when encountered by the po-faced, it becomes a dangerous, double-edged sword whose blade is far more likely to do harm to the utterer than to those who hear it. My father’s biographer, James Breslin, was such a man: tireless, dedicated, a remarkably thorough researcher, but perhaps the most humorless person I have ever met. He bases a substantial portion of his understanding of Rothko’s personality on the misread of a single comment. His notion that my father was a romantically and sexually desperate man, a leitmotiv throughout the nearly six-hundred-page biography, stems from a single quote from a 1959 interview describing his beginnings as an artist: “Then one day . . . I happened to wander into an art class, to meet a friend who was taking the course. All the students were sketching this nude model—and right away I decided that was the life for me.”9 Breslin misses the incongruousness of this statement issuing from the mouth of the echt-abstract painter. Rothko the “mystic,” who is already reaching the pinnacle of his fame at that time, was in fact only interested in leering at a model. The irony that a man known for painting nothing but rectangles would be seduced into a career by a few bodily curves seems to shoot right past Breslin. Oh, that double-edged sword. If we had any doubts that Rothko was being facetious when talking about the irresistible allure of the figure, his comments about Piet Mondrian should erase them. William Seitz summarizes this portion of their conversation: “ ‘I have never had an interest in Mondrian,’ ” said Rothko. “Later told how, for a joke, he had lectured that PM was [an] obscene painter. [A] Calvinist who spen[t] life caressing the canvas.”10 Clearly the tone here is similar to what he will say about himself a few years later, that unable to resist the model, he charged into a career far removed from his education and previous interests. Breslin may be picking up on a certain lustful attitude in Rothko, but he misses the impish grin that tells us there is more naughtiness than desperation afoot. My father’s irony certainly came back to bite him, leading others to misunderstand who he was as a man. In one case, however, his sarcasm also led to his integrity as an artist being impugned. I am referring here to the exhibition organized by the Fogg Museum at Harvard in 1988, which catalogued the strik-

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ing deterioration of the murals Rothko gifted to the university in 1963. Due to the combination of a faulty installation plan that had the works facing a wall of untreated glass, Rothko’s use of multiple pigments that, when mixed, ultimately proved unstable, and substantial institutional neglect, the eventual condition of the paintings necessitated that they be removed from view. One essay in the exhibition catalogue, then echoed in a Harvard Magazine article, generally sought to place the primary blame on my father, and hung a good deal of its argument on Rothko’s use of poor-quality pigments. The idea stemmed from scientific analysis but also from an offhand remark Rothko made to Harvard’s paintings conservator in 1962 about running out to a Woolworth’s discount store when he needed more paint.11 Conservators and journalists suggested that Rothko had used shoddy materials and had maintained a generally cavalier attitude toward his artwork that manifested itself in the compromised craftsmanship evident in the Harvard murals. More alarmingly, my father’s comment created a legacy, leading a subsequent Harvard conservator to remark on, in the accompanying exhibition catalogue, “Rothko’s complete ignorance of, or indifference to, the most basic requirements for permanent painting.”12 The works, she argued, had deteriorated in large part because Rothko did not care. Although the exhibition was small and largely scholarly in nature, and the magazine had a limited circulation, both the show and the article had significant repercussions in the art world. The murals had indeed deteriorated to an alarming degree, but here the artist’s intentions and motives had been called into question. Rothko’s reputation was tainted. Collectors and museums thought about selling their Rothkos before they self-destructed, and new buyers were wary at best for the better part of ten years. Even today, despite the meteoric rise in Rothko prices in the last two decades, the works continue to be seen as “fragile.” This situation can hardly be accounted for by one comment or one article or one exhibition, but in unison they certainly contributed to an unhealthy perception of Rothko’s work, and more centrally for this essay, Rothko’s attitude toward painting. Once again my father’s irony had been misunderstood and his serious intent obscured by the resulting clamor. While later generations of artists have made installations that are very much about the moment of creation, and have preoccupied themselves with impermanence and the transient nature of our lives, this philosophy is worlds away from Rothko’s. My father aimed for the eternal, and sought timeless truths. He was a great lover of art history: of the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, the Greeks and Egyptians. Rothko was keenly focused on establishing his place in that timeline, of creating work that would become part of that legacy, not

work that would crumble and be lost to all but memory. He did buy turpentine and rags and other supplies at the hardware store, but his paints he bought from art suppliers, not least the legendary Leo Bocour.13 My father was once again being cheeky with his Woolworth’s comment, and while he may have been poking fun at those who insist on finery and expensive labels, he was primarily lampooning his own overinvolvement with his artwork, ridiculing himself because he manifestly cared too much. We must remember that this is the man who once called it an “insensitive act” to send his paintings out into the world.14 It was in fact his profound personal investment in the work that made him thin-skinned and vulnerable to how his work was perceived. His deep care for what he produced led to comments like the Woolworth’s one, perhaps more sarcastic than ironic and barbed with a hint of resentment for those who would judge his art; that is, for those who would ultimately judge him. I turn, finally, to perhaps my father’s most notorious quote, made in reference to his series of Seagram murals commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue in New York—a commission from which he was soon to withdraw: “I accepted this assignment as a challenge, with strictly malicious intentions. I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room.”15 This statement has garnered a great deal of attention, in part because of the many visitors who see a selection of the works installed in the bespoke room in the Tate Gallery in London; in part because of the play Red, which focuses on the conflicts raised by this commission; in part because this is one of the few comments my father made on his work in the last twenty years of his life; and in part because of the internalized class struggle voiced in my father’s bitterness about the project—but mostly because of the sheer drama and force of my father’s words. The article from which it comes, John Fischer’s “The Easy Chair: Mark Rothko, Portrait of the Artist as an Angry Man,” is a lengthy piece, fascinating, frustrating, revealing, and disturbing by turns. Its origins are troubling, the piece appearing after a long gestation, immediately following my father’s suicide. Written in 1970, the article draws on notes and memories primarily from 1959, and its numerous factual errors concerning dates, commissions, and so on must make us wonder about the accuracy of conversations recalled eleven years later. It is, however, our one opportunity to glimpse Rothko essentially “overheard,” and it does tingle with the charged atmosphere and raw honesty of an unapproved biography.

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In the famous declaration quoted above, Rothko holding forth on ruined appetites and SOBs, Fischer senses that something doesn’t fit but misses the irony. This aside from Fischer immediately follows Rothko’s famous diatribe: His verbal ferocity was at first hard to take seriously, because Rothko looked anything but malicious. He was sipping a Scotch and soda with obvious gusto: he had the round, beaming face and comfortably plump body of a man who enjoys his food: and his voice sounded almost cheerful. Never, then or later, did I ever see him display any outward sign of anger. His affection for Mell, his wife, and Katie, their daughter, was touchingly obvious: and with his friends he was more companionable and considerate than most people I have known. Yet somewhere inside he did nurse a small, abiding core of anger—not against anything specific, so far as I could tell, but against

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the sorry state of the world in general, and the role it now offers to the artist.16

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Fischer notes the good cheer, the warmth, and the humanness in my father, but fails to fully see that it gives the lie to what Rothko is saying. Is the man he describes the type who takes perverse pleasure in disquieting others? Fischer misses the grandstanding, the bombast, the bravado that is Rothko’s attempt to create an illusory sense of control over a situation he had come to realize was hopeless. Rothko was trying to hide his own deep, deep involvement in the subject matter of his paintings by suggesting that they were simply social tools, or rather, weapons. It was a command performance, and my father probably pushed it farther than he intended, either in the glow of enjoying his own cleverness or in annoyance that his audience did not recognize the irony. This is a bad tendency that I know in myself; in the face of people who do not perceive the irony, you continue pushing the joke. You do it in frustration because you feel that each bit of humor they do not recognize reflects badly on them, but of course the process is ultimately self-defeating. You are simply more misunderstood. And indeed, the real loser in this situation is Rothko, or perhaps more critically, his work. Not because people do not take the Seagram murals seriously, but because the mythos built up around them confuses people about their content and the artist’s intent behind them. Rothko’s anger is real. He does deeply resent that he has painted a temple that is somehow to be dovetailed into a retail emporium for high-end gastronomie. But the anger is not in the paintings; the anger stems from the fact that there is so much sincerity, so much of Rothko himself, laid bare in the paintings—and it has all been for naught. If his position really was arm’s-length, he would not have cared. He would have taken the money, laughed, and moved on to a more profitable commission.

We must remember, then, that when Rothko was brash, it was to cover his own insecurity about painting something so deep and dark and personally expressed. He liked to play provocateur—note the smile—but the painting, as ever, is genuine and heartfelt. Just look at it. Would we continue to do so with such intentionality today if it were anything but? The Seagram murals have dedicated rooms in two important museums with decidedly international guest lists. They have indeed become sites of pilgrimage, or nearly so: places of genuine contemplation. Rooms of wholehearted emotion, openly expressed. And neither the museums nor the viewers engage with these paintings to be the butt of one of Rothko’s jokes. As with so much of my father’s irony, the joke he made was largely at his own expense. Irony is humorous because it juxtaposes, mingles, even equates opposites or things that do not normally belong together. It lives vibrantly in the realm of the mutually exclusive. There is a funny but uncomfortable friction as we try to make sense of how the twain should meet. But is not this intersection precisely where Rothko’s art lives? The completely abstract with very specific content. The quasi-geometric that resounds with the imperfectly human. The strictly planar that implies great depth. The vast emptiness that is overwhelmingly full. The Apollonian and the Dionysian, the committedly intellectual/philosophical that is accessed through the senses and primitive emotional response. This is the sum and substance of Rothko’s repertoire. Irony, humor aside, is another expression of a classic duality, one that celebrates how the two poles are linked by their very opposition. And it is in the tension between those halves, at once completely unrelated and utterly inseparable, that the intensity, the frisson, dwells. It crackles with the same energy, it sings with the same harmony and dissonance, as that electric space between the rectangles in a Rothko painting. My father embraced irony because it encapsulates that unstable pairing of the just-is and the should-not-be, that tragic and laughable human condition he sought over and over again to capture in his work. His paintings and his use of irony evoke and demand an incompatible— and thus utterly typical—mix of emotions. We should laugh, and we should cry.

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The bright works of the 1950s are immediately engaging and what most viewers think of when they think of Rothko. But in the 1960s Rothko honed and refined his technique tremendously, became a far more subtle painter, and quietly transformed his interaction with the viewer. He created, quite deliberately, a less opulent viewing experience, but became far more precise in articulating what he wished to say. And while his paintings of the 1960s are typically more restrained, they are by no means universally dark. In truth, what constitutes a “Rothko” for a given viewer varies significantly with his or her nationality. American collections have a weighting toward the 1950s, the earliest exhibitions of Rothko’s classic work having all occurred on these shores. Traveling to Germany and Switzerland, however, whose collections were largely stocked by Marlborough, Rothko’s gallery in the 1960s, one finds a preponderance of darker 1960s paintings. In England, meanwhile, the deep burgundy Seagram murals of 1959 (or the Tate murals, as they are often called there) are normative. And yet, despite the ways in which initial experience may shape one’s concept of Rothko, there is no question that the works of the 1950s remain the most appealing to the general Rothko consumer, regardless of territory. Based on the scope of retrospective exhibitions, loan requests, and proposals for reproductions I receive, I find that national origin may tilt the proportions, but the 1950s paintings still predominate. It is hard to fight the allure of color, and given the vibrancy of my father’s palette in that seminal decade (and also in the decade before) I do not intend to. But I will suggest that the paintings of the 1960s offer something different, something less but more. Perhaps they are more for the connoisseur, more easily appreciated by those who already know the works of the 1950s. They often lack the visual and emotional “hook” of those earlier works, and so are less likely to make converts of those new to Rothko. More inward turning, their drama is

of the slow-burn variety, particularly when compared with the quicksilver color juxtapositions and the sheer candlepower of many 1950s works. The 1960s paintings, whatever they may offer in weight and monumentality, largely forgo the gestural thrust of their 1950s brethren, perhaps secure enough in their potency to relinquish phallic display (see fig. 20). I do not mean to sound dismissive of the 1950s works, which offer both deeply emotive and meditative experiences for those who look through the patent beauty. I am simply noting that the 1950s paintings are deliberately more seductive. By the 1960s Rothko felt he no longer needed to solicit his viewer and insisted, rather, that the viewer come to his work on his terms. There are many who feel that he withdrew too far and sacrificed too much when he adopted that stance. Here I will examine, in some detail, just what those sacrifices were and to what ends. Is there a qualitative difference between the oeuvre of those two classic decades? How do the paintings of the 1960s function—with what intents and by what means? Are their developments simply evolutionary, or are they transformative, and do the achievements of the 1960s distinguish the paintings from Rothko’s other work? When does Rothko push too far, and does he, in fact, when striving toward his ideal, require too much of an audience not ready to travel with him? The decades do not line up quite so neatly as the critics (and I to this point) would have you believe. When I speak of the paintings of the 1950s, I really mean 1949–57, and when I speak of the paintings of the 1960s, I really mean 1958–67. Others would divide it differently, perhaps including my father, who draw a line between 1956 and 1957,1 but I will spell out my logic as I proceed through a brief tour of the twenty-one years of my father’s classic color-field period. Note, however, that I will continue to use this somewhat blunt 1950s / 1960s distinction as a shorthand. The classic works begin in 1949 and proceed essentially without interruption through 1956. Typically they sport two or three rectangles, with bands of brilliant color, deeply saturated tones produced by superimposed underlayers of contrasting paint, with yellows, oranges, and reds predominating. There are a few experimental works along the way, but these remain readily identifiable as Rothkos, in no small part because of their palette. The dark works do not appear until well into 1957, and then not in any particularly consistent way. It is not really until 1960 that the truly dark works emerge. The years between 1957 and 1960 are dominated by the Seagram mural commission, a project that would significantly influence Rothko’s work for the ensuing decade. The period from 1960 to 1963 is distinguished by many large-

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scale oils on canvas, typically but not exclusively dark. It is these works, more often than not, that viewers think of when they reference 1960s Rothkos (see fig. 40). My father dedicated much of 1962 to murals for the Holyoke Center at Harvard University. Although another important piece in his development, these drew on his previous mural commission and did not entirely occupy his output in the way the Seagram series had in the late 1950s. In 1964, Rothko was commissioned to create what, in 1971, would open to the public as the ecumenical Rothko Chapel. His initial thoughts for this project yielded the sixteen Blackform paintings, medium to large hard-edged, nearly monochrome canvases as dark, spare, and apparently unemotive as anything he would produce (fig. 70).2 These were ultimately superseded by much larger murals, most of which reside in the Rothko Chapel today. Upon finishing that commission in 1967, he produced a limited number of dark works on canvas before ill health kept him from painting on a large scale until the last year of his life. The feeling manifested by the 1960s works is notably different from that of the 1950s works. Some find them somber, and others find them meditative. Some find them the signposts of depression, and others simply inward turning. Some find their emotional range limited, and others find them deeply spiritual. Whatever one’s response, the difference is both real and intentional, and much of it stems from new emphases in the way my father was handling his media. Understanding what Rothko changed in his technique will help us find greater clarity about the changes in what he hoped to communicate. When Rothko shifted his means of communication, he fundamentally shifted the tone of his conversation with his viewers, and ultimately altered what we would take away. To capture the differences between the 1960s and ’50s works, I would put forth two words as primary: economy and tempo. As I will explore in some detail, the works become apparently simpler, bigger and broader yet quieter, engaging us with a more sustained, less igniting stimulation. Rothko has pared his message to the essentials and then washes the walls with it, enveloping rather than entrancing, eliciting rather than inducing. Rothko’s economy in the 1960s works champions balance and proportion as primary virtues. The forms become more regular, more even, the seemingly chance events that peppered the 1950s canvases eschewed in favor of a more carefully considered, through-composed piece. Rothko is speaking less with gesture and more through the gestalt effect of the large field of color. Strict economists may argue that a larger field means more color, yet there is a qualitative difference in how my father makes his point. Here Rothko intones simply and more calmly than before—there is nothing busy about these paintings. All

fig. 70 no. 5, 1964

has been carefully honed into rectangles that approach the geometric, the balance in the composition achieved not so much through color, as it was in the 1950s, as through shape and weight. Symmetry, which was implied but rarely present in the previous decades, becomes the rule, observed faithfully in the horizontal plane and achieved in spirit through the proportions of the forms in the vertical. Rothko’s rectangles, meanwhile, truly feel like rectangles. Even when the forms are softened or feathered at the edges, any irregularity is realized with a rhythmic constancy that minimizes the disruption it might otherwise bring (see fig. 33). And Rothko will increasingly plane away that suppleness until, with the Blackform works of 1964, a taped edge will limit the rectangles to the confines of their category. As he manipulates the form, my father no longer beckons with lithesome contours, choosing, as ever, to speak more plainly, more directly. This is Rothko moving, as he believed all artists must do, toward clarity: “The progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer. . . . To achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be

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understood.”3 Indeed the paintings of the 1960s are the natural progression of Rothko’s work, a continuation of the simplification he began well over a decade before. In many ways, however, Rothko makes a leap forward in the 1960s as bold as the one he made in 1949, pursuing the same goals but daring to do so without much of the intricacy and sumptuousness that had previously garnished his work. From the moment he bid farewell to the figure in the mid-1940s, his process was one of paring down, of stripping away visual detail in search of the essential. First the figure disappeared, and then his forms became fewer and simpler before receding almost entirely. Turning to color, he simplified, employing fewer colors, less complex colors, less stimulating colors, to make his viewer look longer and more deeply to perceive the painting. Rothko distilled and distilled until he reached the atomic level of his idea, a nearly pure expression of what he wished to say. And indeed it was a gamble that did not—and does not—always please his viewers. He would speak the truth plainly, and the plain truth is not always easy to hear. If this was Rothko’s ultimate goal, there were many additional motivations that prompted the change in his work in the 1960s. On the simplest level, Rothko was redressing what he increasingly feared was a miscalculation in his works of the 1950s. If the public responded so directly to his image, so favorably, then perhaps there was a bit too much sweetener with the medicine he offered. While praise for his work was anything but ubiquitous, those who appreciated the paintings typically cited their beauty, their ravishing colors, and indeed saw Rothko as a new master of color. That, of course, was not what they were about, and although the changes in the 1960s works were driven by other philosophical goals, my sense is that they began as a way to correct this misunderstanding. Thus Rothko reduced the immediacy of his colors as a way of clarifying that he was not a colorist, that even his most brilliant hues were simply a means to an end.4 And that end was not about mood; it was not about self-expression; it was about engaging fully with the essences of human existence, be they ecstasy or doom. These two states are necessarily tied to one another and are so reflected in his paintings. Indeed, Rothko reported that even his brightest paintings were imbued with the tragic.5 In the 1960s Rothko brought darker tones to that deep-seated sensibility, in part to make the tragic more palpable. Rothko is less generous with color in the 1960s, but this is by no means the only way he changes his color technique during the decade. Mirroring the increasing simplicity of form is a concomitant simplification in color. Here I am not referring to any darkening but instead to the numbers of colors within a work, the interactions between those colors, the constitutent tones that combine to make up any color, and also the way those colors are applied.

Rothko had long produced his luminous color by means of thinning paint to allow layers of color beneath to shine through. In the 1960s he pushed this tendency further, using turpentine to thin the paints until they essentially acted as stains upon the canvas. (As an aside, I will note that in the family archive we have very few records of my father’s paint purchases—much to the frustration of scholars—but we have a nearly bottomless pile of receipts for turpentine!) The background color previously an amalgam of several different hues, is now almost invariably the product of a single color that washes the canvas, the paint thinned so far that it would appear the canvas was manufactured in that color. Rothko made use of this staining technique for the rectangles too, the paint often wispy and translucent, easily penetrated by the colors beneath. The effect is one of delicacy and even vulnerability. If Rothko’s colors of the 1950s combined to build robust and complex tones, the colors of the 1960s seem fragile by comparison, shining forth but through contrast rather than their own inner light. Black poses the one exception to this pattern, my father often applying it more thickly, with paint that forms its own, often more opaque, layer upon the surface. There is of course significant variation across canvases, but typically where a 1950s rectangle’s apparent color was the issue of five or even seven different layers, the 1960s works are usually limited to two or three, one of these often a slight variant of the background color itself. And yet many of these paintings exude a Rothkoesque glow that meets or exceeds that of the previous decade. Some of this was the result of continuing refinement in my father’s technique, where he was able to elicit the effect he wanted more simply and more efficiently. For instance, rather than building color through many layers, he employed contrast more and more frequently to create glowing effects both within the color field, where similar colors of different value would combine to luminous effect, and also across fields, where light colors against the typically dark backgrounds would shine forth with newfound radiance. Both of these factors are at work in the enormous No. 14 (1960; see fig. 2), now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where two reds combine to make a hauntingly sumptuous swath, rendered all the more lustrous in relief against the earthy grey-brown background, while also hovering over a subterranean blue. The effect is haunting—truly a painting in which to lose oneself. In the next few years my father would discover that he did not need to paint whole fields in glowing color to achieve this effect, but that a simple band would do. If I were to choose the most moving works from my father’s career, it would be the dozen or so canvases from 1961 through 1963, painted in pro-

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foundly deep browns, slate blues, charcoals, and blacks (see fig. 40). Deeply meditative and utterly still, their somber calm is then violated by a small but brilliant band of color above. Crimson, royal blue, sun-infused orange, buttercream, these bands are at once a microclimate within the composition and a source of warmth that transforms the entire painting. Nothing in a Rothko painting exists on its own—all details are subsumed into the whole. Thus, while the bright colors seem at first a thing apart, they dramatically affect the character of the painting. Despite being outweighed perhaps 90 to 10 in terms of percent of sheer area covered, these bands change our perception of the work. They lift these otherwise black works definitively out of darkness. If, as I have suggested elsewhere in this volume,6 Rothko’s many layers of color in the 1950s are a metaphor for emotional complexity, his color juxtapositions of the 1960s, both subtle and dramatic, bring us to a similar emotional depth. The bright areas are both the fuel that fires the engine of these works and a disruptive force that will not let us linger overlong in contemplation. They will not let us dwell on the edge of the abyss. Similar complexity emanates from layering like colors one upon another. Reds in particular are layered upon red, making us rethink any notion of simple color or simple feelings. Much as with human emotion, multiple shades always coexist. And this is no less true for black, where my father juxtaposed two, three, four, fields of black, each distinct from the others. Things are not simply dark: they are dark in compelling ways that we must work to perceive. If contrast became a primary expressive tool for my father in the 1960s, reflectivity was one of the primary compositional means by which he realized it. He created different light from the same tone, changing the feeling each color emitted while also changing the viewer’s interaction with the painting. As the surface shifts from matte to satin, it variously draws us in and repels us, sometimes allowing us to peer deep, other times leaving us to wonder what might be hiding underneath. These varying surfaces represent their own type of complexity, a world where it is not always clear what we are seeing and where our perspective often seems to shift. Are these paintings windows or mirrors? Are we seeing something new, or are we seeing ourselves? Are we inside the painting or do we remain outside it? The answer to all of these questions is “Yes.” Tempo is a word more readily associated with Pollock or Kline or de Kooning than with Rothko. Yet we know that the meter does not need to be fast or the rhythms jagged for us to hear music—all things have their natural flow, their own internal pulse. Rothkos, even the most extroverted of the 1950s, were never about speed. That is not the parameter through which they speak nor the

avenue through which we experience them. And that tempo, already moderate in the 1950s, slows noticeably in the 1960s. The 1960s works soak into us, much as their pigments have already sunk into the canvas, infusing rather than impacting. It is a different experience for the viewer, or rather, as I will argue, the same experience more fully realized—an interaction that has moved from a possibility to an imperative. In the works of the 1960s my father employs his particular alchemy to stretch time, beginning with his use of predominantly darker colors. The longer wavelengths of dark colors may play a part in our psycho-perceptual experience of them as slower than their bright counterparts. There is no question, however, that we must work longer and harder to perceive the distinctions between, and variations within, darker colors.7 Anyone who has spent significant time in a James Turrell Dark Space installation will have an experiential understanding of this principle. The effort we spend in the perceptual process inherently slows our viewing of darker works, making us consider them longer. And from whatever physical principles this effect may stem, dark colors simply feel slower, heavier, less activating, than lighter ones. What we need to do, in an era that values rapidity above all, is remove the pejorative connotations that have become associated with those words, to appreciate what Rothko’s 1960s works have to offer. The dark colors alone cannot account for the slower tempo of the paintings of this period. The enormous scale of many of these works also plays a significant role. Although there is, as ever, variation, the 1960s works tend to be larger than their counterparts from the 1950s. They simply require more time for us to take them in. And not only do we have more area to scan, Rothko has created a landscape where we may lose ourselves; a painting becomes almost a world of its own, where we find ourselves caught up and lingering beyond our conscious intention to stay. Much of the change in tempo is also the result of a change in energy, linked in good part to the gradual disappearance of the brush. The works of the 1960s have, on the whole, far less evident brushwork than the paintings of the 1950s, the increasingly quiescent fields floating or suspended with less internal volubility. Much of the “action” of those earlier classic Rothko paintings stemmed from vigorous brushwork, and as it melts away, so does the impulsiveness and sense of disquiet lurking in even the sunniest of the 1950s works. Those zones between fields, once turbulent nebulae from which new matter was continuously born, have matured into calmer regions with cleaner, clearer transitions. The movement Rothko created through layered commingling of color is also less in evidence, those colors no longer in a state of becoming, mixing and merging at the edges of

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their bounds. Instead the colors stand more proudly one against the other, their contrast in value or reflectivity yielding glow rather than sparkle. The colors themselves are more sensuous than energetic. Less labile than those of the 1950s, they are instead saturated with feeling. These paintings seep into you and stain you—they speak to the bones, not the skin. All of this requires time—seeping, sinking, staining—slow processes that produce cumulative and enduring, rather than sudden, effects. And Rothko’s techniques serve his ends, honing an atmosphere that is refined rather than exuberant, that unfolds when given the temporal space. In the work of the 1960s, Rothko makes explicit what he had suggested all along. His work is not about beauty, it is not about color, it will not serve as decoration, and it is destroyed if made into wallpaper. His work concerns those aspects of life about which we need to stop and think. By reducing their immediate appeal to the eye, he risks losing his viewer altogether, but he gains viewers who will meet the painting on its own terms, responding to the meditative rhythms, the nearly pulseless flow. My father has created an essentially philosophical aesthetic in his painting: it looks the way it thinks. Not coincidentally, he is seeking a similar relationship of looking and thinking in his viewer. The works of the 1960s may seem an older man’s paintings in their slower tempo, their subtlety, their more considered philosophical approach, in contrast with the vitality and exuberance of the 1950s, but we must remember that Rothko himself was already in his fifties when he painted the majority of those brightly colored works. They too were not the output of a young colt. And thus the great accomplishment of the 1960s is that Rothko developed a vocabulary more congruent with the thrust of his work. While he lured you into the conversation in the 1950s, in the 1960s he has dispelled with all oratory—the viewer must fully engage the painting to hear Rothko’s voice. The sensual is still the language of these works, only it has been titrated down to the most meager flow, inducing a deeper tinged reaction, one more akin to the reflection my father seeks to encourage. As he began to explore routes for creating the meditative environment of his chapel, he stripped away the last trappings of beauty and seduction, seeking to remove all distractions from the ruminative task at hand. Proportion and structure are now his tools in crafting the precise experience he intends. There is nothing sexy about these works, although an elusive inner beauty emerges with, yes, enough time. It is not that these paintings banish emotion—far from it. They simply do not impose any of their own. If they elicit feelings from the viewer, then the conversation will be that much more human, but the viewer must bring those feelings to the exchange.

Rothko’s work of the 1960s is in some ways similar to the late work of Bach—I am thinking particularly of The Musical Offering, but the comparison applies equally well to other compositions of the 1740s. These pieces are darker, sparer, less overtly emotive—deep brown and forty degrees Fahrenheit. Intellectual rigor is paramount, and Bach adds nothing that will interfere with the purity of his line, the beauty deriving from the contrapuntal argument itself. Like late Rothko, late Bach uses proportion and structure in their most unalloyed expression, serving something far more expansive. Artist and composer create a deeply haunting experience, with an emotionality that remains a faint echo unless it reverberates in concert with our own. I do think it is hard to begin a first encounter with Rothko focusing on the paintings of 1964 and beyond. They are better understood in the context of the progression that had begun two decades before. But approached from that direction, they do fully repay the investment of emotion, intellectual energy, and time. My love of the late works was, in fact, a primary motivator in my decision to write this book. For I possess precisely that perspective—Rothko from the inside out. With an intimate knowledge of how nearly every painting evolved from what came before, I have a reference for the language the late works speak and how clearly it is derived from the work that is more familiar and more openly inviting. By writing essays such as this one, I hope to clarify what my father himself worked so hard to clarify—to clothe these works in something a bit more immediately winsome so that the viewer can strip it away again and see the naked truth in all its stark and striking beauty. Many suggest that the late works are principally spiritual in character, but I do not think they are inherently so. There is no underlying spiritual message. Rather I think the manner in which they function is more congruent with spiritual exploration. This is again a question of tempo, and it is also one of aesthetics. Late Rothko works, like meditative processes and other forms of spiritual seeking, demand that the viewer take time to reflect, to suspend the here and now and adopt a rhythm more in tune with the universal and the eternal. Similarly, late Rothko works are not preoccupied with worldly beauty; they suggest that what is of greater value lies beyond the momentary gratification of the senses. As with many spiritual traditions, inner beauty is valued over outer. How, ultimately, do we take stock of what Rothko’s work of the 1960s has to offer? The 1950s paintings are more openly emotive—hitting you directly on the nerve, in a habitual spot, with a feeling that is palpable. The 1960s paintings— at least the ones from early in the decade—also engage on an emotional level, but they are not so tempestuous; there is less electrical energy between the different

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fields and the different layers of color. The effect is not so dramatic; it instead requires that we, in essence, lean forward to focus more closely on what is offered and what may transpire. These works elicit a feeling, and then insist that we pause and consider. “Is that all?” they seem to ask us. Indeed, is it? As the decade progresses, my father’s paintings place greater and greater demands on the viewer. The frisson between colors and bands dissipates, the sweep of the brush recedes; the restive quality is gone, replaced by a more reflective one.8 We are left with just an echo of the emotion once so elemental in Rothko’s visual world. He no longer provides the vitality and the passion. He invites the viewers, instead, to find their own. This process, which my father is proposing to you, his viewer, is ultimately his greatest gift. For he is not only insisting that you slow down and spend time with the work; he is giving you permission. He is helping you reorient your values, to spend time on things that are deeper, more meaningful, distinctly not practical and ultimately more worthwhile. Writing from my current perspective, I can attest that such needs are very twenty-first century. Painting from his own, my father would argue that such needs are timeless.

Black and Grey

Even I, longtime champion of the dark works, had expressed some trepidation. A small room with nothing but Black and Greys. Six of them. Too dark. Too monochromatic. Perhaps not oppressive, but utterly uncompromising and resolute. Daunting for the viewer at a minimum. Sometimes it is good to be wrong, and this was as wrong as I can remember being. The room was alive—filled with light. An almost kinetic energy emanated from the unified voice of those paintings. Far from presenting as monochromes, the greys burst forth in action, strikingly contrasted one against another, their admixed colors rubbing against one another with a strangely agreeable, deliciously pungent dissonance. I had not been alone in my misgivings; notably, no museum had tried this before. There had been rooms with a mixture of lighter works and Black and Greys, or rooms—typically much larger ones—with a variety of dark works in tandem with the Black and Greys. But never before had anyone dared to take these works, undiluted by other strains, and concentrate them in a confined space. It was a bold move, and proved a masterstroke; arguably the most powerful of the ongoing series of Rothko rooms at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel, in the first decade of the new millennium. A series of eighteen acrylic works on canvas, conceived and executed during the last year of my father’s life, the Black and Greys occupy a place both within and just outside the canon of Rothko’s classic work. Employing elements of my father’s familiar rectangular format, the Black and Greys proceed to confound expectations on numerous fronts. These include their relative absence of color, their sharp division into horizontal diptychs with no intermediary space between the two large fields, their absence of a background color, and perhaps most notably, the presence of a white border framing the picture plane. Someone faced with a Black and Grey, not knowing what it was, would not be sur-

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prised to find out it was a Rothko, but would almost certainly proceed to focus on the ways the painting was different from their notion of a Rothko rather than the ways in which it was congruent. Indeed, my father was consciously pursuing a new path as he embarked on these works. Having been forced by his heart condition to paint only smallscale works on paper for the better part of two years, Rothko had decided to defy his doctors and begin to experiment with large-scale works on paper, employing new media and techniques, in the latter part of 1968. He drew heavily on lessons learned from those paintings as he devised the formulation for this new series on canvas. I will dissect the compositional elements of these works more thoroughly than I have most Rothko paintings in this book for a few different reasons. First, despite their notable standing as my father’s swan song (that is the perception, though not strictly true), they are not particularly well known and are often misunderstood. Second, while the works represent a significant point of departure, they also revive aspects of Rothko’s style long absent from his painting and thus constitute a fascinating amalgam of his expressive means. And finally, having registered only the initial shock of starkness, many viewers miss the suppleness and complexity of these paintings. They are at once some of his most emotive and some of his most painterly works. It is probably best to begin with what we do not fully understand. We know that he was approached by unesco in 1969 to produce a series of works for a room in their Paris headquarters, a room that purportedly would also contain Giacometti sculptures. We do not know how concrete this proposal was, how seriously my father entertained it, how specifically the conditions of the commission were spelled out, if at all, and at what point he declined. Not for the first time, we have conflicting reports from different observers and no record from Rothko himself. As a result, we cannot know to what degree the notion of this commission shaped the conception and execution of these works. Robert Motherwell mentions a 28-by-28-foot room in his notes from a 1969 conversation with Rothko, but he makes factual errors in other parts of these notes, so it is hard to know how accurate a reporter he is.1 We can also have no certainty about the Giacometti element—whether it was finalized or only a possibility, whether specific pieces had already been selected, or whether my father was working simply with a more global notion of Giacometti sculpture. We can be relatively certain, however, that the commission idea had been put aside well before my father finished the last of these works, and that the total of eighteen paintings significantly exceeds what might have been needed for the

room. Thus the program of the commission may have launched the series, or may have influenced a series already commenced, but it did not dictate the form or scope of what Rothko produced. And yet it is fascinating to imagine what direction my father’s notion of Giacometti may have lent to his choice of color, his working of the surface, and the overall tenor of his painting. Given the very specific strategies my father adopted in the case of his mural commissions,2 we must also wonder at the degree of intentionality he adopted in making the Black and Grey paintings functional parts of a whole. Were they in fact designed to work in concert, on a structural level, to the same degree as the panels for his mural installations? Were the dimensions targeted toward specific spaces, and was the tendency toward horizontal orientations also derived from a mural-like plan? The paintings certainly come together in a unison chorus no less than the various mural series, and yet they function more satisfactorily as individual works than do many of the murals. The evidence may be contradictory, but it all provides food for thought as we examine how these works are made and the spirit that infuses them. My father’s paintings on paper had become larger and more exploratory seemingly with each passing week in 1969. Swelling to as large as seven by five feet, they ranged from somber blacks and burgundies to saturated blues and greens and truly electric purples and yellows. He was experimenting with a wide variety of new pigments and many variations on his familiar rectangular format. A few elements translated directly to the Black and Grey canvases. The first of these was acrylic pigments, which, to the best of my knowledge, he had not used previously on canvas, or at least not exclusively. While I cannot say with great certainty what effect my father was seeking by use of acrylics, the way they interact with the canvas represents a substantial break from his technique of the preceding several years. In the 1960s Rothko had pushed a favored technique to its farthest extreme, thinning his oil paints to such a degree that they essentially stained the canvas, becoming works that were no longer oil on canvas but instead in which oil essentially became one with the canvas. While Rothko certainly thinned his acrylics to a notable degree, no matter how much acrylics are thinned, they stay on top of the canvas. Thus the Black and Greys, while hardly endowed with any noticeable impasto, have a paint surface that stands proud of the canvas and feel painted in a way other works on canvas of the 1960s do not. Acrylic paints also feel less sensuous, less seductive, than oils. They lack the sense of depth and plushness imparted by oil paints, remaining more neutral, more matter-of-fact. Along with other factors, they keep the viewer a bit more at

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arm’s length, not inviting the type of immersive experience that Rothko’s paintings of the previous two decades often did as a matter of course. The acrylics provide a certain emotional distance in works that are in other ways highly emotive. If the acrylic paints provide a less penetrable surface, the white border that surrounds seventeen of these canvases encumbers our direct approach significantly more. Also derived from his works on paper from 1968 onward, the border was a factor my father employed inconsistently, seeming to embrace it at some points and shy away from it at others. The border was apparently an outgrowth of a purely pragmatic process. Rothko painted his works on paper taped to a board on an easel or propped against the wall. When the masking tape that held the paper was removed, it left a white border around the painted surface, typically about an inch. From the late 1940s onward, my father never matted and framed his works on paper but instead mounted them to some type of wooden or canvas support, leaving them unframed and presented very much like his canvases. That process became more arcane in the late 1960s, however, when it was carried out by Marlborough Gallery and no longer under my father’s direct supervision. Here they took the white border and bent it around the wooden mounting board so that only the colored portion showed on the face, and then painted the white border on the sides to match the face, much as my father had painted the tacking margins on the sides of his canvases. At some point in late 1968 or early 1969, my father began to incorporate the white border as a structural part of the composition. The timing of this is not entirely clear, but the white border is in place in most, if not all, of the largeformat works on paper he painted contemporaneously with the Black and Grey canvases. This was true for both the Brown and Grey series on paper, whose color palette has significant overlap with the Black and Greys, and for the more “pastel” series on white backgrounds, whose color palette is notably distinct. With another painter or other paintings, we might fail to even register a white border, but here the effect is profound. This is readily apparent when comparing what we must assume is the first of the Black and Grey series with one of the other seventeen. Here, close inspection (fig. 71) reveals that Rothko painted the canvas initially with the white border and then painted over it with blacks and greys. The result, if one steps back, is a magnificent Black and Grey canvas without a white border—and our experience of this painting becomes entirely different from that of the others in the series (see fig. 8). The borderless painting is expansive, pushing outward with a more forceful, more directly communicated energy. The other canvases offer an interaction one step removed, an energy that is observed as much as it is experienced. We can put ourselves

fig. 71 untitled, 1969

directly into the first painting; with the remainder of the series, our perspective is from outside, our relationship more visual, less physical. Much as the acrylic paints kept us ever so slightly away, so do the white borders hold us at bay. In contrast to the vistas of all-over painting, the vision here is framed, the universe bounded, the energy contained; a thin white line able to restrict apparent motion and expression. We also cannot penetrate into the volume of these paintings as it feels we must with many classic Rothkos. The white border defines the picture plane, and all the action in the color fields occurs in an area behind. The colored region is set back, the white border clearly ordering space in a way foreign to the dimensional ambiguities of classic Rothkos. Even if we see these paintings as snapshots, details of action that continues well beyond and behind the white frame, our own frame of reference has been limited to that presented within the confines of the white. This spatial effect changes the way we communicate with the painting. The interaction between painting and viewer is no longer so immediate, our position toward the painting necessarily more neutral. We are not caught up in the outward expansion of an all-over painting. Similarly, we are no longer enticed inside; we have to appreciate what occurs in the painting from a position apart rather than within. Our

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experience is no longer of the body, it does not stem so immediately from the senses; it is far more distilled. This change in our stance embodies the primary reason the Black and Greys were such a radical departure for my father, much as they seem merely evolutionary. He was keenly aware of this, reportedly very anxious when he presented the works in his studio to a group of colleagues and critics, and particularly eager to know what reaction they had to the border.3 Small though the change was, he understood how dramatically he was altering the terms of engagement. He knew he had changed the conversation with the viewer, and also the viewer’s task before the work. To understand these paintings is a more cerebral undertaking. Rothko paintings were always filled with theoretical and philosophical content, but it was mediated through sensuality. Here Rothko makes the intellectual part of the process explicit. To communicate with these paintings is less of a sensory activity, less intuitive, and more the result of our conceptual and analytical abilities. It is a mistake, however, to think of these paintings as unemotive, muted, or somber. They are in fact exploding with feeling; it is only our position relative to that emotional content that has changed. We are no longer right in the middle of that emotional arena. Instead we stand just outside, feeling its waves propagate even while we are not ourselves inundated. It is much like listening to Debussy, where we encounter an echo of a feeling, rather than its direct experience—sound or color glimpsed through a gauze curtain of memory and reflection. The source of this emotionality is another avenue opened, or rather reopened, by Rothko’s works on paper of the previous few years. Here, in the most dramatic fashion since the early 1950s, the action of the brush has reasserted itself, lending an almost primordial energy largely absent from the classic paintings of the previous decade. Resulting at least in part from the interaction between paint, and particularly acrylic paint, and paper, the brushwork moves very much to the fore, imparting a sizzle to the edges of rectangles and a spontaneous kinetic sweep through its thin washes of color. What was stirring in the works on paper becomes a dramatic force in the Black and Grey canvases. Here broad strokes of grey and underlying color dance and wrestle in vigorous interplay, the meditative expanses of color for which Rothko is known replaced by a newfound combustibility. For the previous decade and more, color juxtapositions created movement and spark in Rothko’s works, but here the action of the artist’s hand is left clearly visible, tracing a spirited path across the canvas. One is tempted to imagine a sixty-five-year-old swashbuckler wielding a brush mightier than the sword, painting with a newfound freedom as he brashly disregards medical advice. Aarrrr!

While the brush lends a dynamic and often unsettled feel to these works, its power stems in large part from the vibrancy of color with which it makes its argument. Grey is not typically regarded as the most, dare I say, colorful of colors, but Rothko seldom uses it in isolation, instead placing it in interaction with blues and pinks and especially yellows, colors that meld with the grey while engaging it in animated dialogue. In truth, grey is one of the most dynamic of colors because it is so readily transformed by any color with which it intermingles, as witness the richness of a sunrise or sunset when the grey sky is illuminated from within by tinted sources of light. The color radiating from the grey fields is the result not only of what Rothko has mixed with the grey, but also of underlayers of vibrant pigment. Drawing on the language of Rothko’s past, the Black and Greys typically incorporate multiple coats of colored underpainting, the lustrous whites and brilliant reds lending an extra radiance to the fields. My father had greatly simplified his work in the 1960s, reducing his use of the underlying colors to a minimum, particularly compared to his work of the 1940s and ’50s. But the technique makes a stirring return with this last series of canvases, their lushness and complexity in fact belying the starkness implied in their name. And what of poor black? I have become so hot and bothered about grey, I have nearly forgotten its fellow traveler. Not surprisingly, it is not really black. Infused with ochers and browns and painted on a white gessoed background, it is a very soft black, almost a deep wood tone. It feels organic rather than manufactured or alien. And again, it is not nearly so uniform as it first seems when contrasted with the volatility of the grey. In fact there are many places where the black thins noticeably, as well as small areas of void, each of these serving as reminders of my father’s hand, of human involvement rather than mechanical production. What really distinguishes the black field from the grey is its matte surface. While the grey retains, in many areas, the reflective quality typical of acrylics, the black truly lets one feel the texture of the canvas, its lusterless appearance making no statements on its own behalf. It simply is. Having considered now both the black and the grey, we should pause for a moment to examine the name that derives from those colors. First we should note that none of the eighteen bear the title Black and Grey. They are all, in fact, untitled. So having pontificated for fully nine pages earlier in this volume about the spuriousness and distorting effect of color titles for my father’s work, why am I so cavalierly emblazoning Black and Grey upon these paintings (sixteen times to this point in the essay)? The truth is, I was not even aware, initially, that I was doing so. Clearly I must regard them as somehow more impervious to

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damage. In fact, I think it is because they constitute a series that I am less sensitive. It is not as if I am suggesting a name for each painting, only a category. More to the point, however, I think that unconsciously I have been relishing how readily they break the bounds of that grouping, teeming with action and color that effectively subvert the stoic description. The paintings thoroughly defy expectations, as I have just described above. But—and now I really am getting picky—they should be referred to as “Black and Grey,” not “Black on Grey.” Why do I care? Not only because obsessional neurosis has me firmly in its grip, but because of the structure of the compositions. I am not sure who first started calling them Black on Grey, but it now appears to be the preferred nomenclature. And why not? It sounds better. More sophisticated. A bit British. It really does. But that is not the way they are painted. Without exception, I believe, the black is laid down first and the grey after, so that wisps of grey—and in a few cases nearly a small band—overlay the black. In addition, using the word on implies an ordinal relationship between the two colors, a hierarchy, a dominant and a subordinate that is not inherent to the work itself. And if we, by means of the word on, proceed to see a type of physical support imparted to the black by the grey, then we are in truly dangerous waters and subject to the consequences of my wrath.4 The intersection of black and grey has a significance that extends well beyond a name. Typically, in classic Rothko paintings, the border region between rectangles is where the greatest intensity resides. The juxtaposition of colors, its effect magnified by emergent underlayers, the potential energy as one form ends and another begins—these combine to create zones of electricity and instability. That is both true and not true for the Black and Greys, as the division between fields and the interaction of the black and the grey is one of the areas where Rothko has departed most clearly from his familiar style. Many have spoken of the division between black and grey in these works as a horizon line: the meeting of two planes, areas of entirely different matter, regions that come together but whose interaction is minimal and division absolute.5 There is undeniably a starkness to the bipartite structure of these works, the taped boundary between the two colors creating a divide quite foreign to the unity of the classic paintings. The lush areas of complex color interaction are absent. And while the contrast of the black and grey is striking, the dialogue between the two colors is muted. The black does not comment; it only throws the grey into greater relief, amplifying the grey’s activity with its own silence. Yet the transition between planes is not so abrupt, the partition not so absolute, as would appear from a casual glance. As I mentioned above, the grey

often trespasses into the black, sometimes almost unnoticed, sometimes more discernably yet deferentially, and other times boldly occupying territory not its own. As always with Rothko, compositional nuance translates into emotional nuance. Black and grey is not black and white, and seemingly fast borders are nearly always penetrable. Our minds and our emotional states are areas of perpetual flux, with categories that are fluid at best. If the Black and Greys only hint at those human states, that hint is as important an element as any more definitive distinctions that Rothko is drawing. In detailing how the relationship between the fields is not quite what it appears to be, I also risk misrepresenting the Black and Grey paintings because, of course, that relationship is also very much what it appears to be. Rothko was creating a new and perhaps disturbing effect, and however much his humanity may have blunted its edge, its cut is still deep. What is the impact of the sharp contrast between the planes? How do we approach an almost unapproachable black? What role does that distinct horizon line play in negotiating a relationship between the two colors? How do we enter these paintings from the perspective offered by their white frame? The bipartite structure of these canvases generates many associations, but its meaning ultimately remains elusive. They appear to represent those core dichotomies inherent to our experience of the world: life and death, male and female, reason and emotion, reflection and action, hope and despair. Perhaps not all of these, perhaps different ones, but these paintings are fueled by means of the static charge generated by abutting forces both opposing and complementary. The undeniable energy of magnetic repulsion and the sweeping power of attraction. Opposites that, in fact, define each other. Are these paintings Rothko’s ultimate realization of the Nietzschian duality that so long fascinated him—the Apollonian and the Dionysian? Or had my father moved beyond Nietzsche to an appreciation that such tensions between opposing instincts define the human psyche and our participation in the world around us? When we view these canvases, Nietzsche would have us view the universe through the artist’s bipartite psyche. Rothko would more likely say that we are viewing it through our own, that indeed the tensions between these two halves—black and grey and all they may represent—are resident in all of us. And what do we make of each of these two halves, painted with such varied consistency across eighteen canvases? Why black? Why grey? Does each speak to specific parts of us? Is the black cold or merely calm? Is the grey filled with energy or turmoil? Our answers will inherently reflect our own projections onto the paintings. Rothko paintings have always been subject to, and at least

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in part brought to life through, this process. With paintings such as the Black and Greys, which present a surface even closer to a tabula rasa than a typical classic Rothko, our projection may be even more necessary. I have a colleague who feels strongly that, with these works, my father finally abandoned his—perhaps naive—belief in the transformative power of art, in its ability to deeply affect us and produce real change. He sees resignation and finds in the flattened perspective and constrained vistas a new relationship to painting, as if Rothko were saying, “This is all there is. There is nothing beyond. The art is every bit as material as I have always insisted it is, and nothing more.” By nature, I am far less argumentative than my father, but I always make it my business to debate with this collaborator, especially when it comes to Rothko. For I do not understand these paintings this way. The weight of the black is undeniable—a notable force against which all action in the painting must wrestle. And yet, for me, it does not limit the vision. This is not one of Rothko’s bricked-in walls. In fact, it invites us to peer in as far as we can, as far as we dare. The Black and Greys do ask us to gaze into the void, to confront the abyss, and there is no view except from the edge of the precipice. Rothko’s paintings had always made this demand; the message is simply more explicit with the Black and Grey. If the black void is more daunting, we must remember that to look is not to jump in. And we must also remember that the void is not a matter of color (or lack thereof). Rothko was painting voids in far more colorful works at the same time (see fig. 43). Is there any less void in this expanse of pink, flanked as it seems to be by hints of feathery cloud? It is a space that can only be mastered and populated by means of face-to-face contemplation and our own answers to the questions it poses. Whether that void is black or pink or the burgundies of the Rothko Chapel, it is incumbent on us to fill it. We must, in essence, see our own reflection in the matte surfaces. This abyss—this void—is not necessarily that of death. It is an existential void—a feared nothingness. Life that is meaningless, with nothing to follow. That lack of meaning is a broader human fear—that there is no point to our existence— but it is also a personal one, representing our own need to find meaning in what we do. Rothko’s paintings are a challenge—to look deeply rather than divert ourselves with the commonplace; to face the void rather than pretend it is not there. And to answer with resolution what we believe is important, what has inherent value, what defines us as ourselves. Rothko has done so in the creation of this Black and Grey series, striking out in a new direction in the face of rapidly deteriorating health, personal and professional turmoil, and crushing depression. In painting these works, he has asserted: “Yes, I must.” And so must we.

Works on Paper OUTSIDE THE BOX

As befits someone who maintains an archive and who researches actively in support of exhibitions, I spend the majority of my time with some of my father’s least-known works. That category includes pencil sketches, tiny figurative paintings on gesso panels, and abstract renderings of mythological subjects, but it also includes dozens of his greatest masterpieces, which seldom see the light of day. I am referring to my father’s voluminous output on paper—the drawings and studies as a matter of course, but primarily the paintings on paper, a genre he exploited at several points in his career to great expressive effect. They are among my father’s most personal utterances. The classic works on canvas do not particularly need my advocacy. These works do. Not because they are in any way inferior, but because of entrenched attitudes endemic to the world of art that would render them second-class citizens. I look here to discuss both the disease and the cure, and in so doing, help viewers know and more fully appreciate these artworks. To undertake this task, there are two primary questions we must ask: • Why did Rothko turn to paper and do so immersively? • Why are Rothko works on paper not seen more frequently?

I will begin by emphasizing that these are not drawings; they are paintings with which to have direct interactions, just like the canvases. These are not studies or supporting works that function primarily as reminders of how those paintings are composed. They are fully realized artworks, viable in their own right and wholly unique. Perhaps as a reflection of this aesthetic, my father produced no prints.1 This was typical of the New York school painters who sought to create immediate and meaningful experiences with their viewers in the moment. They were not interested in creating a recognizable image—their paintings could be too easily reduced to little more than that. The work—par-

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ticularly Rothko’s—hovers on the threshold of emptiness, and a print edition would topple it over that edge. Only the actual work keeps the image on the positive side of the everything/nothing dichotomy; a dichotomy that in itself lends the work an air of mystery and a frisson from the incessant push-pull between these poles. It is clear that Rothko was not seeking, in his works on paper, to create a viewing experience somehow lighter, less serious, or more ephemeral. They are painted to engage the observer in a conversation no less focused and no less significant than that evoked by their brethren on canvas. They are paintings, and indeed, my father treated them as such. Notably, their subject matter parallels that of the works on canvas; in no way are they relegated to treating matters that are less important or less central to our human experience. The one exception is some of the very earliest paintings. When working on canvas from the mid-1920s through the early 1930s, Rothko peered inside the soul through a series of urban scenes, interior settings, portraits, and nudes, each seeking to capture an element of the human condition. They tend to be weighty, with saturated color and substantial paint layers bringing to mind the challenging terrain through which we cut our furrow. The comparatively few works on paper from that first decade, by contrast, often depict the landscape, beach scenes, or the bucolic elements of rural life. The lighter touch of watercolor brush on paper is echoed in subject matter that speaks of urban burdens happily shrugged off. It is as if Rothko has gone to camp. Camp, in fact, he did, in the hills above Portland, Oregon, having hitchhiked his way home across country with his first wife, Edith. Here he found the perspective from which he painted, in gentle watercolor tones, lovingly shaded views of Portland, its hillsides not yet populated with suburban incursions (fig. 72).2 The natural, almost carefree manner in which he executes these paintings speaks of another world altogether from his adopted home of New York. Reluctant though he was to ever leave that city, these simple gouaches tell otherwise, representing a breath of fresh air for a man who all too readily embraced his deepest concerns. Whether beach or field or forest, or even a portrait of a girl who aspires to find herself in a Renoir painting, the material depicted in the early watercolors shows a lighter side of Rothko—one of only a few painted glimpses we get. The natural, more relaxed feel of these works is a reflection on my father’s chosen subject matter, but it is also inherent in the medium. Watercolor invites a lightness of touch, where even dramatic strokes of brush fade away quietly like a voice on the breeze. What would constitute the boldest of gestures with oil paint communicates movement but not force in watercolor. It is all but

fig. 72 untitled [view of portland, or], 1925/34

weightless; gossamer strings without the insistence of woodwinds, the bite of brass, or the thunder of percussion. Rothko carries this feeling forward to the mid-1940s, where he turns actively to paper in the midst of his neo-surrealist phase. Here the disparity we found in the figurative work is not in evidence—the subject matter on paper is just as serious as it is on canvases during this phase of his career. The expressive possibilities offered by working on paper remain, however, and we find my father relishing its many freedoms and gestural options (see fig. 4). He washes, he draws, he dabs, he scrapes, clearly delighting in the plethora of tools at his disposal. No works so fully embody Rothko’s embrace of paper as these. Truly an explosion, the well over two hundred paintings on paper my father produced during this time were unprecedented in his career. The works on paper outnumber the canvases for the years 1943–45 by two to one, and often eclipse those paintings in scale and ambition.3 Even if we allow for the economic appeal of paper for my father, whose financial struggles of the previous decade continued unabated, we cannot but be struck by the enthusiasm expressed in this outpouring of art. Not only is it voluminous, it exudes the zeal and the attentiveness of an artist in love with the act of painting: the passionately worked surfaces, the carefully balanced play of colors and figures within these landscapes, the bold leaps of experimentation which feel intuitive and yet typically so well-judged. The 1940s watercolors are truly beauti-

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ful, normally a word that awakens concern in the Rothko world, but wholly applicable here. These are deeply sensual paintings; unashamedly so. As with classic Rothko paintings, however, we cannot stop with beauty. Although they employ a different vocabulary, these works of the 1940s seek no less actively to touch us on a deep, preconscious level, to stir essential human emotions and address timeless truths. Positioned midway between the still primarily figurative, mythic paintings of the early 1940s and the pure abstraction that began sometime in 1946, these works on paper draw actively on elements of both periods. Although pushing resolutely forward toward abstraction, the watercolors of the early to mid-1940s retain vestiges of identifiable objects— bird’s heads, amoeba-like creatures, and vessel-shaped human forms. But if the paintings of 1941–43 drew content directly from specific myths, and looked to focus our attention there, the untitled works of the ensuing years diverge, touching on some of the same archetypal themes but offering no more than a gloss on the imagery that often accompanied them in classical renderings. Ever in search of the universal, the underlying language that would communicate instinctually with all, my father abandoned the concretely iterated models of the Greeks and Egyptians and Assyrians, hoping through increasing abstraction to speak more broadly to the unconscious underpinnings of human culture resident in each of us. More specifically, these works on paper, perhaps to a greater degree than their brethren on canvas from the same period, concern the primordial, elements of life coming into being and not yet coalesced in form; basic pieces that find different expression in each person as well as each painting. Critic Robert Rosenblum is not alone in seeing many of these as aquatic scenes, with protozoic organisms serving as the figures in motion.4 Appearing to take his cue from the world of scientific research that pushed further and further toward the microscopic building blocks of life, Rothko delighted in the dance of these elemental beings, seeing them perhaps as a metaphor for those universal essentials he always reached for in his painting. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, we learn in biology, and not least in a Rothko painting, where the artist seeks to create in each work a reiteration, a rebirth, of underlying core components of human consciousness. My father selected media suited to evoking this unseen domain, a realm as much of the imagination as of the material. It is a world where things unexpectedly come into being, only to disappear again just as suddenly, where being and nothingness are close bedfellows. Watercolor, often so whispery quiet as to defy perception, fading to silence at the end of every brushstroke, provides the physical embodiment—and disembodiment—of these elusive forms, rendering shadow as silhouette.

One cannot know with certainty what one will find in these landscapes that are so often underwater or underground. We are at lower strata of perception but also of consciousness, in a nursery of nascent thought and feeling. Watercolor evokes not only the physical attributes of these territories but also the sense of chance and the unexpected, placing us in truly uncharted waters. The textured paper, in turn, creates voids, receiving the paint but resisting the brush, introducing another element of chance not so readily generated using the deliberate strokes required by canvas. Indeed, the gestural freedom allowed by the watercolor and paper media invite greater play of the unconscious, bringing the unbidden to the fore, even in the most carefully planned of my father’s compositions. The feeling of landscape, the washes of paint, the ambiguity of the surface—all of these elements are relatively familiar in the world of Rothko, but what sets these paintings apart—from other Rothko works on paper, and from the coeval works on canvas—is the puckish play of pen darting about most of these watercolors. If the selected paints allow for chance, the ink nearly demands it, and my father delights in the liberty it affords. His lines spring forth spontaneously, fancy more than frontal lobes controlling his hand. Although my father would no doubt have denied it, there is a strong feeling of automatic drawing, of unconscious processes steering the line as much as the will. The drawn element to the 1940s works on paper is unique in my father’s painted output. Although there are strong suggestions of it in the canvases from the same period, they cannot fully capture the delicacy and grace, the fluidity of gesture, and the unimpeded sense of movement expressed so readily with pen and ink. Varying from the sharpest of lines to broad bleeds of black, the drawings in these watercolors lend a dynamic force to each composition, cutting through the color but also catching it up in its darting, swirling motion. If I had to give a single answer (not my usual inclination!) to the question “Why paper?” in the 1940s, it would be “Ink.” In many ways, the expressive language of the works on paper from 1943– 46 foreshadows that of his classic work. The spontaneous, gestural quality he explores in ink and watercolor during these earlier years will find a new expression in the action and freedom of brush in his color-field paintings. So, too, the veiled utterance of watercolor is echoed in the modulated character of Rothko’s classic oil paintings. Here, even when size and color communicate with fullness of tone, the volume is not excessive, the voice is never pushed. Rothko’s colors are very seldom bright—they are saturated and stand forth by means of contrast and interplay with other colors. Thus, while they do not possess quite the mel-

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lowness of watercolor, Rothko’s oils share its unforced aesthetic. And while Rothko cannot mimic in oil the lightness of gesture he achieves in his watercolor paintings, the thinned paints of the classic canvases possess some of the delicacy inherent to watercolor—a medium in which thinning the pigment is inherent to the process. Indeed the ethereal floating quality of his rectangles, with their feathered edges fading to nothingness, harkens back to the wispy quality of the watercolor stroke that dies away as the pigment is expended. Whether he is working in watercolor or in oil, Rothko speaks to the ever-resonant borderland between being and nothingness, an existential place and a spiritual place whose evocation begins with the very dissolving quality of his paint media. We should also note a similarity in the relationship between paint and support in these different Rothko works. Watercolor, as its name implies, is first and foremost a liquid medium, and it sinks into its paper support (varied though that can be), essentially becoming one with the paper. Rothko’s turpentinethinned oils, in like manner, sink in and stain the canvas. He may have additional, thicker pigment layers laid on top, but at a minimum those initial background layers impregnate the canvas as if they were watercolors melding with the paper. In both of these media, my father is making a unified entity, an object in itself, not a painting of an object. There are two specific moments during his classic phase that my father turns to paper with significant focus, 1959 and 1968–70. I have discussed both of these groups of works in some depth elsewhere in this volume, so here I will focus on the qualities particular to their media.5 In 1959, paper offers my father a different sense of scale, and a renewed sense of intimacy in his approach to the viewer (see fig. 41). Unlike the 1940s, where paper and canvas existed largely on the same scale, the 1959 papers represent a huge exhalation in the context of the mass and single-mindedness of the Seagram murals. Through the modest size (thirty-eight by twenty-five inches) of these works on paper, Rothko was redressing the measure of man—his viewer but first and foremost himself. Seeking to give the observer the same experience he had when creating the painting, he returned to a scale that was personal rather than institutional. The quiet beauty and calm that emanates from these works was no doubt hard-won in the white-hot atmosphere of passion and frustration that was the Seagram project. A newfound simplicity serves as a primary expressive channel in the works on paper from both the late 1950s and the late 1960s. With backgrounds typically reduced to a single color and the rectangles that float on them made up of fewer layers, there is a directness and honesty that gives the works of both these

periods a particularly clear-voiced quality. Indeed, the 1959 works on paper are a primary source for the quieter, understated tone of the works of the 1960s, while the papers of the late 1960s represent an ultimate realization of that aesthetic (see fig. 54). That tone also derives from the attention to detail and balance possible for Rothko on this intimate scale. These works do not make the sweeping statements of Rothko’s wall-size canvases, but their arguments are precisely honed so that every inch speaks with intentionality and specificity. Yet even within the context of their greater restraint, the 1950s and ’60s works on paper have unique ways of touching us on an emotional level. Much of this has to do with the qualities of water-based media. Though not painted in gouache, the 1959 works (tempera) and the 1968–70 works (acrylic) use watersoluble pigments that my father frequently thinned to a noticeable degree. The dynamic quality of these works thus often resides in the background, where the dilute washes of paint reveal the action of brush bubbling under more quiescent rectangles. At their small scale, these works possess a unique expressive range, the gestures free but clearly the work of hand, not arm. Unlike gouache, these pigments can also be quite opaque, and especially in the late works, we find Rothko actively creating spatial effects or deliberately flattening the surface by interplay of differently applied layers of paint. The support also plays an integral role in this presentation as, compared to canvas’s inherently grainy texture, paper’s smoother finish provides a more neutral surface for creating a truly flat image.6 Ironically, Rothko in restricting the expressiveness of his paintings was using his chosen media to its full expressive potential. The reduced sensuality of the late 1960s works on paper reflected a new approach for my father to his subject matter. It was not evidence of a curtailment of that subject matter or an indication that he wished in any way to diminish the impact of his work. It simply invited a new level of interaction from the viewer. I raise this because quieting a voice is a very different matter from stifling a voice. Despite the fact that these late works do not embrace the viewer as his 1950s works did, Rothko nonetheless wanted us to experience the full effect of their immediacy. To this end, he insisted, as he had with all his classic works on paper from as early as 1953, that they should be mounted on a support, and presented matteless, frameless, unglazed. In other words, they should be treated like paintings, with nothing to impede our view or our approach. To the best of my knowledge, all classic Rothko works on paper that were exhibited or sold during my father’s lifetime were mounted, not framed, some more successfully than others, but the consistency makes my father’s wishes clear.

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I take up this issue of mounting as a way of finally working my way to question two: Why are Rothko works on paper not seen more frequently? The answers have to do with misinformation, biases about paper among collectors, galleries, and museums alike, as well as inadequate museum spaces in which to display works on paper. Many of these problems affect the work of all artists, but some of them combine to particularly keep Rothko paintings on paper off view. Let us begin at the great source of misunderstanding for works on paper. It does not matter if the artist uses ink or oil or graphite or tempera or pastel or gouache or acrylic or charcoal—if it is on paper, technically it is classified as a “drawing,” even if the pigment is applied with a brush. I do not call my father’s paintings on paper drawings—not once in some 287 pages of this Rothkocentric text. Drawings they are not. Figurative sketches and preparatory ink or graphite renderings of mythological beasts soon to inhabit his neo-surreal period paintings—these are the drawings (figs. 73, 74). But when those preparatory works take the form of a smaller-scale painting on paper that serves as a model for a mural, it is, to my mind, a painting. A study, yes, but not a sketch and certainly not a drawing. If it uses paint, it is a painting. Categorizing paintings on paper as drawings involves purely academic nomenclature. The public does not think of them as such, unless we encourage them to do so. I argued to no avail with the Menil Collection in Houston that they should not call their planned museum annex a “Drawings Center,” that this would give a distorted picture of the riches of their collection, which includes all manner of media on paper. With such a name they would effectively keep away all but the most studious among their visitors. “Drawing” serves as a distortion particularly for the work of modern and contemporary artists, who so frequently broke and break with categories, creating objects that deliberately defy classification and refuse to be filed away neatly in previously labeled boxes. Perhaps our best response would be to reexamine our categories rather than simply continue to stuff new work into them, whether it fits or not. This may seem much ado about nothing, that indeed there is very little in a name. I have been told as much—actually rather dismissively—in the museum world, but I maintain my vehemence. It is for the same reason that using language that is demeaning, historically encumbered, or simply inaccurate in reference to race or gender is problematic; it maintains or creates biases and perpetuates unconscious prejudices. While I am not about to suggest that our mindset about works on paper is as critical as those matters of discrimination, I am quite clear that language matters—it reflects and it shapes the way we interact with the world.

fig. 73 untitled sketch, 1930s

fig. 74 untitled sketches, c. 1940–43

Drawing says: small, faint, reticent, private—something to examine rather than become involved with. It is not sensual. Such a description greatly shortchanges the power of drawing, of course, and unfairly restricts the genre, as many drawings are none of the above. But I am not addressing reality, I am addressing perception, and for all but the most sophisticated of art lovers, the word drawing will evoke most, if not all, of the first sentence of this paragraph. Some will see numerous virtues in that list of descriptors, but it is a depiction that is unlikely to get the general public to break down the museum door, convinced that they must see what is behind it. And this is my goal—to change perceptions in order to ensure we are not impeding the flow of people who would come see this artwork. I have every confidence that, once in the room, the viewers would quickly come under the spell of the paintings. I just want to make sure they get there. What do we do with a drawing? We put it in a box—a file box, an archival box, a glazed box (i.e., a frame). Whatever form the boxing takes, the end result is that it restricts our access to the work. The artwork becomes something from which we must remain apart, that we must keep our hands off, that we can

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appreciate, at best, at one remove. This, of course, is disastrous for Rothko above all artists, for it severs the interaction with the viewer—the very means by which his classic work lives. The box, the frame, not only undercuts the presence of the work, it makes the painting into a picture of something, rather than a thing in and of itself. We are peering in at it through a glass, catching a glimpse of a semblance of a Rothko. It has been preserved, no doubt beautifully, but preserved all the same, and you only need to preserve something once it is dead. Whether they are living or dead, we keep works on paper tucked away, out of the light, out of sight. Often, when I visit a museum in connection with a Rothko exhibition, I am taken to the “reference room” or to the “vaults”—essentially storage areas, occasionally study areas, where the works on paper are held. And the message is always the same: “You will not believe the treasures we have hidden back here.” Why are these masterpieces locked in storage where no one can see them? Frequently, but not always, the museum staff’s excitement about their holdings is accompanied by a plaintive “If only we had more hanging space . . .” Yet somehow they find hanging space for the canvases of lesser artists or the lesser canvases of great artists. And in the meantime, the jewels on paper are kept in a drawer or on a rack. I am thrilled to see them, but how many people get this kind of access? There is the occasional scholar on site, buried deep in his or her work, but for the most part these drawings and paintings remain the playthings of the curators, or simply forgotten in a dark basement cache. All of these factors—the way we speak of works on paper, the way we display them, the way we keep them out of circulation, ultimately decrease the value of the work. It confirms their status as the poor stepsibling. We find this even with artists such as the celebrated American landscape painter John Marin, whose output on paper far outstrips his canvases (approximately six to one) and whose watercolors are seen as at least the equals of his oils. And why is it that works on paper sell for less than similar pictures on canvas? Because they are more fragile? Yes, to a degree. Because they must be kept off display 50 percent of the time for fear they may fade?7 Certainly. But primarily because, through the way that works on paper are presented—and this includes how we describe them—we send the message that they are not quite real. They are a vestige of a painting, an approach to a painting, a half-blood relative to a painting. They are, ever so slightly, out of category, and the majority of collectors and museum acquisition committees are only looking for, and willing to pay for, a prime example, a status to which works on paper can only aspire. Of course, I am speaking here about value in all senses, not simply commercial. Although the dollar may serve as the benchmark that reflects public

attitudes, there are many other ways in which we see works on paper treated as an exception, a footnote to the artist’s primary oeuvre. Museums communicate the lesser stature of paper over and over, perhaps no place so clearly as in the staff roster. There will be a curator of twentieth-century art and a curator of modern prints and drawings. Often the drawing curator will serve underneath the contemporary curator, but even when not, there is a clear message; calling out the media under her purview makes it a special case. And yes, it usually is a her—not that we ever see women lodged in positions of lower or marginalized authority.8 Typically she is expected to cover a broader expanse of art (in terms of period and/or region), the thinking being, apparently, that works on paper do not merit the same degree of specialization as canvases. This approach to staff is echoed in the hanging spaces, where we find at MoMA, for example, dozens of rooms dedicated to twentieth-century art and—a drawings gallery. I wish MoMA were alone in this, but it represents the rule rather than the exception. In fact, a drawings gallery would represent significant progress for most institutions, a purpose-built room almost too much to hope for. I look forward to the day that this book is horribly out of date and the forthcoming Menil Drawings Center in Houston is forthcoming no longer. While I remain troubled by the idea of works on paper split off to an annex, as they will be at the Menil, this is counterbalanced by the desirability of a dedicated space, designed explicitly for the work, with the typically smaller rooms and the low lighting necessary for these works. Mistitled or no, it is an extremely important step forward and will hopefully inspire similar steps by other museums. Works on paper will not truly be appreciated until major institutions embrace them fully and display them richly. Museums are not alone in keeping works on paper in the cabinet. Or rather, the curatorial staff is not alone, for the voice of the art conservator carries great weight. At least some of the decisions that keep works on paper off display and in compromised displays stem from the conservation department. This is particularly the case for Rothko’s paintings on paper, which present a number of challenges stemming from their frequently dark tones and large scale, and their need for planar, unimpeded presentation. While I appreciate that a conservator’s first duty is to protect the artwork, I am puzzled and frustrated when their efforts to safeguard lead them to ignore the artist’s clear intentions about how his or her work should be presented. And when such clear intentions are lacking, these professionals can prove dumbfounding in choices that reflect minimal awareness of the viewer’s need to, in fact, view the work.

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As I indicated previously, my father did not treat his paintings on paper as drawings; he treated them as paintings. His mounting of his classic 1950s and ’60s works on paper was the most concrete manifestation of this attitude, a process that did not vary save in details of materials. Mounting the paper flat to a rigid support that would keep it every bit as planar as a stretched canvas, Rothko never employed a frame or border, as such elements would substantially alter his composition. The absence of matte or frame maintained his precisely formulated proportions, while the presentation without glass allowed the viewer unhindered communion with the work. These were not mini-canvases, as some have suggested—if he wanted to create such items, he would have (and did). They are simply works that are paintings every bit as much as the canvases, and which interact with the observer by essentially the same principles. Some of my father’s methods for mounting his papers were crude, and those of the people hired by his gallery, cavalier. The results were not particularly good for the health of the artwork. Seeing this, I have spent much of my Rothkooriented professional life working with conservators to develop a method whereby Rothko works on paper can be mounted in ways that are safe for the painting but allow a maximized Rothko experience. I have encountered resistance from professionals along the way, but for me it was never a question of whether, it was only a question of how. Indeed, how could one do anything other than mount these paintings, when it was so clear that this is what Rothko wanted? Nor is this simply a case of pleasing the artist—we are dealing with work for which presentation is critical, and an artist who instinctually understood what his paintings needed in order to speak. When these paintings are shown by museums, however, the thinking is very different, as are the results. In 1984 the National Gallery in Washington presented a large-scale retrospective of Rothko works on paper, showcasing a portion of the sizable gift they had recently received from the Mark Rothko Foundation. In many ways the exhibition was magnificent, the paintings a revelation for the many visitors who had not previously—surprise!—seen a Rothko work on paper. As for the presentation, however, all I could say at the time was “Never again.” Despite this declaration, I have seen “it,” or vestiges of “it,” many times since, for the attitudes embodied in the preparation and presentation of this show are pervasive. I will use this exhibition as an example to dissect, not because it was any worse than others but because its comprehensiveness highlighted the problems. In addition, because I had paintings from my own collection in the exhibition, prepared by the same conservator, I had a firsthand perspective on the decision-making process. Indeed, I had many arguments

with the conservator, which, being only twenty years old at the time, I lost. To that, I can say, “Never again,” or at least “Not exactly again.” What do museums do when they display work on paper? They put it in a frame. “Even though Rothko made so clear this is not what he wanted for his classic works?” I demanded. “Yes, that is what you do with a work on paper,” I was told. “And what you do with a contemporary work on paper is you float it” (that is, affix it to the backing board at the top and let the paper hang down with no matte or other material to keep it flat). “But didn’t my father mount his works so they would stay in plane?” I asked. “This is rippling and undulating all over the place.” “The beautiful thing about paper is it takes its own shape—it’s part of the aesthetic. It’s one of the reasons artists work on paper—they want that. It feels like paper.” “But I can’t see the rectangles—they are shiny and the light is hitting different parts of them in different ways.” “Again, it’s part of the aesthetic.”

The above is paraphrased from an actual conversation I had with the conservator when she was preparing a painting on paper from my collection for the 1984 show. The work, a very large dark-green-on-blue acrylic on paper, had lain flat and unmounted until that exhibition. It has seen two further problematic mountings since, before finally receiving the good support it needs to be seen clearly last year. That first presentation, however, ticked all my “no” boxes. It was presented in a “natural” wood frame whose honey tones were anything but neutral and clashed horribly with the colors of the work. The frame closely bordered the painting, not only lending a claustrophobic feel but also revealing all too clearly that the painting was not square (there should have been a custom-cut frame). What little bit of the support board did show was too white, calling attention to itself and creating a composition-altering uneven border around the painting. Floated from two hinges and the top, the painting not only rippled but bunched in some areas, the result of my father having used very “wet,” diluted paint that dried unevenly. Finally, it was placed behind Plexiglas, nominally nonreflective but in fact so reflective that one could barely see  the painting (I have yet to encounter a good glazing solution for dark works—they essentially become mirrors). To add insult to injury, when I saw the painting in the exhibition, the frame had warped, so that it came off the wall at a bizarre angle.

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There was no point in even looking at this painting in that exhibition. It was not only dead, it was unrecognizable. Not a painting but an artifact. Other works in the exhibition did not fare as badly. The 1940s watercolors sang sweetly, and the previously mounted works were displayed as they had been received, unencumbered by frames. Some late works on paper, however, fared worse. In addition to the floating and framing and glazing, they were presented au naturel. This is to say that tears were not mended and that pieces of masking tape remained on the edges, attesting to what was clearly, at times, a hasty studio process for my father. If all the other factors had rendered communication with the painting nigh impossible, these elements reduced the work to a curiosity, little more than a laboratory display. Although I disagreed vehemently with this conservator and have since with other like-minded ones, I do not believe there was anything willful or perverse about her actions. Indeed, through her work, she was expressing a philosophy, one closely allied to Hippocrates’ “First, do no harm.” She would not mount works because she was concerned that any adhesive strong enough to hold them down would damage the paper or the paint. She wanted something reversible that could be easily taken off its support. She framed and glazed the works because it protected the paper—especially the edges—from damage in handling while also cutting light exposure by means of UV-filtering Plexiglas. And she did not remove tape because she did not presume to know my father’s intentions about the tape. She suggested that he may have wanted it there and that at this point, whatever his thinking, it had become part of the work. Since she had worked on many dozens of Rothko works on paper, I insisted that she was in an excellent position to intuit my father’s intentions, but she was unwilling to impose herself. These less-is-more arguments are all well considered and derive from a genuine concern for the well-being of the work. But to my mind, they reflect the overprecious attitude of a specialist unwilling or unable to look beyond the purview of his or her particular field. For if protecting a work renders it a shadow of itself, has it not essentially been damaged? Has not its essence been obscured so that it cannot be appreciated for its true merits? By not acting to present the work in full health, have we not made it sick? I am reminded of my very complicated relationship with the psychoanalytic process I was learning in graduate school in the 1980s and ’90s. As therapists, we were taught to remain silent unless there was a compelling and necessary interpretation to make. By our silence we were to maintain neutrality. But the more I progressed with my studies, the more I wrestled with this practice, for I came to

realize that silence is not neutral. No response is a response. And to extend this to the world of art conservation, a nonintervention is an intervention. By electing not to make decisions we do not feel equipped to make, we are indeed making a decision. I understand that for the conservator it may be prudent to hold off from undertaking invasive procedures in the hope that the future will bring innovations in technique and materials that will accomplish the task more effectively and more safely, or perhaps with new information about the artist’s methods.9 This must be balanced, however, against a recognition that expertise is extraordinarily valuable, and it is fleeting. There is slight chance that there will be another Rothko Foundation. It is unlikely that there will ever be a conservator who has put hands on more Rothkos than the one who prepared that exhibition. From my perspective, if one is in a position to make the call—make it. It is a matter of responsibility. This type of thinking was the primary motivation for my decision to devote myself to my father’s artwork full-time. No one again will ever have the firsthand knowledge of him that my sister has and that I also possess, slight as it may be. No one will have such ready access to as many paintings and archival material as I do, not to mention the supplements of family anecdotes and my sister’s firsthand accounts. With the catalogues raisonnés nearing completion, no one is likely to dedicate themselves single-mindedly to Rothko, and Rothko alone, for such an extended period of time. And what happens now matters. The seminal exhibitions, the research by those connected directly to the artist, these will be drawn upon again and again by future generations as they formulate their own understanding of how Rothko’s artwork functions. Every exhibition, especially early ones assembled by leading institutions and the artist’s foundation, becomes an influential part of the record. But it is not only the written record with which we must concern ourselves—it is also the visual record. What we present the public—the casual museumgoer, the art lover, the scholar, the world of art professionals—burns itself into memory, forming ideas, understandings, and opinions. When these thoughts derive from exhibitions that misrepresent the work, ones that show it in a compromised fashion that undercuts its expressive power, then it is an understanding that needs to be undone. And that is difficult work. That initial impression is difficult to dislodge, our minds, even when presented with a compelling reassessment, holding firmly to the primary idea as well. Any revisionist ideas will be juxtaposed with, and measured against, what we once knew with certainty. That is why it is so important to get it right the first time. It is very difficult to get an institution to make the right but bold decision, which is why exhibition after exhibition continues to show my father’s classic

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works on paper framed and under glass with, at best, unsatisfactory results. Only my sister and I make unframed mountings of Rothko works on paper, and we are seldom asked to loan those paintings, because they disrupt the “harmony” of the installation that otherwise features framed works. Disrupt indeed! It’s like having the New York Philharmonic play in the same room where people are listening to an mp3 of the same piece played through computer speakers. Several museums even insist on loaning their Rothko canvases framed and under glass—they might as well keep them in storage. All of these works become little more than specimens, barely perceptible behind their vitrines. They are no longer living, breathing works of art. As my father feared, they have been reduced simply to colored rectangles, dead on the wall. Do not think for a minute that my sister and I take questions of conservation lightly. Indeed, my primary activity concerns preservation of our father’s work and legacy, and my sister has more than played her role in that undertaking. We spend a significant portion of our time addressing conservation concerns, which my father’s paintings generate at an alarming rate. This is not typically because of any particular fragility or inherent vice in his work. It is simply that any factor that mars the surface of a Rothko will stand out plainly and necessarily interfere with our ability to interact with the work. The paintings themselves are not fragile—their effect is fragile. I am thus very sensitive to conservation issues, but I am equally sensitive to conservation choices that interfere in other ways with our ability to view the work unimpeded. In the end it is a cost-benefit analysis. The conservator is naturally dedicated to the health of the work. My dedication is to the viewability and expressive power of the work—a different, but not necessarily incompatible type of vitality. To my mind, it is preferable to have a painting that can be fully appreciated for a shorter period of time than to have a painting that is difficult to appreciate for a longer period of time. I will reiterate that the concerns I have highlighted in this essay are ones that I raise on behalf of all artists, not only Rothko. My father’s work simply puts an exclamation point on a more general problem because it is so reliant upon sensitive presentation in order to function as intended. Too frequently, curators and conservators lose perspective, finding a work fascinating when presented unflattened, unmended, and squeezed in a box, having little sense that for most of the public they have created a mute piece, unable to speak through glass, unable to speak over the message that it is merely a sketch or some type of proto-work. These professionals reduce the paintings to study works when they could be alive and vibrant and deeply com-

municative. As custodians of a rich legacy, they no doubt have a balance to address and must indeed consider the future as well as the present. Clearly their aim is to protect and preserve—but are they keeping the works alive, or are they keeping them half-dead? In the small realm of Rothko, I make it my business to look into all the nooks and crannies in the service of the larger picture. It is ironic that I must address the works on paper as one of these nooks, as a type of byway, when they constitute such a significant part of my father’s output and a part of the output of such significance. I will continue my efforts to get these works into the light and liberate them from restrictions; to tip the balance a bit more toward the living, a bit more toward the now. In my estimation, that will have the most positive impact on the future.

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There are artists who are fabulous self-promoters, artists who create a three-ring circus around themselves, almost without trying. Their personas and their artworks are resilient and thrive both in the limelight and amid controversy, making the adage that there is no such thing as bad press ring true. My father was not such an artist, and his act that most captured his public’s imagination has also persistently impinged on that public’s ability to see his art clearly on its own terms. I am speaking of his suicide, at age sixty-six, which has come to be nearly as well known as his signature paintings of the 1950s and ’60s. There is a bitter irony, here, for an artist who looked to remain silent and let his art speak for itself. It is Rothko’s art that people love; the art that draws crowds to his exhibitions, that sells posters faster than lottery tickets. However much mystique the suicide may have added to his story, were it not for his art, Rothko’s suicide would have failed to hold our attention for more than a few days at best. And yet the topic inserts itself, seemingly of necessity, into most discussions of my father. It is as if we think we cannot understand the art if we do not understand the suicide. Why should this be so? My suspicion is that it has a great deal more to do with sociological and psychological phenomena than it does with the artwork itself. That is, it has more to do with us than it does with my father. Let us therefore examine our need to see Rothko in his paintings and how that need may be driven by our insistent preoccupation with suicide; it will serve the vital process of interacting with his art and ultimately further our understanding. Looking in a Canvas for the Man

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In most of the other essays in this book, I talk about art; that is, Rothko’s art. While these discussions involve his art in many guises, its development, its form, the associations it generates, and its modes of interaction with the viewer, it is still the paintings that remain the focus of the examination. In this essay, how-

ever, I am really talking much more about people, about human beings and what this difficult topic of suicide can help us understand about ourselves. It is a different sort of undertaking. And yet perhaps it is not so different after all. Art raises many questions and focuses our attention in disparate directions, but great art—the art that touches us most deeply—fundamentally directs us to look at ourselves, not with a self-indulgent gaze but with a curiosity about what it means to be human. Art encourages us to examine ourselves as embodiments of unique perspectives and sets of experiences—as thinking and emoting creatures. Certainly this is where Rothko paintings aim to focus us. They invite us to peer into our own inner world, one that is intensely personal and one that, at the same time, shares common existential threads with all other people. We must therefore register and remain conscious that Rothko paintings, first and foremost, speak to us about us. This is a concept that I touch on throughout the essays in the volume, but it becomes crucial to maintain that focus in the context of the suicide, which so readily redirects our attention. Rothko’s works are not confessionals, they are not two-dimensional autobiographies tacked to a wall, they are not a parade of self-portraits, and to read them as a series of signposts on the road to an understanding of my father’s psyche will send the viewer on a meandering course in search of someone else. My father made this very clear in his own writings: I have never thought that painting a picture has anything to do with self-expression. It is a communication about the world to someone else. . . . You may communicate about yourself; I prefer to communicate a view of the world that is not [at] all of myself. Some artists want to tell all like at a confessional. I as a craftsman prefer to tell little. My pictures are indeed facades (as they have been called).1

I do not want to overstate the case here. It is not as if Rothko paintings are devoid of Rothko. They are of course imbued with feeling and a reflection of the hand and the man that made them. But these are not the psychological dramas of Munch or the windows into the artist’s own soul that van Gogh painted. Rothko’s artworks are far more philosophical and generalized to broader human experience. The emotional content is there to help the viewer make connection with the painting (indeed, my father called it “consummation”2), but that is an avenue to an understanding of something more universal and frankly much more important than simply my father’s feelings (as no doubt is true of Munch’s and van Gogh’s works). Rothko understood the slippery slope of solipsism. He was not interested in painting that was self-expressive or self-referential and

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was not so egotistical as to think that his viewers would be interested either. His ego surfaced not in the belief that his viewers should be interested in him, but in the belief that people should listen to him because he had something important to say. We must thus be wary of confusing the artist with his art. Artist and artwork are entwined but not entangled, intimately attached but not the same thing. In our quest to understand art, particularly work that seems elusive or inscrutable, it is quite natural that we would turn to the artist’s biography for clues. The life should give us some markers, some framework for contextualizing the art and beginning our road to comprehension. And yet we must remain cognizant that such material tells us about the artist, not necessarily the art, just as the artwork does not inescapably reveal the nature of the artist. The work of most artists would be dull indeed if limited by the scope of their biography. Such an approach reduces art to a type of dry reportage, a reworking of facts and personal experiences that is likely to fly off neither page nor canvas with much vitality (with some notable exceptions). Great art, by definition, is work that transcends such details; it is a transformative process by which artists make real their vision of something new or but dimly viewed before. Twentieth-century modernists, across many disciplines, particularly distanced themselves from a notion of art as biographically sourced, and similarly disavowed interpretation based on that notion. Although this position was perhaps most notably catalogued by the writers and literary critics of the postwar era, the visual artists of my father’s generation also had little interest in weaving their life stories into their abstract canvases. A comical and wickedly incisive treatment of the interplay between biography and art comes from Vladimir Nabokov, who was not only one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers but also a formidable critic and editor. As such, he was uniquely positioned to address this issue and did so in his novel Pale Fire, with his inimitable humor, mischievous and caustic by turns. Here the narrator performs a detailed exegesis of his next-door neighbor’s posthumously published epic poem, reducing the most overwrought metaphors and self-indulgent imagery to simply chance occurrences in their neighborhood.3 The result is decidedly cartoonish and all the more effective for that. Nabokov, never one to suffer fools, makes patently clear that a biographically based interpretive approach is indeed likely to generate little but foolishness. To reduce art to biography is necessarily to bring it to the level of the mundane, when by contrast the very artistic process involves a journey of the imagination and a construction of things beyond the merely perceptible. Yet life

may inform art and in fact must do so. It is not as if artists live in a vacuum or are insensitive to experience and the world around them. Far from it. Then what may we glean from artists’ lives that can give us direction in our interaction with their art? Perhaps a great deal, but we must be cognizant of how and what we take away, where our biases intrude, and where we are less than objective in selecting material we see as significant. Why, for Rothko, is dropping out of Yale more important than the slackening of his socialist ties in the 1930s and ’40s? Why does the dissolution of his first marriage carry more weight than the genesis of his second, or the death of his mother prove more significant than the birth of his son (ahem)? The biographers would certainly have it so. Experience has shown me that most people focus almost exclusively on Rothko’s suicide, often knowing very little about the rest of his life. The suicide is grasped with an almost audible “Aha,” as if this were the one explanatory factor that trumps all others, offering a key that renders all else irrelevant. Suddenly other aspects of his life—his devotion as a family man, fear of flying, love of music, friendship with Adolph Gottlieb, penchant for automat meals, reverence for ancient Greece, to name but a few—reflect nothing about him and have no causative value. All significance resides in the one final act. My training in psychology, along with my educational background in literature, has lent me some insight into the questions I have raised, and both areas of study suggest important cautions about how we draw conclusions, and by extension, how we think about the suicide. First, the sciences teach us to remain alert for the most basic error when evaluating data or socially derived information of any kind—confusing correlation with causation.4 Two facts or phenomena may coexist and may have patterns that parallel one another, but we typically need specifically controlled conditions in order to prove a causative effect of one upon the other. In the case of Rothko, we must ask how we can know that any particular facet of his life had a causative effect upon his artwork. Moreover, when looking at the suicide in particular, we can know that since it occurred after the production of all the artwork, by definition it could not have influenced the work. I am, of course, not so naive as to think that depression, and the many factors that contributed to it, could not have had causative effects on both the direction of the artwork and the suicide. Still, we must be very careful when our thinking tends toward “He committed suicide and therefore . . .” Second, we may note the literary approach to causation and interpretation advanced in Rothko’s own era by Barthes and subsequently by Derrida and his cohort. Structuralist and Post-Structuralist theories focus on the ambiguous relationship between signifier and signified; that is, between the thing that rep-

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resents and the thing that is represented. In fact, these arguments about the inherently arbitrary relationship between most words and the object or concept they stand for apply just as readily to visual art. Here we can ask what in the language of the artist or his artwork makes us believe that the image in the foreground of his painting that looks like a dog is in fact a dog or indeed a particular dog. We assume all manner of representational intent and reveal an inherent and perhaps groundless faith that an attempt to represent a dog can communicate meaningfully about dogginess. Abstract art stretches any apparent links thinner, making that signifier/signified relationship necessarily, and perhaps intentionally, highly ambiguous. Abstract art simultaneously invites and undercuts any attempt to connect the work to the concrete, whether by the concrete we mean an object, an idea, or even an emotion. To take something as specific as suicide, therefore, and relate it to something as abstract as Rothko paintings, is indeed to sail rapidly into very murky interpretive waters. Again we must ask why, when considering Rothko’s art, we so insistently link it to his suicide. Why do we believe that this one event—which happened after the creation of the art—reveals so much? Why do we feel that it yields specific understanding? Indeed, what other factor could be so obscuring? No one has firsthand knowledge of suicide—is there ultimately anything that can remain for us less knowable? And therein lies, I would venture, much of its fascination. The Lure of Suicide A friend and I in a museum room She says, “Look at Mark Rothko’s side Did you know about his suicide? Some folks were born with a foot in the grave, but not me, of course” —Dar Williams, Mark Rothko Song

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When an artist becomes the subject of popular song, it is safe to hazard that he (or she) has achieved legendary status. And yet Rothko, who was always so concerned that his work be understood and accepted, and who then immediately questioned whether it had been accepted for the right reasons, would not have been able to sit quietly with such prestige. Troubled enough by the motivations of the viewers in his lifetime, could he possibly have endorsed the mystique generated around the paintings by his death? For through the suicide, he awakened a far greater set of complications, creating an interference pattern through which most must pass to view his work and through which his fame will always be regarded. Has he indeed achieved fame or merely notoriety? Will songs laud

him for the power of his paintings, or will they instead render art and artist a footnote to the sensation of his suicide? In the case of Dar Williams’s song, I would suggest the answer must be both. For, as I have noted, the suicide would not generate ongoing fascination were it not for the appeal of Rothko’s artwork. And yet it is unlikely that my father would have featured in this song were it not for the suicide, despite the fact that the first stanza contains a very sensitive description of the emotive vocabulary of his work (“The blue it speaks so full / It’s like the beauty one can barely stand”). Over the course of the song, Williams uses Rothko’s suicide as a gateway to looking at human personality and psychological defense, but those are subjects at best peripheral to the language of my father’s paintings. She equates the saturation of color in Rothko’s canvases with his own emotional saturation, a depth and excess of feeling that ends, consequentially, in suicide. This is quite a sophisticated undertaking in a four-stanza song, but we are still closer to the life than we are to the work, and once again, the tail has wagged the dog: the suicide is the causative factor, working retroactively to color the content of Rothko’s artwork. Rothko is by no means the only artist whose life is so scrutinized. There is Picasso the womanizer, Roald Dahl and Ezra Pound the fascists, and endless speculation about the sexual orientations or preoccupations of Schubert, Chopin, and Wagner. All terribly scandalous, of course, but none of these can touch suicide for immediate impact and the shock it induces; a shock typically accompanied by unselfconscious gawking. What is it about suicide, that we give it so much weight and scrutiny? Further, what is it about Rothko’s suicide, in particular, that seems to stimulate such strong associations in people? One does not hear so much about Gorky’s suicide or Kirchner’s or even that of Kahlo, whose work was so intently autobiographical. And when suicide does enter the conversation about these artists, it seldom generates the same presumption of “inevitability” that it does with my father. Only van Gogh, a famously tortured soul, seems as intimately paired with his undoing as my father, and even that suicide would probably not have the same currency were it not for the notorious cutting of the ear that preceded it, again as if it were a harbinger of his ultimate end. Suicide involves an interplay between the searingly psychological and the graphically physical that seizes the imagination, and sends a shudder down that spine with an unmatched intensity that renders the topic almost irresistible. Irresistible, certainly, for most journalists covering Rothko. Despite the stated intention for their inquiry, the credentials of the writers and the subjects

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of the exhibitions to which their piece is linked, interviews and articles on Rothko inevitably navigate to the suicide. No wonder that, echoing my father’s sentiments about public statements, I have become increasingly cautious when speaking to the press. One piece in a London newspaper sought to mention the suicide four times in a single page—until I convinced them to edit out two. This was supposed to be a piece about the midcentury New York Rothko knew, but somehow the award-winning journalist was too lured by the lurid details of my father’s death to stay on topic. A pity; we might have learned something beyond the fact that I ordered vegetable paella for lunch and that my father’s death was exceptionally bloody. A bloody shame this approach is so typical. The suicide is usually described graphically—gratuitously so. Pools of blood saturate the screen in the opening scene of films about my father (at least in their unedited guises), in pallid imitation of a Hitchcock movie. Ironically, perhaps the most excessive case was a film focused in large part on the Seagram murals, which my father painted fully twelve years before he killed himself. And no matter the time frame, spilled red paint seems to foreshadow spilled blood in any rendering of Rothko’s life. Does the gore really tell us anything about the paintings, or even about the man striving at that moment to achieve something greater and more ambitious than he ever had before? Unlikely. Instead, I hear poor van Gogh’s bloody ear hitting the floor, as it has undoubtedly done in countless films, dramas, miniseries, dime-store novels, and comic books. Rothko was fortunate to have children who can try to redress the tasteless and the distracting—and strong copyright laws that arm them to do so. Van Gogh was not so lucky. Thus, while his paintings are venerated, and his lifelong struggles evoke genuine sympathy, that fragment of ear has become van Gogh’s calling card, which must be tucked deeply in a pocket to see his paintings for what they are. Even when not graphically portrayed or dwelled upon, Rothko’s suicide is often the first thing mentioned about him, as if this will somehow give us a greater understanding of everything else that follows. And this is precisely the problem. No one lives life backward. To read a life as a series of causal events building to a suicide prejudices our understanding of all things related to that life, that person, and his or her work. This approach puts an interpretive lens before us that will inherently distort everything we view. With this perspective, nothing can exist for itself: its meaning is automatically bent to fit the picture that ends in suicide, its value skewed so that it conveniently adds to the equation whose sum total is violent death by one’s own hand. It is like looking through the wrong end of the telescope, where a potential universe of information funnels to one obscurely viewed point in the distance.

This single-minded and insistent focus on the suicide as the explanatory factor reminds me of a phenomenon I encounter repeatedly in spectator sports (of which I am an occasional fan). When reviewing a close game, the spectator almost inevitably sees victory as the result of one crucial play or series of plays late in the match. This is even more true in the case of loss—it is one blunder by a player or one bad call by the referee that has sunk the ship. But of course this is wholly inaccurate. The particular point or ruling may have been tremendously important, but it could not have had great impact had the team not put itself (through good performance or bad performance throughout the game) in a position where the one play or one ruling could make a difference. That we reason similarly—and irrationally—in the realms of sport and art indicates a psychological predisposition, a need that orients us to view things in this way. We appear acculturated, genetically wired, socially programmed (choose your explanatory device), to view a situation as the result of individual triumph or failure. We seem to have a need for heroes and scapegoats, who act out a story that can be readily communicated, repeated, and grasped. We want those simple stories that fit conveniently into a familiar narrative that provides us a nearly automatic key for the interpretation of events. But we need to recognize what is lost and what is disfigured in that simplification. To reduce the artist’s life solely to his demise and to see his work as a reflection of his suicidally oriented disposition is to create the same type of distortion I have just outlined in the case of sports. The damage, however, is in many ways worse. For sports are a type of socially circumscribed warfare, and are thus designed to be truly the stuff of heroes and legends, an echo of heroic moments from our history. However simplistic the interpretation of a game, it exists within an accepted paradigm for the function of athletics. But when contemplating art, can such simplistic paradigms apply? And in the case of Rothko’s philosophically driven (and, some would argue, highly mystical) creations, can stereotypical narratives helpfully inform our process? Are we not engaging with Rothko’s art specifically to move into realms far beyond the black and white? Surely Rothko’s final “blown call” does not undo or rework the intricate and compelling way in which he advanced and scored up to that point. This is not sport—there is no winning and losing. The suicide does not render Rothko’s work for naught, and by the same token, it should not give the work added valence or significance. Again, Rothko’s suicide is significant to the world only because his artwork is significant. Were this not so, the man and his means of death would have been quickly forgotten. As it stands, however, his suicide is the bloody ear by which many first identify him.

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None of this is to deny the importance of the suicide. As his son, I can attest to the significance of my father’s loss. His suicide was a deeply personal, life-altering (!!!) event, driven by complex psychological factors. It did not occur as an aberration, and it necessarily reflects profoundly on the psyche of the man who killed himself. The danger is in using it as a Rosetta stone, the interpretive key to all questions about his life and work. That danger is amplified by viewing the drama of suicide, which is a socially determined phenomenon, as a reflection of the personality of the person who suicided. That is to say, in our culture, suicide is an inherently dramatic act, but that does not mean that people who kill themselves do so because they are embracing those dramatic elements. That drama, like funerals, is for the living. Suicide can certainly be a highly public statement, one enacted for maximal visibility and notoriety. But more often suicide is intensely private, indeed perhaps the most solitary of all acts, representing a complete withdrawal into the self. I stress this because, however the act was “intended” (and indeed it can be an impulsive act with, at best, highly compromised intentionality), in its aftermath it becomes a public phenomenon, seized upon by an often-gaping public. And thus the danger of suicide for one’s legacy, because however private the motivations, it becomes the most immediate and pervasively public piece of that legacy; a place that otherwise, in the case of Rothko, would have been held far more eloquently by his artwork. I noted earlier, in the case of songwriter Dar Williams’s piece, how even someone clearly sympathetic to my father’s work cannot resist making the suicide the focus of her or his interaction with Rothko. This tendency is hardly less prevalent among professionals: art historians who, aware of the public consciousness, no doubt feel compelled to comment on the suicide; filmmakers craving action amid all my father’s contemplation; and mental health practitioners, who see in my father’s art and life inviting avenues for probing interpretation (and publications). I encountered one such psychiatrist in the context of a lecture he had been invited to give at the then-new Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The two of us ultimately had a respectful and fruitful exchange of ideas on art and suicide and Rothko, but it did not begin so well. Engaged to speak on a specific Dalí work, he almost lost sight of the artist of the moment, so preoccupied did he become by a tangential connection to Rothko’s suicide. As he had been one of three authors of a journal article from two decades before, “Mark Rothko’s Paintings . . . Suicide Notes?”5 it is perhaps not surprising that he was tempted in this direction. It became clear, however, that he was not simply lured, he was overwhelmed by my

father’s suicide. The Dalí painting in question, a typical cocktail of conundrums and contradictions, titled Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln—Homage to Rothko, received only rudimentary discussion—so too the esteemed president. His focus, instead, became Rothko, as defined by his suicide, an artist mentioned only tertiarily and cryptically by Dalí at the end of the title. Such sway did the suicide hold for the lecturer that he unwittingly wrestled the “Homage” into an elegy, while proceeding to place a Rothko painting on the cover page of his PowerPoint presentation rather than the Dalí painting he was hired to discuss. It almost goes without saying that he saw Rothko’s paintings as a series of foreshadowings of the tragedy to come. Rothko’s work became the victim of his own suicide, here abetted by a mental health professional—one who may have had a vested interest in the subject but who should also have had the discipline to find more nuanced and multiply determined understandings. And let us not forget Dalí, whose artwork was ignored in favor of Rothko’s suicide, and whose appreciation of Rothko’s work was left aside. Whatever meaning it had to him was apparently superfluous. The Allure of Fear We focus so readily on suicide because it frightens us to our very core. So foreign and so close to home. Something we cannot imagine and which we can imagine too readily. The object so repulsive we cannot resist looking at it. In some ways our disposition to look at what is most forbidding parallels my father’s emphasis on the tragic, an emphasis itself often misunderstood. That emphasis was not manifested in a preoccupation with doom or a moribund shadow cast over all he painted. His was a much more existential view, and a deeply humanistic one. Simply stated, what binds us all, at core, is that we are born and that we die. As humans our first and most essential task, one that we all engage in, consciously or not, is to is search for an understanding of the miracle and mystery that is life, colored by the knowledge that in the end, we will die. Death is always on the horizon, and the fear of our mortality leads us to all manner of often elusive quests for control of our fates—is this not one of religion’s most basic functions? Suicide, ironically, puts some control of death back in our hands, but that thought is more threatening still, for are we truly in control if we would throw away the awesome gift of life? And we wonder what a suicide’s life must be like—what we would be like—to make such a choice, if it is indeed a choice when one reaches that point. Suicide fascinates and frightens, attracts and repels; a part of us wants to touch it, to know what it is like, even as we know that it will burn.

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This preoccupation with that which most disturbs us is reflected in the seemingly limitless tide of horror and violence in the majority of popular films made today. Treatment of even the most gentle themes is apparently incomplete without it. Somehow we feel compelled to watch all manner of horrific things we would never want any part of ourselves. And this circles back to one of my previous points: suicide touches our psyches in a truly profound place, but we turn it into theater. In the public imagination, it falls in the realm of show and pyrotechnics, and it obscures our view of the art—Rothko’s art—and even the man who painted it. These Technicolor trappings undercut our ability to look directly at our own mortality and its impact on our lives. That sense of mortality—this is what Rothko meant by the “tragic.” This is where he wants us to look. His paintings are so simple because he has stripped away the spectacle; we must face, fully frontal, the wonder and sorrow that is human existence. Even if, in the end, we may ask why he was not able to face it any longer, this does not excuse us from engaging with those elemental questions as directly as possible. They are there whether we will look or not. And Rothko would have us look. Rothko’s work, with its focus on the cycle of life and death, propels us unflinchingly toward the existential, a very uncomfortable place for most people to sit quietly. As a counterbalance, we grope for concrete artifacts and history to foster understanding of his abstract world, seeking to fill the painter’s void from outside rather than from within ourselves. And Rothko’s suicide fills that need readily, even as it raises myriad existential questions and fears of its own. Focusing on Rothko’s suicide becomes the more comfortable option—it tells of someone else’s struggle with death, not our own. The suicide distracts, ultimately, because it tempts us to look at Rothko, not ourselves. The artwork, we must remember, is not about him (or by extension his suicide). It is an invitation—a demand—to consider and experience our place in the universe. Our place—not Rothko’s. But the suicide pulls us away and makes us wonder about his relation to that world. It is far too easy to turn the mirror from our own faces to his. The Threat of the Abyss

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Had my father killed himself at any point in his career, it would have significantly disrupted our interaction with his work. The form and substance of Rothko’s classic work, however, greatly magnify the difficulty. For when an artist produces works that for many resemble a blank slate, and then amplifies the mystery through suicide, he has courted, wittingly or unwittingly, an instinctual

response; a nearly requisite filling of the void with the drama of his death. My father’s work is challenging enough on its own terms, its seeming emptiness potentially intimidating and demanding explanation.6 How natural, indeed almost logical, to view that apparent abyss as a psychological abyss, and specifically Rothko’s personal abyss. To do so provides great relief, moving us outside of ourselves and toward the concrete, providing the narrative we crave when presented with uncertainty. The classic works pose the promise and the threat of drawing us in irrevocably. The suicide, in turn, reverberates with us so alarmingly because we can imagine that this is where the paintings lead. My father’s end creates urgency to jump back from the edge; for safety, but also to release ourselves from the challenging work of wrestling with his art and what it may help us understand about ourselves. Through his suicide, Rothko created the biggest possible distraction for all who would see his painting clearly—an event that shouts much louder than his paintings speak, at least in the moment. His art’s meaning manifests itself slowly and in concentrated, private conversation. It is easily submerged by a wave of spectacle. My father’s act inserts itself between the painting and the viewer, creating clamor where there should be silence. The suicide was a terrible miscalculation for an artist who had labored continually to foster intimacy with his viewer. Similarly, his tragic end refocuses our gaze from the forever, where he would have us look, to a very specific and unfortunate moment in time. These are clear indicators that Rothko’s suicide was not, in fact, the type that involved calculation. If he could have maintained his focus beyond the immediate, he would have. It would have greatly aided ours. What the Paintings Tell Us My essential point remains that our fascination with Rothko’s suicide has only peripheral connection to Rothko. It has to do with us: not with the particulars of our own lives and psyches but with the basic existential needs and concerns common to all human beings. We become fixated on suicide because it is forbidden and frightening and therefore we must look. There is little to suggest that my father was preoccupied with the subject or that he treated it or its precursors in his art. My father’s health deteriorated throughout the 1960s, and rapidly so in the last two years of his life, following his aneurysm and diagnosis of advanced emphysema. Whatever we may glean about my father’s suicide, seeing it in the context of a man who was withering away, it would be a fundamental mistake

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to assume that this wasting applied to his artwork as well. In fact, if we look at the works from the last two years of his life, the evidence is entirely to the contrary. There is a flurry of activity, many levels of change, and near the end, a renaissance in his work that belies his depression and deterioration. It is possible that as he approached the end of his career, my father grew less certain about the power of art to bring real change. His late work solicits the viewer less actively, even as it requires more attention to be heard. It needs more, and it gives less. Rothko’s ideas about the power of art may have shifted, but this did not translate into disillusionment with his own process of painting. He continued to strive and develop, to seek new and even more distilled means of expression, new routes on his pursuit of eternal truths. His late paintings are indeed a new beginning, not a dead end that deepened his depression and sealed his fate, as a few of his colleagues and some writers have suggested.7 Here is the painted evidence. From the time of his aneurysm in early 1968 to his death in February 1970, Rothko painted more paintings than during any other comparable two-year stretch in his career. This despite his ill health and heavy drinking, the crumbling of his marriage of twenty-four years, and his deep depression (about which, I can assure you, there was not a whiff of mania, despite what some psychobiographical bloggers would have you believe. If you ever feel that your day has been too quiet and peaceful, please engage me on the subject of posthumous psychiatric diagnoses). Initially restricted by his doctor to painting small works on paper, my father proceeded to defy medical advice and make the necessity of working on paper a virtue by pushing the boundaries of the medium farther than he ever had before. After producing well over one hundred small paintings, he went on to create many large works, using a wide variety of papers and paints, mixing different acrylics and temperas in what was clearly a forward-looking quest to explore the expressive limits of these media. When he eventually returned to painting on canvas as well in 1969, he continued his experimentation with acrylics, producing, for the first time in his career, canvases painted exclusively in that medium. This hardly seems like the course of an artist who has lost all hope and is simply resigned to death. His explorations went even further in the formal realm. In 1969 he began work on his final series on canvas, the Black and Grey paintings. These dispensed with the background color on which his forms had floated for the previous twenty years and brought his two rectangles into direct juxtaposition at an unmediated horizon line. Replacing the soft “frame” of the background color was a stark white border that recessed the forms and flattened the picture

fig. 75 untitled, 1969

plane. Although the paintings were still identifiable as “Rothkos,” the changes were not subtle and represented a major step for the artist (forward, he hoped). At the same time that he was working on these canvases, he embarked upon a similarly ambitious group of large Brown and Grey works on paper, which make many of the same formal leaps as their canvas siblings. Numerous commentators, both scholarly and popular, have noted the dark colors of the late works, and have equated these deep tones with my father’s depressive state, going so far as to see them as harbingers of the suicide. While I am quite happy to challenge this association between dark colors and depression, in the event, it is not really necessary. For at the same time, or even just after, my father was painting these dark works, he was painting another series of large works on paper, in light, almost pastel hues on a white background. So while my father’s palette did darken during the 1960s, it was by no means consistently dark, and at the very end, when he was at his most depressed, he was painting some of the softest and lightest works of his career (fig. 75; and see fig. 43).8 The color is not so alluringly sensual as in his paintings of the 1950s—he had learned definitively how to invite contemplation with

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even brightly colored paintings—but these late works are hardly the embodiment of an artist peering obsessively into the depths. They are instead perhaps the most palpable caution against reading art as biography—against seeing the progression of his art as a progression toward death. With all the variety of form and media and scale and color in the last years of Rothko’s output, there is ample evidence of an artist still actively engaged with his work. For me, however, the clearest sign of vitality in my father’s late work is the dramatic reappearance of the brush in the textures of his painting. It is a striking reawakening of an element that had been a hallmark of his signature works of the 1950s but that had long lain dormant, or rather quieted, in the service of other ends. Indeed, beginning in the late 1950s and progressing through the next decade, the presence of brushwork in Rothko’s surfaces had become less and less pronounced, to the point where it all but disappeared. The first hints of this renaissance come in some of the small works on paper of 1968, where the rectangles are often rendered from a single color, the paint thinned to a light, wispy wash that is alive with the action of brush and the artist’s hand. By the time he progressed to the larger formats of the Brown and Grey papers and Black and Grey canvases of 1969, the stroke had become as important as the color, with dynamic, gestural elements energizing the picture plane (see fig. 8). This is particularly striking in the canvases, where the weightiness of the monolithic black upper fields is directly challenged by the restless, churning movement permeating the grey just to the south. Greys that are, incidentally, suffused with color—yellows, pinks, blues, and ochers—that lends each work its own individual character within the series. I will not be so bold as to suggest what these paintings “mean.” Like all Rothko work, their specific meaning comes into being in each interaction with the viewer. I am not shy, however, in making clear what they do not mean. These are not the final closed windows of a man who has lost all faith in his painting. These are not the hollow echoes of earlier work from an artist who has simply given up. They are the products of an artist still actively striving to find meaning and connect to what is most human in the midst of his own personal struggle. And struggle—especially for this artist—is the very essence of an actively engaged mind and questing spirit. It is the stuff from which great art is made. The Black and Grey paintings, and the ethereal works on paper that accompanied them, are testaments to an artist who is resigned to nothing, who is in fact pushing his boundaries ever farther. Undeniably anxious about his new works, worried about their reception, questioning the very steps he was taking,

fig. 76 installation photo, fondation beyeler, basel (2004)

my father remained resolute enough to paint them, to make them large, and to make them numerous. I return, in the end, to the memory of the Black and Grey room I saw in Basel, populated by some of Rothko’s very last canvases; a room that most felt would be too dark and too laden with the shadow of death. But even from the doorway my expectations were swept away, for I could see that the room was filled—with light (fig. 76). It was not the incandescence of a single canvas that one finds in the 1950s work but the cumulative glow created by an environment of these late works in communion with one another. Each had its own particular tone that it added to the chords created from the six voices, but together they sang to a vital engagement not with death but with life. Yes, that view of life was tinged with a keen awareness of the inevitable end, but these works affirmed that life remains life up until the very last minute. These paintings sang not of surrender to death but instead of a life, even in dark moments, passionately lived.

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In 2003 I was invited to a centennial celebration for my father in his hometown of Dvinsk (now Daugavpils), Latvia. Once a prosperous small city at the hub of intersecting railways connecting the Russian Empire to Western Europe, the town today boasts chiefly the rusted remains of Soviet-era industry and decades of neglect. Largely populated by Russians who immigrated during Soviet times, it is struggling to find an identity in a reborn Latvian nation where ethnic Latvians and their capital, Riga, hold economic and political power. Only Latvian speakers may vote, and apparently only Latvian rivers may flow, the broad and gentle river Dvina (Russian) quietly accepting its transformation to the Daugava (Latvian), and the city named for it meekly following suit. It is a town I doubt my father, who emigrated at age ten, would have recognized, not only because of its changed name and physical face (a Lukoil station sprawls today where his apartment building once stood), but also because essentially no Jews remain. Once constituting more than one-third of the city’s population of nearly 70,000,1 they have been scattered to the winds or to unmarked mass graves, leaving just an elderly remnant of some four hundred Jewish souls. My sister and I toured the city, which, despite its reduced state at that time, was not without charm. A tiny onion-dome church survives in a green square near the center of town, seemingly thumbing its nose at its much newer and larger cousin that looms on the outskirts of the city. The sense of repose offered by the simply adorned city park near the government buildings was not particularly disturbed by the tattered remnants of Daugavpils’ industrial workforce. These men mostly stared into space, seemingly too lost to engage in cards or conversation with their fellows, while the women largely ran the town. It was September when we visited, and the apples that would have filled my father’s birthday pie (a long family tradition, as he hated cake) were hanging from the trees.

A genuinely handsome brick building housed the city museum, whose leaky roof undercut what ambitions its meager government stipend allowed. The director was both bright and personable, but the huge collection of cigarette butts in her ashtray spoke to the uphill battle she must constantly fight just to open her doors. On the edge of the city stood the moss-covered ramparts of the fortress built to turn back Napoleon. The fact that he simply marched his army around them was perhaps a testament to their strength. These sights were periodically punctuated with the screech of tarnished 1950s-era streetcars, which clutched desperately at the remaining traces of track traversing the patchwork of asphalt and cobblestone covering the streets. The capital of Latgalia, a small mixed ethnic region not historically belonging to Latvia, Daugavpils appeared still in search of a clear place on a map that was ever-shifting. Much has been made about the influence of the expansive Latvian landscape on the mind of the young Rothko. More than one scholar has seen the profound sense of space emanating from my father’s decidedly planar compositions as reflecting the expansive environs of his childhood. It is true that there is little to block the vistas in this land plowed smooth by glaciers, and also true that its far northern perch does yield a misty, diffuse quality to the light during much of the year. Colors, based on my limited experience, are slightly muted and powdery rather than glistening in character. Tempting as it may be to link the Latgalian scenery to Rothko’s pictorial form, there is ultimately little to support the connection. If terrain is such a strong determinant of composition, would we not expect a proportionally greater sense of space from Jackson Pollock, whose Wyoming upbringing provided even bigger sky than Rothko’s? And what of Rothko’s twenty years of figurative painting, much of which is marked by dramatically enclosed, even oppressive spaces? If this is my father’s Latvian soul yearning for space in the cramped urban confines of New York, what is it that suddenly allows him to rediscover his childhood in the 1950s, a decade whose many new skyscrapers cast shadows all over the island of Manhattan? Why would this be the moment when he seems to transcend the barriers of physical space in his painting? So forgive me if I did not feel I was unlocking a key point of entry into my father’s classic work as I trod the streets of his early childhood. I did not sense that in the Latvian landscape I was finally in the presence of the wellspring of his pictorial imagination. Not that I think artists are by any means immune to such influences; witness the many Scandinavian composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose awareness of the natural beauty around them positively suffuses their music. I simply did not recognize in those Baltic plains, any

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more than I do in the hills of Portland, Oregon, the broad spaces of his classic painting. Despite the other influences in his life, my father remained a decidedly urban painter, and when vistas open in his work, they speak to me of a journey not of sight or body but of mind and spirit, bursting free of their limits. And yet what a thrill to walk the avenues and byways that he must have crossed in his childhood. Here, for once, I could engage with my father simply as a human being, not as the creator of painting X or drawing Y. Here I could add another piece to the puzzle that is the biography of Mark Rothko. And of course the piece did not fit. It did not make sense in any expected or logical way. His childhood environment did not immediately shed light on his development as a painter or shine out as a source of inspiration. It merely added to the seemingly random amalgam of facts and events and places and actions and experiences that come together to make a human being. These elements grate against one another; they are discordant and contradictory if you try to abut them and order them into a sensible entity. I have learned that you must treat them as a gestalt, and then they become purely additive and can make a satisfying whole. As I took in the sights of Daugavpils, I did not believe that I had discovered the essential Latvian element in my father’s persona. Instead I heard my father saying, “Yes, that was me in Latvia, just as it was me in Portland, and me in New York, and me in New Haven. Well, perhaps that was not truly me in New Haven . . .” What became clear to me was that his essential humanness, his innate Rothko-ness, remained constant across dramatic changes in surroundings and government, social milieu and geography. He was, at heart, a man who defined himself, someone whose inner life was far richer, far more compelling to him, than his environs. Our hosts eventually conducted us to a low-slung yellow-brick movie theater cum auditorium, still labeled kino in Russian. Unprepossessing on the outside, it was enormous on the inside, with a capacity that must have approached two thousand people. This is where the Rothko symposium would be held, playing, remarkably, to an essentially full house for the entire two-day stretch; an accomplishment even more striking given that the majority of those attending were listening through headsets to translations made on the fly about an artist whose work they had probably never seen. Quite a contrast to audiences that only occasionally top one hundred people for art lectures at major art museums in the United States. An impressive roster of speakers graced the program, many of them foremost Rothko experts and all of them having traveled long distances for minimal or no compensation. Assembled by Farida Zalitelo, a young literary scholar

turned civic historian turned Rothko fanatic, they had dutifully come, perhaps out of a sense of occasion or curiosity about Rothko’s roots, or simply because they were unable to resist Farida’s infectious enthusiasm and dogged insistence. All of these factors had brought me there, along with the US ambassador to Latvia, Brian Carlson, whose tireless wife, Marcia, seemed in competition with Farida for sleepless months preparing for the events. In typical fashion I too had spent countless hours making all ready—writing the lecture, creating painting reproductions for the historical museum, providing biographical and archival material—and yet I had come largely because I felt I should, interested to see my father’s birthplace but not overly eager, only partly conscious of the momentousness of the occasion. It was not until I was up on the podium that I fully realized I was speaking on what would have been my father’s hundredth birthday, in the city of his birth, about artwork he could not have imagined making at the tender age when he left. That lecture, which I revisit in the first essay in this book, was seminal in changing my relationship to my father. More accurately, giving that lecture when and where I did marked a point where I no longer simply participated in Rothko events; I became a central part in driving and shaping them. Within months, I was at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, lecturing again and helping relaunch the small Rothko exhibition that accompanied the Latvian centennial celebration, serving with my sister as Rothko ambassadors to the other country that claimed him. The spring took me to Houston and the Rothko Chapel, where my sister, Kate, and I discussed the centennial and our father’s career, both privately and in a public presentation. My connection to the chapel has remained constant since that time, and I have served on the board since 2004. That year also saw me edit and publish my father’s book of philosophical writings, an undertaking that brought me closer to him than anything since our early years together. And throughout that year, the seeds of this volume were nourished. Though most of the essays had been conceived abstractly in the year or two before, they germinated with the power of intent stemming from that first journey “home.” My visit to Daugavpils also refocused my attention on my father’s relationship to his own heritage, and specifically to his Jewishness. Decidedly of the melting-pot generation, my father claimed to speak no Russian, Yiddish, or Hebrew, despite living in Dvinsk until he was ten and attending cheder (Jewish religious elementary school) during much of that time. His assertion was certainly not true, but it indicated an essential rejection of his Old World self, a disavowal of connection to his childhood and religion. The youngest child of an otherwise manifestly secular family, he alone was subject to what he found the

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fig. 77 prayer books, synagogue, daugavpils, latvia (2003)

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unwelcome byproducts of his father’s late religious awakening. And when at the age of ten he found himself a solitary mourner, sent alone by his family every morning to recite the Kaddish in memory of his recently deceased father, his resentment boiled over. He vowed never to set foot in a synagogue again, and to the best of my knowledge he kept his pledge. Although still attached to his cultural and ethnic identity, he proceeded to marry a gentile woman (the second time round)—Mary, no less—name his son Christopher, and create a body of artwork unequivocal in its quest for the universal. This brief sketch of Rothko’s rapport with Judaism was the received wisdom I had lived with and which had always dominated my thinking about him and his background. But now, in the midst of his birth city, I began to wonder anew. We met with Sofia Myerova, the woman who functioned as the unofficial shepherd of the Daugavpils Jewish community. She brought us to the one synagogue that remained of the forty-three that had once stood. There she lifted the seats of the pews to reveal dozens of crumbling prayer books, many printed more than one hundred years before, lying now unquiet, like so many desiccated bones in wooden caskets (fig. 77). “These must be buried,” my wife insisted, citing a centuries-old tradition of disposal of ritual objects. Sofia shook her head. “I have buried far too many people. I cannot bury anything more.” Later she took us to a killing field discovered a decade or so before, filled with the bones of the Jews herded there to be shot in 1941. The tiny Jewish community had paid for the small Holocaust memorial that now stands near the site. The Soviet-era Latvian regime would contribute nothing more than a distant stone marker dedicated, vaguely, to “the victims of fascism.”

The Jews here were never insiders in any true sense. After all, their presence in the Baltic region was a function of a thrust into the Pale of Settlement by the Russians in the late eighteenth century. Allowed neither to own land nor serve in government, the Jews always had a marginal status, the mantle of an uninvited guest hard to shrug off. And yet sheer numbers must have given them at least some illusion of influence and control. The shift to the status of first outsiders and then the hunted was certainly dramatic if not overly sudden. Pogroms became more and more common throughout neighboring regions, starting in the late nineteenth century, while the Jews’ allegiance to socialist ideology and activism certainly did not make them popular with local officials. With this strong scent of unrest in the air, my father’s family joined one of several waves of emigration from the area, fleeing conscription into the tsarist army perhaps as much as it fled the Cossacks. In this context I began to question how my father would have felt about the centennial celebration held in what was once his hometown. For it was not only the Nazis and the Soviets—as was the case in so much of central and Eastern Europe, local citizens were also active participants in eradicating their Jewish neighbors. And only in Poland and Lithuania was an equally high percentage (approximately 90 percent) of the Jewish population killed during the Holocaust.2 Given this history, how welcome would my father have been here? How infinitesimal was the likelihood that Marcus Rotkovich would have survived to paint, had he remained in the motherland? In striking contrast to this harrowing and all-too-recent history was the reception we received in Daugavpils. Our bus was met at the city gate by a twenty-strong choir of the most angelic children, bedecked in traditional peasant costumes, their hair woven in braids and many bearing bouquets of flowers (fig. 78). They welcomed us with song, local beer, salt, and a pretzel-type bread typical of the area. We met with the city council, each member wearing a smile that warmed the room. We had an audience with the mayor, who made an effort to maintain the high seriousness of her office when she first met us but who soon succumbed to mothering us, making sure we had enough to eat and had tried all the local delicacies at the various meals in our honor. We proceeded by motorcade to the east bank of the Daugava, where a large black open steel sculpture— an homage to my father—stood as a sentinel by the river. With brass bands and abundant speeches we celebrated its installation and dedicated it to their cherished native son. And the banquet that followed the symposium, held in what I imagine was a rather lonely but still grand civic ballroom dusted off for the occasion, was unlike any I have seen. Anyone who was someone in southeast Latvia—

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fig. 78 children’s choir at city gate, daugavpils, latvia (2003)

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and quite a few who were not—was there. The food covered countless tables in rich tableaux of harvest colors, the arrangements sculpted into physics-defying contours that reached boldly for the ceiling thirty feet above. For the people of Daugavpils, Mark Rothko was a hero—their hero—and my sister and I were his emissaries. Was it genuine? It certainly felt genuine. The warmth of the public was infectious, and their embraces made me feel at home, not uneasy. And though everyone loves a party, lectures are typically a tougher sell; still, the numbers in the auditorium compared favorably to those in the banquet hall. But Mark Rothko was a Jew, and one who turned his back on Latvia at the age of ten, never to return—hardly the stuff of which Latvian heroes are typically made. Were the Latvians desperate? The easy answer is yes. There are almost no Latvians whose names are known beyond the country’s borders (although that is rapidly changing in the world of classical music). The best alternative to Rothko were other Jews—Isaiah Berlin, Sergei Eisenstein—or Mikhail Baryshnikov, an ethnic Russian whose youth in Riga was wholly the product of Soviet control over their state. Like Rothko, Baryshnikov departed early, returning only many years later. And if the Latvians, generally, were yearning for a hero for their newly reborn nation, the disenfranchised Daugavpudlians were doubly so, ready to pull out any stop to divert some attention from the capital.3 The gun may be smoking, but I am not admitting it as evidence. Despite the circumstantial indices of insincerity, I was truly convinced by the people of Daugavpils. They had embraced Mark Rothko. Would they have preferred it if

he were not a Jew? Probably, but his ethnicity did not seem an impediment to evolving plans to shape much of the city’s identity around his legacy. Discussion had already begun in 2003 of the Mark Rothko Arts Centre—part museum, part education center—and I recently learned that the long-planned airport will also bear his moniker, particularly ironic for a man who refused to fly. Most convincing, however, was the town’s reaction to our work to renovate the one remaining synagogue, beginning in 2004. My sister, our spouses, and I collaborated with the Jewish community there to refresh the building that serves not only as their place of worship but also as an essential social center, meeting space, and even soup kitchen. Although the town officials had not received a cent from us for projects that might have felt more pressing to them, they fully embraced our undertaking, threw another lavish banquet, and this time succeeded in luring the president from Riga to preside. Meanwhile all sat quietly at the rededication as the head of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad castigated them at thirty minutes’ length for their complicity in the Holocaust. Case closed. If Rothko père and fils seem to have gotten lost in this exploration of contemporary Latvia, it is only superficially so. For the issues raised by renewing Rothko links to Latvia continue to surface in many other places relevant to my father’s oeuvre. Much of my sister’s and my work with our father’s legacy has involved adapting to Rothko’s burgeoning presence as a public figure and, in essence, helping his work adapt to the changes in public perception. As he becomes recognized and embraced by a wider and wider audience (“A Rothko in every pot,” I used to say), segments of society who had never heard his name fifteen years ago now see his paintings on postage stamps, on billboards, and decorating the homes and offices of the power brokers, the jet set, or, occasionally, the wealthy-but-hip on both television and the big screen. The decisions we now make about where to hold exhibitions or print publications are less concerned with raising consciousness about Rothko and more about making available, more broadly, a cultural commodity that is considered desirable, a priori. Yes, I work to broaden the Rothko palate and foster a more deeply savored experience, but the primary effort is no longer simply to get people in the door. What becomes a far more central task is to anticipate people’s perceptions and preconceptions about the paintings, and particularly the artist. For much as my sister and I are caretakers of the artwork, equally important is our role as protector of Rothko’s persona. The way people think about the man profoundly affects the way they see the work and will often dictate, consciously or not, their experience of his painting. Stick a life-size effigy of Rothko in front of a canvas,

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and not only is it hard to see much of the art but what one does see becomes simply a background that in turn colors one’s view of the artist. Hence the dangers of letting that persona overinflate, replacing the paintings themselves as the artist’s mouthpiece. With work that can suggest a tabula rasa, where emptiness is a frequent misunderstanding, the presence of too much biography and too much mystique can camouflage the subtlety of what my father painted. In this sense, as I have intoned before, Rothko’s work is fragile, easily overwhelmed by a deluge of press, of pseudo history, of commercialization. With these concerns in mind, negotiating how Rothko is presented in Latvia becomes not simply a matter of personal politics and preferences but one that also affects how Rothko is more broadly perceived. Should we let our father’s Jewish name be so closely associated with a country whose anti-Semitism was paraded all too concretely just a generation before? Should we show his work in Germany—which, after thirty years’ hesitation, we did, in Munich and Hamburg in 2008—when that country was the driving force behind the Holocaust? Is it appropriate to show the work of a Jewish artist in these countries, or is the question not germane for a painter who did not want to be identified specifically as a Jewish artist? These are political decisions that affect Rothko’s persona, but they are also decisions that involve my father’s feelings and his own sense of self. My sister and I always try to remain sensitive to his wishes, both as a filial duty and from repeated verification that he generally knew what was best for his paintings. Yet the two examples I have chosen, Latvia and Germany, are particularly tricky because my father went on record about them. He mused once, late in life, that he would love to have an exhibition in his native country, while at the same time he famously rejected an overture for an exhibition in Germany that, as a Jew, he could not pursue in good conscience, offering instead to create a small chapel for the victims of the Holocaust.4 Here we had clear choices dictated by our father, and yet we found ourselves second-guessing him. He rejected Germany, but did he know the degree of the atrocities committed locally by Latvians or in Russia by the Soviets? Would he have approved of centennial celebrations in Daugavpils and St. Petersburg? Could these places really still claim him as a (Jewish) son? Nor could he have known that Germany would come to have the largest holdings of his artwork, both private and public, outside the United States, while at the same time undertaking more in the way of education and reparations than any of the other nations involved in the Holocaust. Should we simply follow his lead with a country that was clearly in love with his work and which was not afraid to acknowledge him as a Jew?

These are decisions with very public consequences, ones that catch Rothko up in decidedly thorny social and moral questions. It is not enough that my sister and I know my father’s politics and remain cognizant of the choices he made in his lifetime. It is essential that we let ourselves feel what our father would have wanted, and what would have been true to his persona. The judgments and considerations I have discussed are undoubtedly areas where family lore and knowledge of my father’s life play a bigger role than some others, but in the end, it is ultimately the interaction with the paintings that tells us most. They speak most clearly about the type of person he was, intimating the more private parts of him that permeate through any elements of rhetoric involved in his work and in the way he presented himself. The more we take in his artwork, the more that effigy superimposed from the outside fades away while a more fully rounded human figure develops to take its place. In the end, at least with Rothko, it is the paintings that make the man. 2013—A Celebratory Coda Despite the developments of the last few years, I have kept the core of this essay intact. Written initially in 2010, it reflected struggles and deliberations of great significance more honestly than if viewed retrospectively through the lens of unexpected good fortune. Even if the last few years have answered—satisfactorily—many of those haunting questions I have catalogued, they have not erased them. Neither have these years undercut the importance of working through such questions, especially now in the light of a success that could all too easily be perceived as unmitigated and uncomplicated. For indeed, the first sight of Daugavpils’s Mark Rothko Arts Centre can readily sweep away all reservations (fig. 79). This new/old edifice, which has shaken off a rather checkered past, exceeds the superlatives that have been heaped upon it. Housed in what began life as an eighteenth-century garrison building, the museum exudes the grandeur and elegance of old Europe. Inside it is light, open, and modern, its long halls of small arched galleries proceeding in a natural rhythm that invites the visitor to enter and participate in its narrative. Each gallery offers a reason to tarry, sometimes as an aside, sometimes as a part of a cumulative discussion moderated by the exhibition. Few museum spaces offer such a compelling dialectic between forward impulse and leisurely consideration. Few are so solicitous of the viewer or so pleasant to stroll through. While the building immediately wins one’s admiration, the program is hardly less satisfying. Refreshingly, Rothko is not its primary focus, as the museum’s first commitment is to the arts of the region; region, here, incorporating

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Latvia but also Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and parts of Russia, the historically fluid borders of the area lending a strong sense of connection between the art of these various nations. And while a historical orientation is necessarily part of the mission, the exhibitions also often feature the decidedly contemporary, with work not simply of living artists but of artists invited for residencies, a core feature that predates the museum itself (although the building now provides magnificent facilities in which they may stay and work). The one room of Rothko paintings is hung with rotating works loaned from the Rothko family. It is flanked by a Rothko biographical room which contains—most satisfyingly for us—documentation on the once-vibrant, now vanished Jewish culture of the region. This room, which we did not request, goes some distance toward assuaging some of the misgivings we had about reconnecting the Rothko name to Latvia. In truth, so too did the remarkable dedication of the people involved in the Arts Centre project as well as that of the popularly elected local government. Little more than a pipe dream when first put forward at the time of the centenary celebration, the museum has, improbably, been realized despite overwhelming financial odds and at best minimal

support from the capital. Farida Zalitelo was tireless in her pursuit of this apparent holy grail. She initiated the project as a committee of one, but she rallied many to her side. In the end, she and the city overcame countless obstacles— economic, political, and social—to create a lasting legacy for Daugavpils, Latgalia, and, yes, Mark Rothko. It was a remarkably large and daring venture for an impoverished municipality in a fledgling nation. Did they do so for the betterment of their city, its perception, its status in the nation, its economy? Without question—to do anything else would have been a breach of their civic duties. Were they banking on the capital of Rothko’s fame? Of course, for otherwise, who would have noticed? Ultimately, however, whatever the hard-fought gains that drove the process, Daugavpils embraced a Jew as its cultural standard-bearer, a symbol of the city and of Latgalia as a whole. The center provides hope, in an increasingly fractious world, that art can indeed heal wounds, that it can teach difficult lessons, that in the fullness of time, it can bring people(s) together.

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As I have asserted throughout this volume, interpretation of an artist’s work through the lens of biography will almost certainly distort its meaning. Not only is it oversimplistic and haphazard, since inevitably one is coming to conclusions based on only selected pieces of biographical information; it is also a lazy route that circumvents deep interaction with the artwork on its own terms. More crucially, interpretation based upon biography undercuts the very reason that we attend to artists—because they are artists. That is, their unique role is to create based on their vision of the world. We interest ourselves in what they make because of a basic faith, or at least curiosity, that they will have something unique and perhaps profound to say. To reduce artists’ work to a product of their biography is to essentially muzzle their voices and divorce their creative instinct from their hands. When we push biography to the forefront, we undercut the role of their artistic vision and doubt their ability to realize it. It is to see artists as simply involved in self-expression—expression of a self shaped by factors perhaps only marginally under their control.1 I believe every word of what I have just written, and yet I am about to turn my back on it entirely. Briefly. For even as I make great efforts in my writings to deflect attention from my father’s biography, I note that there is one important element in his life that is routinely overlooked: his courtship and marriage to my mother, Mary Alice (Beistle) Rothko (fig. 80). Although I am certainly conscious that a son may be all too ready to put forth his mother as the source of all inspiration and the remedy for all ills, the transformation in my father’s work in the six years between when he met my mother and when my sister was born is dramatic, resplendent, and undeniable. I will not suggest that the connections I draw here are causal. I will simply bring them to the reader’s attention. I am hardly the first to note that behind every great man is a woman, or to suggest that the woman’s contribution is

typically shortchanged. I will, however, do a bit here to try to right that balance. And having written about my father for more than 250 pages, could I, in good conscience, not include a brief essay about my mother? No indeed; that good conscience would have gotten the better of me. Better known to the world as Mell, my mother was the maverick of her family. The second child of a middle-class Cleveland family, she took great pleasure in squabbling with her strict, if loving, father, a self-made businessman of Pennsylvania Dutch origins. She demonstrated an early gift with watercolor and with pastel, and was illustrating her mother’s nationally published children’s books by the age of thirteen. The publisher soon asked her to produce work for the books of other authors in their stable. Although she went dutifully, at her parents’ insistence, to Skidmore College, which had a reputation in those times of a “finishing school,” she majored in art and moved to New York City upon completing her degree. Not, I think, what her father had most in mind. Here she worked as a commercial artist, most notably producing covers for those great scholarly journals True Confessions and True Stories. Mell was introduced to my recently divorced father by the photographer Aaron Siskind at a party, and reported to her family soon after that she was dating a Russian. One can imagine her little sister’s disappointment upon meeting my father, having expected a dashing Cossack in full regalia. Although they raised her

fig. 80 mark and mary alice (mell) rothko (1952/53)

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in a substantially Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland, it is unlikely that my mother’s family anticipated her marrying a Jew, much less a foreigner. Her artwork had always been encouraged, especially by her delightfully eccentric mother, but no one had thought it would lead to such skewed life decisions. It is hardly more likely that my mother could have anticipated her choice. Nearly two decades older, Jewish, and impecunious at best, my father represented a dramatic break with the middle-class world in which she was raised. He offered intellectual capital, but very little of the comfortable surroundings she had known. While it is not apparent that she ever had a penchant for “fine art,” my mother’s talent was clearly ample. It remains a great disappointment to my sister and me that she abandoned her career when she became a mother. Whether this was a reflection of my father’s Old World values, her Middle American ones, or an intersection of the two, she became strictly a homemaker and mother, producing only the occasional greeting card or Halloween costume as expressions of her creativity. Whatever rebelliousness she showed at a young age dissipated after her admittedly brow-raising choice of partner was solidified in marriage in 1945. Eighteen years his junior, my mother certainly represented an antidote to Rothko’s domineering first wife, which is not to suggest, however, that she was especially deferential or subservient. What is clear is that she offered him a type of support, an unqualified love that gave him a secure base from which he could launch himself into the world. It is perhaps ironic that I am speaking of her relationship to him in essentially maternal terms when she was in fact so much younger, but my father was hardly unique among men in looking for a degree of mothering from his wife. Not always certain of himself as an artist, he needed solidity in his own home in order to muster more confidence in the world of art. That artistic confidence increased exponentially in the company of his new wife. My father’s first wife of seven years, Edith Sachar, had also been significantly younger than he (nine years). An artist in her own right, she voiced frequent frustration with my father’s lack of success, particularly in the context of the burgeoning sales of her jewelry designs. Possessed of a caustic tongue that endured well past her years with my father, she helped erode whatever belief he had in his own work.2 Sachar did not find anything romantic about their bohemian lifestyle and compelled her husband to help her with jewelry production rather than paint. Hardly a pioneering feminist accustomed to taking orders from a woman, and nurturing long-held beliefs about the marginal value of commercial art, my father found assisting his wife with jewelry the ultimate humiliation. It was one of the factors that drove him, finally, from their oftencontentious marriage.

However much Sachar may have undercut Rothko’s ability to paint and grow as an artist, I am not wholly unsympathetic to her. First of all, she was producing designs that were innovative and compelling, executed no doubt in the context of my father’s own unsympathetic attitude toward her work. Furthermore, given the volume of his output in the 1930s and early 1940s, my father must have spent virtually all the time that he was not teaching, painting. Considering the scant luxuries they enjoyed and my father’s nonexistent sales, this must have served as a persistent source of deep irritation. Their mutual frustration could only have been exacerbated by the presence of both their studios in their apartment, which left each constantly under the other’s microscope. Following their divorce, my father spent hardly a year as a bachelor, indicating that he was not particularly seeking freedom from marriage. Liberation from the Sachar sweatshop was another matter. To be out of those bonds was clearly a breath of fresh air for my father, one that was in no way choked off by so quickly “shackling” himself to my mother. She in turn appeared perfectly content with their minimal means and proved herself quite adept at freshening their home on the most meager budget. Her belief in his work and her belief in him lifted my father in a way that he may not previously have experienced. The impact of her buoying presence is readily seen in the rapid development of Rothko’s artwork. When Mark met Mell, he was painting in a neo-surrealist style, having slowly migrated from work tied closely to ancient mythology to much freer glosses on mythological themes. His paintings had become increasingly abstract, with biomorphic forms that recalled rather than represented the figures that populated the metaphysical landscapes. My father did not sign his works unless they had found a buyer—a rare thing in those times—and even then rarely dated them, so it is hard to know the exact sequence or alignment of his life and artistic events. As far as we can tell, 1944 did not constitute a moment of sudden stylistic changes but did represent a moment of flourishing productivity and new mastery. While watercolor on paper was a preferred medium starting in 1941, in 1944 there is suddenly a great flurry of activity, dozens of works washed in sensual color and invigorated with lithe and sinuous ink drawing (see fig. 4). These are among his most beautiful works and some of his finest as well, lacking only the enveloping communicative power of the sectional canvases of the next two decades. Are they exactly coincident with my mother’s arrival in his life? I do not think we will ever know; but if they do predate her, my mother’s presence certainly did nothing to damp their flow or their quality. On canvas, however, we do have one definite and delectable piece of documentation. Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (fig. 81) was painted for my mother

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during my parents’ brief courtship. Subtitled “Mell-Ecstatic,” it is on a scale entirely unprecedented in his oeuvre, eclipsing the previous largest canvas by a factor of three or more. An abstracted depiction of the two of them (we must assume) on a fantastical beach, it is the only “rendering” he will make of my mother and the last work that passes for a self-portrait. Yet for all the dynamic qualities of the figures, the viewer is ultimately more absorbed by their relation to the space around them, in which they seem to participate and yet from which they also float free. It is one of those magical places, a landscape of the mind, the type of unspace he will create in the best of his classic works. Slow Swirl is one of his greatest paintings, regardless of time or style. The curators at MoMA certainly seem to agree— while the strongest 1950s and ’60s Rothkos of their collection come and go from the walls, Slow Swirl almost always remains. And don’t even think about asking for a loan, no matter how formidable the exhibition you are planning! In the case of this one canvas, my mother’s influence is undeniable, but Slow Swirl is not the last of its kind. It was soon followed by Tiresias and Rites of Lilith, similarly ambitious works on a grand scale. These paintings are not tied to my mother in any tangible way, but something has clearly been freed in my father. On the most mundane of levels, he is unlikely to have had more money than before (in fact, he is likely to have lost some in his divorce), but he suddenly feels at liberty to spend it, investing in new materials, stretching himself economically so that he can stretch himself artistically. And there is also a new level of passionate communication in these works. Tiresias is a final, dramatic realization on canvas of a figure he had long sketched, and the import of whose history had clearly preoccupied him for some time. With Rites of Lilith we see a new and startling deconstruction of the human form and of the pictorial space, a breaking down that will accelerate in the coming months. It is a picture of great force, its energy pulsating with a hitherto unseen violence. Here I will explicitly break my taboo on biographically based interpretation and wonder if this depiction of the biblical Adam’s apocryphal first wife might have something to do with Rothko’s own, the pleasures and comforts of his new marriage throwing into sharp relief the miseries of his first. The presence of Mell may have allowed him to begin exorcising those demons. Within two years of meeting my mother, Rothko not only had become a bolder and more expressive painter but was also ready to take an essential stride forward. The dissolution we began to see in his compositions of 1945 became an active process, one not merely of breaking down but of constructing a new, fully abstracted stylistic language. By sometime in 1946 my father had rid his paintings of the last vestiges of figuration and had begun to paint what we now

fig. 81 slow swirl at the edge of the sea [mell-ecstatic] (1944)

call his Multiforms, untitled works that have shed all concrete ties to the world of myth and history and visual reality. The new freedom embodied in these works is striking, with their bold color palette, all-over frameless painted surface, boundary-pushing motion, and generally larger size. For reasons biographical or no, Rothko had the confidence to radically change his style and push his adventure much further into the unknown world. Rothko, the artist, however, was not alone. Virtually all the artists of the New York school underwent a similar transformation around this time. Just as Gottlieb and Pollock and Newman, among others, had adopted, at a minimum, some of the formal trappings of surrealism earlier in the decade, so did all these artists push fully into abstraction by the late 1940s. So homogeneous was this

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gravitation that it became the source of arguments and ultimately schisms within the school, most notably for this volume between Rothko, Newman, and Still. If only Rothko had told them, “I was not influenced by your work, I was simply inspired by my wife,” the history of twentieth-century American art might have been different . . . I offer this historical perspective to emphasize that in the 1940s, abstraction became the language of avant-garde American art; it was not my father’s discovery, with or without his new wife. That said, having my mother in his life at that critical juncture may have given him the energy and the self-assurance to push forward artistically when he might have otherwise hesitated and missed the moment. Rothko’s next big transformation comes in 1949, when, as the received myth would have it, his classic style sprang into being seemingly from the abyss. As you should now understand, having read this volume—you have been reading it, haven’t you?—my father’s work of the previous two and half decades had prepared him well for that step. In fact, the work we now call classic emerged as a very logical progression from the Multiforms before them. That said, a dramatic launch unquestionably occurs at this time, a devil-may-care embarkation on a voyage into uncharted, if enticing, waters. It is a moment of annunciation, a notable change in declamation, if not necessarily in what is being declaimed. Am I still crediting my mother as the source of inspiration, now four years after they were married? Most Californians would be twice divorced in that time. No, 1949–50 was the annus mirabilis for the New York school, the moment when all the painters we now remember made their big break and adopted their iconic styles.3 Rothko was both an intellectual engine and compositional pioneer in the movement, but he was clearly part of a movement, no matter how iconoclastically independent most of the members claimed to be. When I raise personal influences on my father at this time, it is thus not with the suggestion that they gave him the direction to move forward; it is more that they helped provide the impetus. For my father was notoriously self-doubting. As I suggest elsewhere, this is part of what makes him so palpably human—not an egomaniac announcing himself upon the canvas but a highly complex, highly emotive man wrestling with himself and somehow translating that into a single expression on the wall.4 Hence I look to the sources of devotion and sustenance in his life not for the content of what he says or even the language in which he says it. They were, instead, a source of nourishment for the unequivocal tone of his creative output. For my father’s work of the 1950s and ’60s is nothing if not full-voiced, wholly, at times painfully, sincere. It takes a great deal of resolve to convey such uncertainty with confidence.

The year 1950 provided my father not only the continued pleasure of his still-young marriage but the prospect of parenthood, with my sister, Kate, born at year’s end. At age forty-seven Rothko became a father for the first time, a source of great excitement at a moment when his artistic endeavors were clearly providing a good deal of satisfaction as well. The year he became a father was the year Rothko painted of some of his best-known works, the year America really began to notice. Coincidence? Perhaps. And yet I do wonder if my father’s flame would have burned so bright, when and for as long as it did, without these sources of emotional fuel. He was, after all, no more than a man. Lest the reader think that I am wholly without ego, I will suggest that 1963, the year I was born, marks the pinnacle of Rothko’s career as a painter (not necessarily as an artist); a year replete with deeply sensuous, emotionally fecund, dark canvases.5 In truth, the 1960s are a decade where it is much harder to read the influence of personal life upon my father. His marriage began to sour mid-decade, but he was at that point fully involved in the Rothko Chapel project, whose intellectual and spiritual rigors, voiced in a highly specific, formal language, isolated him a good deal from the realm of the personal. That isolation may have been a source for some of his marital conflict, but it would be difficult to decipher such things in the work. His subsequent depression and near-fatal illness further marginalized my mother’s role in his life, the two separating shortly after he recovered. Similarly, I am reluctant to interpret changes in his work in the last year and a half of his life to my mother’s absence. First, because they remained in daily, if limited, contact, but also because these were very complicated times for my father, with many other factors weighing on him. Thus I am inclined to attribute neither the comparative reticence of 1968’s works on paper nor his voluminous productivity during that time to my mother’s absence. It is simply too difficult to tease apart. To be fair, those seminal moments of the 1940s and ’50s are hardly less complex to analyze. I have not even mentioned, to this point, the horrors of World War II and the ensuing revelations about the Holocaust, which affected all the artists of my father’s generation. In the wake of those understandings, it would be hard to see the figure as an object of beauty, the human as any kind of embodiment of the divine. Abstraction may have been a natural response.6 Nor should we forget the wave of optimism that swept America in the wake of military victory and the economic resurgence that accompanied it. America had definitively assumed the mantle of leadership, and for the first time, this encompassed the arts as well. There can be little question that the artists of the New York school felt empowered by this groundswell and that the national spirit bolstered their resolve to realize the all-encompassing art they had only imagined before.

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Yet for all the sweep of history and popular trends, the influence of isms and culture around them, I still look to the individuality of these artists as the primary source of their creativity. That they were of their times cannot be questioned, and yet it is the deeply personal quality of what these artists have to tell us that makes their work unique, that makes it worth listening to, that ultimately makes it art. And certainly no one was more individual, more closely linked to his internal world, than my father. That was the source of his vision, the well from which he drew his expressivity. There were many influences upon that inner world, but no one who had such a direct point of entry as my mother. Mary Alice Rothko may not have provided the content of what my father painted, or directly influenced the style in which he did so, but she made it viable, made him believe he could say what he needed to say. Ultimately, she enabled him to paint it.

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I knew my father only until I was six, which is to say, hardly at all and yet profoundly and intimately. Undeniably the amount of detail I can bring to any description of his person or thoughts or behavior is thin. And yet, with the exception of my mother and sister, there is no one I knew better. We construct a picture both magical and strikingly concrete about the people in our early years. Communication, although often preverbal, is constant, and what we absorb through touch and smell and simply through observation is chiseled into the very root of our being. There is a concentrated way we get to know a parent as they occupy such a huge portion of our universe and our mental telescope does not yet focus so effectively beyond them. So while I can tell you far more about the traits and habits of my wife of twenty years, on some basic level I do not know her as well. If someone relates a story about her, I need to perform a brief but identifiable mental calculation to judge whether or not it is true. With my father, I know instantly. I may not be able to evaluate the particulars, but the essence of his behavior and of his character is readily at hand. In the next several pages I explore my at times tenuous, at times robust link to my father. My uncanny sense of when I know something is true about him (often) or not true about him (always) leads me to believe that my relationship to him has inherent and instinctive substance. What factor dna plays in that equation can be only a matter of conjecture. Core personality development occurs very early, and I am convinced my father played a major role in mine, sowing instincts and understandings that time and his absence have not undone.1 And yet my path to knowing my father in a more conscious way has been much like that of most who love his work—first and last through his paintings. The question I field most frequently from art lovers is whether or not my father and I discussed art. I remind them that I was only six, but in truth, my sister, who was a good deal older than me when our father died, did not have these dis-

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cussions either. Apparently my father did not think art was really germane to family life. That is not to say that my sister was never witness to such discussions, the most infamous a six-hour affair between our father and art historian Peter Selz in the back seat of a Fiat 500. My sixteen-year-old sister was somehow—somewhere— wedged between them. The debate centered on whether or not Piero della Francesca was the greatest artist of all time. The two men reportedly switched positions during the course of the argument. She has never told me who was right . . . Art did not feature in our conversations, but music did. Whether my father was merely responding to my inborn passion or nurturing it by expressing his own, music was certainly the most frequent topic of discussion between us, or at least the most memorable one. We spent so much time listening together that music came to form a type of instinctual bond between us; a language we both spoke comfortably, idiomatically, naturally. My father would sing too, most often in a supportive role to the musicians on the record but sometimes just wandering around the house or ambling down the street. His deep, round voice is burned in my memory probably more clearly than any visual images, polluted as those are by the many photographs I have seen. That voice was his other gift to me—as I have inherited it, unrecognizable though it often sounds to my own ears, echoing around inside my head. Although he quickly indoctrinated me in the virtues of his own personal pantheon of composers, my father did not breed a slavish follower. For him, Mozart was untouchable, but I preferred Schubert. More specifically, he thought Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet was the pinnacle of music, but I insisted Schubert’s Trout Quintet was finer, and did an interpretive dance to prove it. Since he was not much of a dancer, I think I won that round. I am not sure if a victor was declared in our great opera bout, Die Zauberflöte in his corner, Don Giovanni in mine. No matter, I knew I was right. Regardless of his occasional lapses in judgment, I remain indebted to my father for awakening my love for music and steering me to build a quality record collection—how many people still value and play the records they bought at age three? This also included the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, following my big sister’s example. I could never understand why my father was so repelled by them. It was good to have the contrarian voice of a teenage sister in the house. There it is—I have thrown my readers a bone. A gen-u-ine story from the Rothko household. As you will have noticed, slogging your way through this volume, I seldom, and indeed reluctantly, resort to the personal. Even in this most explicitly firsthand of essays, part of me is working hard to keep the discourse off that level. This disinclination is not a function of any heightened

sense of privacy on my part. It is simply that I do not find the personal very interesting, and I assume, as a result, that others do not either. I receive many assurances to the contrary and have been told that when I lecture, the audience really brightens up if I tell an anecdote (which I understand to mean, by extension, that people are generally dozing if I am not telling one). This, however, is not my own way of engaging with the world. I quickly grow impatient if people respond to a simple question with an extended story. Similarly, when reading the newspaper, I will skip multiple paragraphs of “human interest” to find the actual issue under consideration. I have not the least curiosity about how many miles Juana Doe walks each day to buy bison marrow supplements for her arthritic chihuahua. Why would the writer possibly begin the article this way? What could this woman possibly mean to any of us? And yet, having disavowed the relevance of the personal, I have proceeded to tell you more about my own attitudes than you probably have any interest in knowing. I do this, as ever, with an eye (actually two) to furthering your understanding of Rothko—not me, the other guy. For, as best as I can gather, my father had a similar relationship to the world. We are idea people, Dad and me, and not only do we gain minimal enjoyment from personal-level information, we tend to both disregard it and mistrust it. Such material is a distraction from broader principles, a seduction to things that provide empty entertainment, at best a thin, sweet coating on the mundane. My father would have had no comprehension of the appeal of a Twitter feed. Come to think of it, neither do I. We may live in the “information age,” but although we can send larger quantities of material faster than ever before, it is not clear that we have anything more to say. My apologies, I keep grabbing a soapbox—let me give my father the podium: Our own struggles, however, are individualized and remain our individual preoccupations, and in the main never connect to the stream of the infinite.2 We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.3

These quotes do not quite capture Rothko’s frequently caustic view of our culture’s preoccupation with personal trivialities, but they certainly make clear that he is swinging for deep philosophical fences. What matter to him are the generalized, abstracted truths rather than our private ones. Once we leave the philosophical level, we lose all too readily the essential idea in a morass of inconsequential specifics particular to an individual and his or her situation.

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Turning to Rothko’s seminal lecture at the Pratt Institute in 1958, we encounter an artist whose distaste for the personal extends to himself as well. He draws a clear distinction between expressing one’s self, which is the artist’s task in treating his or her subject matter, and an expression of self, which is likely to be beside the point if we are seeking real understanding: I have never thought that painting a picture has anything to do with self-expression. It is a communication about the world to someone else. . . . Knowing yourself is valuable so that the self can be removed from the process. I emphasize this because there is an idea that the process of self-expression itself has many values.4 What a personal message means is that you have been thinking for yourself. It is different from self-expression. You may communicate about yourself; I prefer to communicate a view of the world that is not [at?] all of myself. Self-expression is boring. I

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want to talk of [something nothing] outside of myself—a great scope of experience.5

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We see here the artist as intellectual, a man preoccupied with thought in the pursuit of essential truths. We should not equate intellectual with unemotional, however, as emotional understanding is part of the full expression of the artist’s subject.6 Rothko is distinguishing, instead, the intellectual pursuits he values from the social ones he finds vacuous. Expression of self, of purely personal information, does little to advance work toward greater clarity, and he finds it merely a hindrance in pursuing that end. We may surmise that this attitude about the personal was central in Rothko’s push toward abstraction, with its generalized emotional language and resolute focus on ideas. Yet it is reflected even in the figurative paintings from the dawn of his artistic career. These reveal an artist noticing just enough of the world around him to paint some vestige of it. One does not need to look very hard to see his far greater interest in the underlying essences, the broad themes of that world, than the particulars of how they are embodied in the figures he paints. Even the portraits and nudes show a general disengagement with the person in the painting. They are objects in, not subjects of, the composition (see figs. 12, 56). We see this in the content of his paintings, as he consistently strives for the universal, for subject matter that is so fundamental that it speaks across culture and time. This is not a lowest common denominator but a palpable expression of core human truths. Thus when I encounter explanations of his signature abstract style that are based on the particulars of his life story, I quickly grow skeptical. While I am certain that our experience actively shapes our worldview, consciously and unconsciously (I am a psychologist by training, after

all), I am also alert to my father’s expressed dedication to engage—and engage us—with a world larger than himself. He has no interest in being boring; he wants to be transformative. Several regularly cited explanations of my father’s color-field work base their arguments on his early experience, particularly his first ten years in Latvia, a world that seems particularly foreign to most of us on a number of grounds: 1. because of its location far to the north; 2. because many people are not even aware where it is; 3. because of its position on the fringes of history—where it has come in and out of existence over the centuries; 4. because the primarily Jewish world that my father inhabited is now only a memory in the wake of the Holocaust; and 5. because few westerners have been there.

All of these elements give Latvia a flavor of a world unknown and exotic, one that can only be glimpsed in our mind’s eye. It is the type of place we can only imagine and which we therefore presume must have a unique influence on anyone who lived there. But of course that is a skewed perspective—based on our experience and what is familiar to us. We would not have such musings if he came from Paris or Rome. The primary associations that Latvia generates for the visitor center upon the flatness of the landscape. The ice-age glaciers took no prisoners, leaving a tabletop profile to the countryside, stretching from the Baltic Sea to areas well past my father’s hometown of Dvinsk (now Daugavpils). It is indeed hard not to see similar aspects in my father’s classic works, with their in some ways flat perspective, grand vistas, and planar background. Is this not his young Latgalian self, speaking through the artwork of his maturity, an unconscious means of reaching back to roots, or those roots expressing themselves unbidden in the way he views the world? But then must not such associations abound as well for the artists of South Texas, which is every bit as flat as Latvia? Little matter, of course, that most contemporary artists’ work from that region looks nothing like the South Texas landscape. What I am trying to point out is that correlation does not indicate causality. Simply because we see in Latvia’s topography visual elements vaguely akin to those we find in Rothko’s sectional works of the 1950s and ’60s, that does not mean that these are the origins of that strain in his work. To make any such claims, we would want to find similar correlations between childhood landscape and mature pictorial style of the other New York school, color-field painters: Gottlieb, Newman, Still, Lewis, for starters.

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I make particular note of the problems with this type of argument because my father took such issue with it: “Our age seems to be in search for the greatest number of correlations it can find. Developments in psychology and in the social sciences have given rise to a body of information which has been quickly adopted to show its action in every activity. There has been a mad scramble to relate everything to everything else.”7 He goes on to acknowledge that a myriad of environmental factors may influence the artist but asserts that they are so numerous and so diverse that it is impossible to tease out their effects, and that such research diverts attention from the unique amalgam which is the artist’s subjectivity. I focus on this question here as well because it constitutes another point of connection between my father and me. Coincidentally (?), my dissertation research in psychology, completed nearly ten years before I read my father’s manuscript, concerned method almost as much as content. I sought to control as many variables as possible precisely because I had scant faith in the correlations drawn in previous research. I tried to hone in on truly discrete populations using precise measures. It seemed to me that, when considering human subjectivity as well as societal constructs, the complexity is so great that it is easy to measure something, but very difficult to know what in fact one is measuring. And the more broadly we try to generalize our findings, the more likely we render those correlations spurious. As we consider other aspects of my father’s life and art, therefore, I suggest we be wary of what my father called “an excessive zeal for the establishment of immediate and direct causation.”8 While we may ponder the various influences upon my father’s artistic styles, he makes quite clear the primary source of his inspiration for his pictorial language. In a series of lengthy discussions in his book of philosophical writings, The Artist’s Reality, he cites Giotto as the visionary of the Renaissance, after whom the lure of linear perspective led most artists astray, chasing after visual effect rather than giving their paintings tactile substance.9 Giotto uses color to move action to the frontal plane rather than burying it in the murky shadows of an illusory distance. This use of color to shape the activity of the painting is the first principle of my father’s work, classic and before. To return specifically to the question of childhood influences on my father’s classic style, I am willing to trust my eyes. Having traveled three times to Latvia, and having swum in a stream of endless Rothkos for decades, I genuinely do not believe my father’s work evokes the Latvian landscape in any fundamental way. To my mind, what is so striking about his abstract works is the way they depart from the planar, the way in which they evoke a three-dimensional space that extends beyond the canvas; a space that exists in the mind and which ulti-

mately transcends the world of things. Looking to biography or to concrete images for explanation is a natural reaction to the mysterious, but it is a process which inherently grounds the part of us that would take flight with Rothko on his “adventure into an unknown world.”10 A similar search erupts around the source for my father’s colors. So striking, so boldly laid bare upon the canvas, they beg to be explained. Most explanations, however, tend to start from an incomplete knowledge of his work. The first such misimpression is that these colors leap onto my father’s paintings, newly born along with everything else, around 1950, when he becomes “Rothko” as we know him. But dialing back through the decades reveals that Rothko’s lush palette was in full voice in the Multiforms of the 1940s and that his prior neo-surreal and figurative periods were active incubators of those tones and the complex layering that produced them. Biographical explanations circumnavigate the soot-coated landscape of New York, his adopted home of thirty years at the time, usually heading straight to Latvia. I have seen the work tied to the hues of his boyhood landscape and further to the distinct coloration of farmhouses in the Baltic countryside. Here, scattered about the endless plane, one finds homes painted in searing tones; bright, sharp colors in values outside our daily experience. Like Rothko’s colors, they are colors that the eye cannot ignore. But here the resemblance ends, for Rothko’s tones are almost never bright. Even at their most affecting, and in their sunniest garb, they are full—saturated, but not brilliant. They glow, they do not burn. Rothko paintings are pregnant with color, indeed—full from the inside. I will reiterate that I always work to move attempts for understanding Rothko’s work to the inner and to the universal—seemingly opposite directions, but ones in fact with close kinship. My father’s world was first and last an internal one—this is where he found his piece of our common humanity. Yet his vision was always toward the universal as he strove to connect through his artwork to that piece in all of us. His abstractions are his rendering of a personally derived truth in a language intended to generalize and speak to the most elemental human thread in each of his viewers. I share this predisposition toward the abstract, so I rarely need to remind myself of these foci, but I have come to realize that it is not the way most people orient to the world. Most people prefer narrative or personal touchstones to put some flesh on the general and the ideational. It is natural inclination, but one that short-circuits our work to understand what and how Rothko communicates. It is particularly when biographical considerations intrude and are put forth as causal that I tend to chafe. We cannot look to external sources of information; to interact with Rothko, we must accept his invitation to find an internal process parallel to his own.

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Much has been written about Rothko’s orientation toward religion. Was he religious? Was he spiritual? Was he both of these, despite his avowed atheism? My father’s relationship with Judaism was particularly complicated, sufficiently so that I declined my own invitation to write about Rothko as a Jewish artist for this volume. There is one aspect, however, which I will address, simply because it is put forth so often. Does Rothko’s fully abstract color-field style derive from the biblical prohibition on making a graven image of the human figure?11 Religious observance is highly idiosyncratic, and there are as many apparently self-contradictory expressions of it as there are people who claim religious inclinations. Still, proposing this religious code as the source of my father’s move to abstraction truly puzzles me. For this is not a personalized articulation of an internal spiritual tendency that is being put forth, it is adherence to a very specific religious law, the type of doctrine he had actively rejected for the past forty years. His civil marriages, atheist/Christian second wife, refusal to participate in organized religion, and complete disregard for the Sabbath would seem to argue against this, as would the fact that he painted the figure for fully twenty years prior to the change in his style. I certainly acknowledge unconscious processes and compromise formations, but this seems a very unlikely enactment of an otherwise repudiated religious impulse. And are we then to believe that his Jewish colleagues in the New York school—Newman, Nevelson, Gottlieb, to name just a few—were following the same inclination, as were the non-Jews Kline, Motherwell, Pollock, and Still when they adopted abstraction at essentially the same moment? The ultimate answer, again, exists not in the strength or fallibility of such arguments. Whatever religious aspects his work may contain, Rothko’s adoption of abstraction served the end of communication. He is seeking a path to truth, not the true path. The god he serves is not a jealous god and does not need appeasing. Whether Rothko is using abstraction as a route to God—God as the embodiment of truth—is another matter. The unknowable God, the one that cannot be seen and whose image (in the guise of Man) we can only mutilate through the renderings of our own hands—this is closer to my father’s philosophical world.12 It is fundamentally to see God as an essence, as a Platonic form. Attempting to capture God, Truth, the (in)substance of the universe (add your version of the concept here), through depiction of those “things” made manifest in the world, is at best an indirect road, and much more likely a diversion into byways and trivialities. Abstraction provides a far more fruitful path. Rothko is certainly not concerned with sin. If religion is moving him here, it is a specifically philosophical orientation toward religion; an appreciation that there

is genuine understanding about the nature of reality, and our relation to it, expressed in the prohibition. That interaction between indefinite and the concrete, the unknowable and what must be known; that is at the crux of his work. In keeping with his reluctance to focus upon himself, Rothko made only one self-portrait in oil (what would he have done in the age of the selfie?). That portrait is notable for the dark glasses that obscure virtually all sign of his eyes— Rembrandt’s windows on the soul are nowhere to be seen. While my father’s posturing can—and has—been interpreted on many levels, we can be certain that he did not encourage a personal relationship with the viewer by means of his appearance; his artwork serves that purpose. This portrait has also helped draw attention to my father’s notoriously poor eyesight; he had been nearsighted since childhood and was legally blind without his glasses as an adult. Rothko’s eyesight would have kept him from becoming a fighter pilot (the only such factor?—perhaps not!) but could not dissuade him from becoming an artist. A variety of scholars have written about Rothko’s vision, wondering if the soft, hazy focus of his forms from 1946 forward reflect the world of his blurred vision, the world as he saw it when he took his glasses off.13 Perhaps you have anticipated that I am unconvinced. First, I ask, what of the notably sharp draftsmanship of 1943–46? His eyesight was no better during those years, although perhaps his artistic focus was simply different. More importantly, as I have emphasized throughout this volume, Rothko paintings have very little to do with what you see with your eyes. They are about what you see with your insides. My father’s vision was not focused outward (hence the opaque glasses?), and even in the figurative period he seldom depicted a visually derived “reality”—he painted his own, very personal reality. But few of these scholars, a largely bespectacled bevy I would surmise, have any real understanding of what it means to be nearsighted. Not really nearsighted. They probably weigh in at a feeble 20/175 or 20/325. They do not have the perspective to talk about 20/800. I do. I have been known to quip that my father gave me only three things: poor balance, poor eyesight, and the gout. I thus have the good fortune (?) to share my father’s visual perspective on the world. True confession—I have maxed out at 20/725. I cannot quite measure up to my father—an inferiority complex in the making, no doubt. All the same, I do know how one negotiates the world at this level of impairment—and it is not with glasses off. The first thing one does in the morning is reach for the glasses on the nightstand, and the last thing one does at night is put them back on the nightstand within easy reach. They only come off during the day for the occa-

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sional eye rub (a bad habit I broke years ago) or the periodic musing that you might look a lot better to the strangers across the room without your glasses (a bad habit I have failed to break). Thus Rothko is unlikely to have spent significant time taking in a somewhat less distinct vision of reality with his glasses off. And if the glasses were off, that reality would not have been merely less distinct; it would have been largely uninterpretable. We come, finally, to several understandings of Rothko’s classic work as representative of particular genres of painting. I will gloss these only briefly enough to say that, if you want to see Rothko paintings as landscapes, think of them of landscapes of the mind, a distinctly internal, even idiosyncratic vision made manifest in paint. There is no place depicted, only a state of being, the journey to which may be immediate or remain ever-elusive. The same holds true for the “lunar landscapes” of the Black and Grey works. This is a world already at one remove from ours, physical, yet outside our actual experience. Its elusive nature, real yet not entirely graspable, is a step on the journey toward the “place” embodied in a Rothko. For those who see Rothko’s abstractions as depicting windows and doors, think of these not as representations of actual objects but as metaphors for moving from one place into another, a transitional process that allows us to see not with our eyes but with our whole selves. They are portals to a potentially transformative journey. To summarize a perhaps not entirely cohesive consideration of the role of the observable world in my father’s work: don’t. That is, whether it is visual imagery or biographical events, do not look to it for keys to Rothko’s world. To understand the work, or, more important, to converse and travel with the work, one must do so from the inside out. This was my father’s process, and it must be yours as well. After my insistence on divorcing Rothko’s artwork from the biographical associations of his youth, I must appear to contradict myself to speak of how important the past remained to him. One fanciful notion of the artist depicts him or her as an individual who lives very much in the moment, who fully experiences the thoughts and sensations of the now and translates them into something more permanent for others to encounter. Or we see the artist as visionary, gazing into the future, his or her “head in the clouds.” Less often do we think of the artist dwelling on the past, researching, pondering, rearticulating. This is more the purview of the philosopher—but what could be more appropriate for Rothko? He was the philosopher who happened to paint. Compelled to pick up neither brush nor crayon in his youth, Rothko never seemed particularly driven

toward the visual. His artworks are not the product of a man who simply had to paint. Instead he was an artist driven by ideas—ideas with which he wrestled and which he simply could not let go. As stated before, my father had little need for self-expression, but he had an irrepressible hunger to recognize and understand the truth. His paintings are his attempt to engage us in that practice. With this objective for his work, it is only natural that the past was an active area for consideration. Indeed, for Rothko the past was not something separate from our experience; it was, necessarily, always present, informing all we do. Rothko sought to learn from ancient civilizations, from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, wringing from them every ounce of collective wisdom, drawing on the examples of history as inspiration for something entirely new. He thus did not see his demonstrably abstract paintings as a break from the figurative past but instead as part of the continuum of art history and thought.14 He was reinvigorating an existing conversation, putting forth a contemporary argument that could only be viewed in the context of the ongoing discussion from which it sprang. To think of oneself outside of that timeline was self-deception. A student of art history, my father, who traveled only reluctantly, made three pilgrimages to Italy, where he could study at length the artwork that gave flesh to his own. He certainly had great interest in the modern as well: his love of Matisse, above all, is well documented. And yet, with contemporary painters, he admires primarily the way they have solved a problem, or found a new way to address an important question. One does not get the sense that, for him, these artists (I am thinking of Picasso, Miró, and his New York contemporaries, all of whom he has discussed) touched essences the way his revered artists of the past did. They may be serious painters, engaging their viewer on topics of substance, but they do not hit the marks of the universal and the timeless, which were for my father the essential ends. We see this focus realized in my father’s artistic philosophy, which remains remarkably consistent throughout his career. His drive to address the essences of human experience, to touch our emotional core, is present from the first vestiges of figurative to his most minimal abstractions. It is a reflection of his understanding of the human psyche and its response to the human condition, something he believes also remains essentially unchanged. Society may be in a constant state of flux, science and technology may perpetually “modernize” us, but the core of what it is to be human endures: we are born, we live, we love, we work, we die. The trappings may evolve, but these ultimate truths underlie all our experience and shape our psychological world regardless of the social apparel in which they are garbed. Rothko is not interested in the modern, he is

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interested in a modern—that is, a relevant, communicative—response to the forever, the only time frame that really matters. Philosophy and history come together in Rothko’s unfinished treatise The Artist’s Reality. Although it may have begun life as essay about teaching art to children, there is almost nothing of the didactic, the technical, even the practical, about it. It is almost entirely focused on the function of the visual arts and how the visual arts function. And it is richly illustrated by discussions of how art has realized those functions throughout history, a section of the book that he clearly intended to extend had he finished the volume. I detail my father’s historical orientation at this length because I think it is essential for understanding the man he was—it was certainly essential for me. It resonated with me to find someone else who was not concerned with what was most current, with what was most exciting, but instead with what was most moving, what spoke to our modern sensibilities in a way that was not simply modern. Unlike Pollock, for example, he did not listen to music of the moment—he wanted music that took him beyond the moment. And although I look to a far broader spectrum of music than he did, I too seek works—often from the past—that stir the innermost workings of my soul. My father certainly valued and wrestled with contemporary understandings of the human condition, but work that did not address that level did not need to apply, no matter how expressive of the current it was. My father’s gaze to the past did not simply represent a means to ideational and artistic goals, however; it reflected a personal orientation as well. I heard this repeatedly in his tone as I edited The Artist’s Reality for publication. It manifested itself as a longing for times when art was more valued, the artist more central, his vision recognized and heralded.15 Yes, this was the dejected voice of an artist (my father) who could not find an audience, but it was notable that he pined for a romanticized past, ancient Greece or Renaissance Florence, rather than envisioning a new utopia. While Florence may have offered more glory for the artist, ancient Greece seemed to represent a type of paradise lost: a time of a cohesive, unified understanding of humankind and its place in the universe. Rothko contrasted this with the intellectual chaos of modern times where, as the world is broken down into smaller and smaller categories, studied by more and more specialized disciplines, the individual’s sense of that universe becomes fragmentary and his or her place in it increasingly unclear. While there is, thus, a clear philosophical thrust to Rothko’s take on these civilizations, there is also more than a hint of nostalgia: a longing for simpler times, a wish for processes to slow down, and for the questions before us to be

considered more wholly. It is hardly coincidental that he brought these views to fruition a decade later in the time-slowing unity of his color-field canvases, with their call to contemplation and their openness to individually derived meaning. They were a brilliant response to his disillusionment with a world he found out of balance, a way of redressing some of what felt dehumanizing. And Rothko, who, again, was not interested in self-expression, does not burden us in his painting with his personal sense of loss and fragmentation. He uses that sense to forge an artwork responsive to it, one that addresses the inherent limitations of the modern worldview and offers an alternative, painted in modernist language, that feels more psychologically whole. And yet, for all his sophisticated work, psychological and artistic, his nostalgia remains—a sense that something precious might be lost. I became conscious of this strain in my father’s disposition largely anecdotally. First in his mistrust of the art lovers of his time, who (unlike the great patrons of the Renaissance!) would collect his works for the wrong reasons: decoration, fashion, perhaps investment. He persisted in believing that things were better long ago, that there was greater sophistication, greater sensitivity. Second, and perhaps more telling, is the fact that he never destroyed any of his artwork (except on a few occasions when, desperate for materials, he used the back sides of previously painted works). He moved his early paintings a dozen times, from home to home, studio to studio, making room for them in crowded apartments and ill-equipped workspaces. Moreover, he continued to hang them: artwork from more than thirty years before continued to grace his walls at the time of his death in 1970. Rothko’s treatment of his early paintings speaks, on the one hand, of their continued relevance to him, but on the other, of a seemingly nostalgic embrace of the past. There is a sentimental but also substantive attachment to what he had done before, a recognition that his early creations were part of him, that without them the story not only of his artistic development but of his own personhood is incomplete. They are a way of holding on to parts of the past, concrete incarnations of who he was—and remained. While there are other ways of making sense of my father’s relationship to his earlier work (inertia, for example), I am confident in my understanding, as I recognize his attitude instinctually. I too never discard any of my work, which means that I have sizable files of pieces I have written previously—for classes, for my amusement, for publication. It also means that, when writing, I make use, somewhere, of almost every phrase and idea that I generate. With the older pieces, there is a sense that they may prove useful at some point, to jog the memory or generate an idea. I have the notion that, no matter how much I

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change, that earlier self is still part of me; whatever I have done before remains relevant, and can easily become current again. Whether or not my father drew active inspiration from his earlier paintings, he clearly carried his past forward with him, iterating his philosophy in ways that were new yet remained congruent with his previous renderings. One relic that traveled with my father through time and space was his unfinished philosophical manuscript The Artist’s Reality. Although he abandoned it in the early 1940s, apparently never to work on it again, he remained sufficiently conscious of it to take it with him across changes in studios, homes, and marriages. And when, near the end of his life, my father entered discussions with art historian Robert Goldwater, who intended to write a critical assessment of Rothko’s work, he told Goldwater of the manuscript and perhaps gave him a copy as well.16 Although many artists remain attached to their earlier work, it is the rare artist who still values his writings from thirty years before. Yet for my father, however radically his art may appear to have changed, there was an abiding consciousness that his earlier self was still very much present. And reading those chapters affirms their continued relevance. The writings seem to foretell the coming of his classic works and are wholly conversant with their modes of expression. Those writings are a tremendous gift to scholars, as they codify a great deal of Rothko’s thinking about art. They were also a great gift to me; through the process of editing them, I reaffirmed much of what I thought I knew about my father and found new levels of understanding and connection. Most strikingly, I found that we had similar voices. I am not referring to my speaking voice, which I already knew, in my mind’s ear, was like my father’s. I am referring to our writing styles, which had a great deal in common in how we addressed our reader, how we put our ideas across, and how we used language. What was more surprising, and sometimes amusing, was our similar, sometimes idiosyncratic tastes. These were revealed during the “conversations” we had through the intermediary of the text. For example, neither of us are convinced by the paintings of Michelangelo.17 How many people actively dislike Michelangelo, perhaps the most venerated artist in Western history? This is when I knew we were related. The areas of convergence in style and personality were important to me personally, but more crucially gave me freer license to undertake the work I do with my father’s legacy. They allowed me to edit The Artist’s Reality with greater certainty in my choices, and they steeled my conviction to write this book, which was already conceived but about which I had only amorphous plans.

When researching The Artist’s Reality, I also came across the draft of a note, wistfully imagining an exhibition of his work “in the old country,” although he understood that it would not come about due to the political strife between the Soviet Union and the United States.18 This was a strikingly personal statement on my father’s part, a yearning for his past, indicating a need to reconnect to this piece of his old self. Even in the wake of World War II, the ravages of the Holocaust in his homeland, the unwelcoming chasm of the Cold War, and his own disillusionment with the socialism of his earlier years, he clung to this idea, hoping to reestablish a link he knew was gone. I feel this wistfulness in many of his paintings. Sometimes what seems like a quest for the beyond, to grasp the unknowable, is also a probing backward to find what was lost and cannot be retrieved. It is not an element that keeps one locked in place, but the pull is there, perhaps most of all for a Rothko. I will close by considering my father’s essential humanity, the core of his spirit and the element that allows viewers to connect so readily and deeply with his work. It has its most concrete expression in what I call his humility, for lack of a better word. To speak of a famous artist’s humility is probably a contradiction in terms, as by definition, the artist must have the audacity to create something stemming from the self and place it boldly before the public. There is a core of egotism in such an act, a declaration that the artist has something to say and that others should listen. This is often accompanied by a healthy dollop of “Look at me,” but this is where Rothko says instead, “Look at my work. It is really not about me.” My father engaged in this dialectic—to show and not be seen— throughout the 1950s and ’60s, and in the end the strong pull in both directions may have consumed him. But we can see that it stems from deeply human, contradictory feelings—the desire to be recognized and appreciated on one hand, and the overwhelming self-doubt that arises when people do in fact look, on the other. A story from my father’s visit to London in 1966 captures some of these mutually contradictory feelings. Rothko was in discussion with Sir Norman Reid, director of the Tate Gallery, about making a gift of his Seagram murals series to the museum. As they walked through the famous Clore Gallery of William Turner masterpieces, my father quipped, “That chap Turner learned a lot from me.”19 On the one hand, my father’s cheeky comment positively blazes with hubris, putting himself above the lionized Turner in this, the most central node of the Turner universe. And indeed, as an artist, on some level one must believe he or she has surpassed the master, or how would one dare to bring new work

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before the public? Yet this joke—much the type Rothko the younger would have made, by the way—reveals in its brazenness its very absurdity. Rothko could only make this comment because it is patently untrue, the impossibility of the timeline pointing clearly to the impossibility that Rothko is the greater artist. It is an avowal of kinship and ultimately a humble acknowledgment of his role as student. In keeping with his reverence for the past, my father decided to make the gift to the Tate in large part because his work would hang near the Turners. He wanted to be part of that continuum of art history, to engage it in conversation, and believed (or only hoped?) that his work would be enhanced, not diminished, by the master’s light. My father’s relationship to his fame was at best complicated; fame was a desired but highly suspect drug. The same part of him that remained wary of his fame also helped him keep perspective on the magnitude of his own gifts, as the following story makes clear. My uncle once told me about a conversation he had with my father. He and my aunt were visiting my parents in New York, and the two men went to the diner downstairs from my parents’ apartment for a habitual late-night plate of herring.20 My father proceeded to tell his brother-in-law that he considered himself extremely lucky, that there were a dozen painters of his generation whom he thought every bit as talented as him, but who had not received recognition or whose reputations were now fading. He felt that, in the end, it was mostly good fortune that he was one of the ones who had become celebrated. Lest we are tempted to hear my father’s comments as false modesty, we should remember his audience. My uncle Dick, an accountant from Ohio, had no knowledge of art nor the slightest interest in it. He was hardly in a position to tell my father he was selling himself short, and he had no frame of reference to do so, as history, writ large, had not yet proclaimed Rothko one of the greats. The attitude expressed by my father in this story is what keeps him so human; far more engaged with his work than with his ego. It highlights the fundamental humility that helped him clear himself out of the way, so that we could have a more direct, more honest experience with his work. And yet, we must remember, this is also the artist whose fantasy was to become one of the “Three Ms”—Mozart, Matisse, and Mark.21 He dreamed large, and he dreamed ambitiously. There is no question that he aspired to greatness, for to aspire to anything less would necessarily have left him short. I understand instinctively my father’s struggle with these two poles—the wish to be lauded and the discomfort with becoming the object of such praise. By choosing to make my father’s legacy my full-time work, I have frequently placed

myself in a public position. Had I wanted to stay entirely out of the limelight, I would have remained in my professional office, practicing psychotherapy. And yet in my work I make very certain to keep the focus on my father and, most particularly, his oeuvre. I repeatedly shun interviews that have a more personal flavor, and I have no interest in writing a memoir. It is really not about me, and like my father, I believe that if it were about me, it would not be interesting. It has taken me a very long time to write this book, even though the ideas have been there for more than a decade, and it has taken me a very long time to write this essay—it is nearly the last. When I talk about myself, I try to make sure that it will shed light on my father’s work. That is what is important, that is what is timeless, that is why people have interest in matters that truly are peripheral, such as my father’s life and, even more so, mine. And while it might appear that this paragraph is about me, this is simply another place where I hope that, through my experience, you may better understand his. My father and I both believe at core that all people are ordinary, even the most accomplished. Sometimes, however, those very people are able to create things that transcend the ordinary, things that are greater than the fallible beings that created them. Those are the things worthy of our attention. Those are the things that live on and inspire us.

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Notes

Prologue 1. Morgan Thomas, “Rothko and the Cinematic

13. Mark Rothko, “Statement on His Attitude in Painting,” 1949, in Rothko, Writings on Art, 65.

Imagination,” in Rothko: The Late Series, ed. Achim Borchardt-Hume (London: Tate, 2008).

Ceci n’est pas un frigo 1. Brian O’Doherty mentions others having this

Mark Rothko and the Inner World

impression; see O’Doherty, “Rothko’s Endgame,” in

1. Antonioni quoted in Robert Motherwell’s

The Dark Paintings, 1969–70, exh. cat. (New York:

eulogy for Rothko, Robert Motherwell Archive, Daedalus Foundation, New York. 2. Mark Rothko, “Notes from a Conversation

Pace Gallery, 1985), 5. 2. David Anfam, “Introduction: To See Rothko,” in Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas (New

with Selden Rodman, 1956,” in Mark Rothko,

Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 12; Michel

Writings on Art, ed. Miguel López-Remiro (New

Butor, “Les Mosquees de New York, ou l’Art de

Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 119.

Mark Rothko,” Critique, October 1961, 843–60;

3. Hans Ehrenwald quoted in Faber Birren, Color

Thomas, “Rothko and the Cinematic Imagination,”

and Human Response: Aspects of Light and Color

62; E. C. Goosen, “The End of Winter in New York,”

Bearing on the Reactions of Living Things and the

Art International, March–April 1958, 37.

Welfare of Human Beings (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978), 45. 4. J. Gregory Meyer et al., “The Association of Gender, Ethnicity, Age, and Education with Rorschach Scores,” Assessment, July 24, 2014. 5. Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). 6. Ernst G. Schactel, “On Color and Affect,” Psychiatry 6 (1943): 393–409. 7. See “The Quiet Dominance of Form” in this

3. Mark Rothko, “The Ides of Art: The Attitudes of Ten Artists on Their Art and Contemporaneousness,” Tiger’s Eye 1, no. 2 (1947), reprinted in Rothko, Writings on Art, 57. 4. Robert Goldwater, “Reflections on the Rothko Exhibition,” Arts, March 1961, 44. 5. Mark Rothko, address to Pratt Institute, November 1958, in Rothko, Writings on Art, 126. 6. Anna Chave, Subjects in Abstraction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 37, 146. 7. Rothko and Gottlieb, letter to the editor, 36.

volume. 8. Mark Rothko, The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 35. 9. James Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 110; Klaus Kertess, “City Light,” in Mark Rothko: The Realist Years (New York: Pace Gallery, 2001), 6. 10. As discussed in “The Artist’s Reality: Mark Rothko’s Crystal Ball” in this volume, the exact

The Quiet Dominance of Form 1. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 25. 2. Marjorie Phillips, Duncan Phillips and His Collection (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 288. 3. Rothko, “Notes from a Conversation,” 119. 4. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 40. 5. Mark Rothko, “The ‘Scribble Book,’ ” in Rothko, Writings on Art, 10.

timing of Rothko’s withdrawal from painting is not

6. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 48.

clear and may in fact have preceded his first move

7. Rothko and Gottlieb, letter to the editor, 36.

into a surrealist style. 11. Mark Rothko, interview by Ethel Schwabacher, May 30, 1954, Ethel Schwabacher Papers, Archives of American Art. 12. Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, letter to the editor, New York Times, 1943, in Mark Rothko,

8. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 59. 9. Christopher Rothko, introduction to Rothko, Artist’s Reality, xxvii. 10. The fact that the Rosa Parks image is a staged photograph only reinforces this point. 11. Breslin, Mark Rothko, 328.

Writings on Art, ed. Miguel López-Remiro (New

12. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 59.

Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 36.

13. Ulfert Wilke, diary entry, October 14, 1967, in

289

Ulfert Wilke Papers, Archives of American Art,

as has been shown in exhibitions of these works at

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 40.

the neighboring Menil Collection. The fact that my

14. Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, “The Rothko Chapel

father did not use these panels in the end seems a

Paintings: A Personal Account,” in Image of the

further indication of the “nonpainting” aesthetic

Not-Seen: Search for Understanding (Houston:

he ultimately selected for the chapel.

Rothko Chapel, 2007).

2. Carol Mancusi-Ungaro and Gene Aubrey, personal communications to the author.

The Tyranny of Size 1. The exceptions are those strongly horizontal paintings that reach most insistently toward the

4. See “Stacked” in this volume.

horizons.

5. For more specifics, see Sheldon Nodelman,

2. Rothko, address to Pratt Institute, 128.

The Rothko Chapel Paintings: Origins, Structure,

3. Mark Rothko to Katharine Kuh, September 25,

Meaning (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), a

1954, in Rothko, Writings on Art, 99.

tireless account of all aspects of the chapel, which

4. Rothko, address to Pratt Institute, 128.

details the permutations of the chapel’s structure,

5. Rothko quoted in Dorothy Seiberling, “Mark

composition, and design process.

Rothko,” Life, November 16, 1959, 52.

N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 1 – 2 0 6

3. Wilke diary entry, 4. See also Rothko, “Plasticity,” Artist’s Reality, 43–55.

6. Barnstone & Aubry Architects, architectural

6. Rothko and Gottlieb, letter to the editor, 35.

drawing based on discussion with Rothko, June 7,

7. The larger quote is: “I paint very large pictures.

1967, Rothko Chapel Archive, Houston.

I realize that historically the function of painting

7. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 56.

large pictures is something very grandiose and

8. Written in 1971, shortly after the opening of

pompous. The reason I paint them, however—I

the Rothko Chapel, the work is also a memorial to

think it applies to other painters I know—is

Rothko, Feldman’s friend throughout the 1960s.

precisely because I want to be intimate and human.” Mark Rothko, “How to Combine

9. Brice Marden, “About Painting and What It Can Do” (lecture, Rothko Chapel, January 29, 2011).

Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture,” 1951, in Rothko, Writings on Art, 74. 8. Breslin, Mark Rothko, 110. 9. See “The Mastery of the ’60s” and “Works on Paper: Outside the Box” in this volume. 10. “To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an

The Seagram Murals 1. Phyllis Lambert, Building Seagram (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 161. 2. John Fischer, “The Easy Chair: Mark Rothko, Portrait of the Artist as an Angry Man,” in Rothko, Writings on Art, 131.

experience as a stereopticon view or with a

3. Ibid.

reducing glass.” Rothko, “How to Combine

4. See “Rothkos’ Humor” in this volume for a

Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture,” 74.

fuller discussion of the verbal poses my father adopts, as well as a more in-depth look at Fischer’s

Stacked 1. See “The Quiet Dominance of Form” in this

own complicated relationship with his subject. 5. This is true in essence if not in fact. My father

volume.

had been commissioned, as a very young artist, to

2. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 9.

illustrate a book called The Graphic Bible. The story of how that commission disintegrated is another

290

The Rothko Chapel

point of drama in my father’s career (see Breslin,

1. As I discuss below, this is less true of the south

Mark Rothko, 65–78). Additionally, Rothko was a

wall painting, which is the closest of any of the

WPA artist in the 1930s, so as part of that program

murals to a typical Rothko painting. The three sets

he was creating public works. These paintings are

of “alternate” panels painted by my father for the

now lost, but we do know they were small easel

Rothko Chapel but not used in the final scheme

paintings, not large-scale murals.

also remain viable as paintings in their own right,

6. Fischer, “Easy Chair,” 131.

7. Stephani K. A. Robson, “Turning the Tables: The Psychology of Design for High-Volume

11. See “The Rothko Chapel: Our Voices in the Silence” in this volume.

Restaurants,” Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1999): 56–63. 8. Rothko, “Ides of Art,” 57. 9. Fischer, “Easy Chair,” 131. 10. OK, I made him up. 11. Fischer, “Easy Chair,” 131. 12. Rothko’s Rooms, documentary film, directed and produced by David Thompson (BBC, 2000).

Rothkos’ Humor 1. Sally Scharf, personal communication. 2. Mark Rothko to Barnett Newman, August 1946, in Rothko, Writings on Art, 51. 3. Stanley Kunitz, eulogy at Rothko’s funeral, quoted in Lee Seldes, The Legacy of Mark Rothko (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1974), 7. 4. Rothko to Newman, July 31, 1945, in Rothko,

Untitled

Writings on Art, 47.

1. Rothko and Gottlieb, letter to the editor, 36.

5. Fischer, “Easy Chair,” 134.

2. The one exception is a group of neo-surrealist

6. Ibid., 135.

watercolors featured in a gallery exhibition at the Mortimer Brandt Gallery in 1946, many of which

7. Mark Rothko, address to Pratt Institute, 125–26.

did receive titles. This is a further indicator that

8. Lynn Schneider, personal communication.

titles, even at this early stage, were first and

9. Fischer, “Easy Chair,” 135.

foremost a sales tool.

10. Mark Rothko, notes from an interview by William Seitz, January 22, 1952, in Rothko, Writings

Mark Rothko and Music Epigraph. Mark Rothko quoted in Brian O’Doherty, The Voice and Myth of American Masters (New York: Random House, 1973), 153. 1. Katherine Kuh, personal communication to the

on Art, 77. 11. John T. Bethell, “Damaged Goods,” Harvard Magazine, July–August 1988, p. 31. 12. Marjorie B. Cohn, “Introduction: The Reciprocity of Perspectives,” in Mark Rothko’s

author; Dore Ashton, interview by James Breslin,

Harvard Murals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

February 25, 1986, James E. B. Breslin Research

University Art Museums, 1988).

Archive, 1900–1994, box 1, folder 13, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Mark Rothko

13. Oral history interview with Leonard Bocour, June 8, 1978, Archives of American Art.

Archives, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

14. Rothko, “Ides of Art,” 57.

2. Rothko and Gottlieb, letter to the editor, 36.

15. Fischer, “Easy Chair,” 131.

3. For a more detailed discussion, see “The

16. Ibid., 131–32.

Artist’s Reality: Mark Rothko’s Crystal Ball” in this volume. 4. Kate Rothko Prizel, personal communication. This was a favorite expression of our father’s in the household. 5. Rothko cited in Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists (New York: Devin-Adair, 1957), 93. 6. Mark Rothko, “The Romantics Were Prompted,” 1947, in Rothko, Writings on Art, 58.

The Mastery of the ’60s 1. Breslin, Mark Rothko, 328. 2. This is not a true series, and the number can swell or diminish by one to three works depending on which are included as part of the group. 3. Rothko, “Statement on His Attitude in Painting.” 4. Rothko, “Notes from a Conversation.”

7. Fischer, Easy Chair, 137.

5. Ibid.

8. See “The Quiet Dominance of Form” in this

6. See “Mark Rothko and the Inner World” in this

volume. 9. Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 197. 10. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 58.

volume. 7. Chave, Subjects in Abstraction, 183. 8. The note about brushwork applies to the works on canvas pre-1969. In 1968, when my father worked exclusively on paper, the brush

291

reasserted itself, a practice that carried over to the

the new method we have found for mounting

Black and Grey canvases of 1969–70; see essays

works on paper, after decades of search for one

“Black and Grey,” “Works on Paper,” and “Van

that is both safe and true to the work, draws on

Gogh’s Ear” in this volume.

techniques that are many hundreds of years old.

Black and Grey

Van Gogh’s Ear

1. Robert Motherwell, “Motherwell Muses,” first

1. Mark Rothko, address to Pratt Institute, 125–26.

published in Stephanie Terenzio, ed., The Collected

2. Rothko and Gottlieb, letter to the editor, 36.

Writings of Robert Motherwell (New York: Oxford

3. Canto 4, lines 931–35, read:

University Press, 1992), 196–197.

And while the safety blade with scrape and screak

2. See “The Rothko Chapel: Our Voices in the Silence” and “Untitled” in this volume. 3. Robert Motherwell, “On Rothko,” Robert Motherwell Archive. 4. See “Stacked” in this volume. 5. Robert Goldwater quoted in Dore Ashton, About Rothko (Oxford: Oxford University Press, N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 0 8 – 2 8 6

1983), 190.

Travels across the country of my cheek, Cars on the highway pass and up the steep Incline big trucks around my jawbone creep

To which the editor/narrator’s interpretive gloss reads: Line 934: . . . Big trucks I must say I do not remember hearing “big trucks” passing in our vicinity very often. Loud cars, yes—but not trucks.

Works on Paper

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (New York: Berkley, 1962),

1. There are, in fact, three small etching plates in

40, 182.

our archive, line sketches for classic canvas

4. A recent glance at journals and miscellaneous

compositions. To the best of our knowledge,

notes amongst my father’s papers revealed this as

however, my father intended these only for making

a recurring theme in his thinking. He saw the rush

holiday greeting cards for his own personal use.

to spurious correlations as a peculiarly twentieth-

2. My father’s Portland watercolors may, in fact, date from one or more of a few trips he made home in the 1920s and ’30s. 3. All of these numbers are approximate, as exact

century and highly problematic tendency. 5. J. G. Ravin, J. J. Hartman, and R. I. Fried, “Mark Rothko’s Paintings . . . Suicide Notes?” Ohio State Medical Journal 72, no. 2 (February 1974): 78–79.

dating of these works, in both media, can be

6. See “Ceci n’est pas un frigo” in this volume.

challenging. The basic proportions are accurate,

7. See Breslin, Mark Rothko, chap. 19.

however. 4. Robert Rosenblum, “Notes on Rothko’s

8. I will also note that his deep depression following his mother’s death, in 1949, coincided

Surrealist Years,” in Mark Rothko, The Surrealist

with the resplendently colorful emergence of his

Years (New York: Pace Gallery, 1981), 8.

classic style that same year.

5. See “The Tyranny of Size” and “The Mastery of the ’60s” in this volume. 6. This is also in contrast to the coarser texture of the watercolor paper my father used in the 1940s. 7. A very rough percentage that will vary subject to light conditions, length of proposed hanging, and which conservator you speak to. 8. My efforts to put real numbers with this

292

Return to Dvinsk via Daugavpils 1. Russian census, 1897. 2. Lucy Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933–1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), 150–66. 3. If any measure were needed of the degree to which Daugavpils failed to attract notice in its own

experientially derived impression have proved

country, consider the following: Vaira Vīķe-

futile. My apologies to the many exceptions to this

Freibergathe, president of the Latvian Republic and

generalization.

an otherwise superb, torchbearing leader—made

9. I have indeed seen the march of progress on

her first visit to Daugavpils, the tiny nation’s

this front these past thirty years, although, ironically,

second-largest city, at the time of the Rothko

family’s second visit in 2005, nearly six years after she had assumed office. 4. Werner Haftman quoted in Chave, Subjects in Abstraction, 188.

4. Rothko, address to Pratt Institute, 125. 5. Ibid., 127–28. The received text, which was transcribed from the question-and-answer session following the lecture, gives the word nothing, which, based on context, is clearly a transcription

Mell-Ecstatic

mistake or misunderstanding of what was said.

1. See “MR & CHR” in this volume for a fuller

Something or things seems the mostly likely

discussion of my father’s ideas about the role of self-expression in art.

correction. 6. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 76.

2. Carson family, personal communication.

7. Ibid., 14.

3. I am playing very fast and loose here. The

8. Ibid., 16.

change was in fact spread over several years for this group of artists; Pollock and Still, for example, probably a littler earlier than some of the others. 4. See “Van Gogh’s Ear” and “MR & CHR” in this volume.

9. Ibid., esp. chaps. 5 (“Plasticity”) and 6 (“Space”). 10. “. . . which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.” Rothko and Gottlieb, letter to the editor, 36. See also “Ceci n’est pas un frigo” in this volume.

5. For a fuller discussion, having nothing to do

11. Rothko biographer Annie Cohen-Solal has

with my birth, see “The Mastery of the ’60s” in this

discussed this question with me, but she is hardly

volume.

the first, and I will add that I am asked this

6. Matthew Baigell has written eloquently upon

question repeatedly when I lecture.

this subject, as have others. See his Jewish Artists

12. Rothko, address to Pratt Institute, 126.

in New York: The Holocaust Year (New Brunswick,

13. Breslin, Mark Rothko, 387.

NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).

14. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 14. 15. Ibid., 2.

MR & CHR 1. Core personality or “temperamental disposition” typically develops in the first year, with

16. Prizel, personal communication. 17. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 10. 18. Fragment, Rothko Family Archive.

significant further development over the course of

19. Breslin, Mark Rothko, 666.

childhood due to complex interactions between

20. Personal communication. In fact, I believe

genetic, physiological, and environment factors. D.

that this is a conflation (on Dick’s part or mine) of

P. McAdams and B. D. Olson, “Personality

two stories, because the diner was below my

Development: Continuity and Change over the Life

parents’ apartment of the 1940s and ’50s, and the

Course,” Annual Review of Psychology 61 (2010):

conversation reflects the perspective my father

517–42.

would have had in the 1960s, when the family had

2. Rothko, Artist’s Reality, 94. 3. Rothko and Gottlieb, letter to the editor, 36.

moved to a brownstone uptown. 21. Prizel, personal communication.

293

Index

Page numbers in italic type indicate illustrations. 1920s works: on paper, 218. See also figurative work 1930s works: form and composition in, 174; on paper, 218; size and scale of, 85–86. See also figurative work 1940s works: automatic drawing in, 28, 221; classic works compared to, 221–22; on paper, 219–21; second marriage and, 265–67; size and scale of, 85–86; titling of, 163–64. See also Multiforms; neo-surrealist works 1950s works: 1960s works compared to, 37, 196–206; chronology of, 197; emotional quality of, 6; formal concerns in, 64–66; on paper, 89–90; responses to, 196, 200; window analogy applied to, 9, 41. See also brighter paintings; classic works; sectional works 1960s works: 1950s works compared to, 37, 196–206; analysis and appreciation of, 196–206; Bach’s music compared to, 205; chronology of, 197; color in, 37, 200–204; emotional quality of, 37, 202, 205–6; formal concerns in, 37, 64–66; inner glow of, 17–18; paint quality and handling in, 201–4; on paper, 90–92; reflective quality of, 37–39; responses to, 36–37, 198; size and scale of, 203; time and temporality in, 202–3. See also Black and Grey works; Brown and Grey works; classic works; darker paintings; late paintings; sectional works

294

Abstract Expressionism/ists, 81, 110–11, 177, 179. See also New York school abstraction: Abstract Expressionism and, 110–11; artistic expression through, 7; in figurative work, 99–100; figurative work compared to, 94–96; and the idea, 100–101, 110–11; in Multiforms, 31; music and, 181–82; New York school and, 267–68; religious influence on, 278; responses to, 40, 45–48; as response to horrors of war and genocide, 269; R on, 99–101; R’s motivations for using, 45, 181–82; and truth, 278; universality of, 87, 100–101, 277 acrylic pigments, 209–10 action, as artistic element, 17, 28–29. See also dynamism and movement Adams, John, 180 Albers, Joseph, 18; Study for Homage to the Square: Light Rising, 47–48, 48 Anfam, David, 18 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 6–7 the Apollonian, 195, 215 architecture, classical, 137, 172–73 Aristotle, 18–19 Arnheim, Rudolf, 14 Around the World in Eighty Days (film), 185 art history, 104, 179, 192, 281, 286 artist-patron relationship, 133, 150–52 artists: roles of, 152–53; selfishness of, 152–53. See also

biography, art’s meaning and viewer’s experience influenced by artist’s The Artist’s Reality (Rothko): on abstraction, 99–101; on color and linear perspective, 105–8, 110, 276; composition of, 98; descriptions of manuscript, 94, 97; historical focus of, 282; on the idea, 102; influence of, on contemporary paintings, 98–99; initial purpose of, 98; on modern art and science, 101–5; prescient character of, 96, 99–101, 110–11; on Renaissance art, 104; R’s attachment to, 284 Art Nouveau, 138 Art of This Century Gallery, 159 Ashton, Dore, 169 Assyrian culture, 98, 220 atomization, 103 automatic drawing, 28, 221 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 178, 205 balance and proportion, 14, 37, 63, 70–71, 77, 122, 174, 198–200 Barthes, Roland, 237 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 256 Bauhaus, 138 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 172, 176; Pastoral Sonata, 162; Pastoral Symphony, 162 Berg, Alban, 178 Berlin, Isaiah, 256 biography, art’s meaning and viewer’s experience influenced by artist’s, 4, 234–49, 257–58, 262, 266, 275–80 bipartite structure, 215 Black and Grey works, 207–16; analysis and appreciation of, 207–16; borders around, 207, 210–12, 246–47; classic works in relation to, 207, 211; color in, 213; emotional quality of, 212; formal concerns in, 72–73, 207–8; form in, 103; as landscapes, 280; as late works, 246–49; movement in, 17; painting-viewer interaction in, 211–12; paint quality and handling in, 209–10, 212–13, 248; relationship of fields in, 214–15; responses to, 41; titling of, 213–14 Blackform paintings, 70, 143, 198, 199 Bocour, Leo, 193 Brahms, Johannes, 172, 185 Breslin, James, 191 brighter paintings: emotional quality of, 11; visual impact of, 82 Bronfman family, 132 Brown and Grey works, 72–73, 210, 247–49 brushwork. See paint quality and handling Cage, John, 180, 181 Carlson, Brian and Marcia, 253 Catholicism, 122 Cézanne, Paul, 53–54 Chave, Anna, 46

children’s choir, Daugavpils, Latvia, 256 Chopin, Frederic, 239 clarity, as goal of R’s work, 35, 37, 87, 127–28, 172, 199–200 classic works, 32–35; 1940s works compared to, 221–22; absence of traditional formal elements in, 7, 24; Black and Grey works in relation to, 207, 211; color in, 17, 32–33, 53; emotional quality of, 6; external world absent from, 6; form and composition in, 34, 77, 102, 114–19, 173; inner glow of, 17–18; landscape vs. portrait analogies applied to, 82; meaning and impact of, 32, 50–51, 110–11; movement in, 8, 17; movie screen analogy applied to, 42; Mozart’s music compared to, 170–71; nebulousness in, 14; on paper, 222–23; responses to, 40, 45–46, 48, 158; size and scale of, 33–34, 67, 82, 85, 87–89, 178; transition to, 77, 268; window analogy applied to, 9, 41. See also 1950s works; 1960s works; sectional works classicism, 172–73, 177–78 claustrophobia, 23 client-artist relationship. See artist-patron relationship collective unconscious, 28 color: in 1960s works, 37, 200–204; biographical explanations of, 277; in Black and Grey works, 213; centrality of, 31, 52–53, 108, 139; in classic works, 17, 32–33, 53; dynamism of, 17; emotional quality of, 11, 32; as expressive mechanism, 32–33; in fast-food restaurants, 142; in figurative vs. abstract works, 96; Giotto’s use of, 106, 276; monochrome, 38, 71, 75, 128, 140, 141, 156, 198, 207; in neo-surrealist works, 29; as primary expressive mechanism in R’s work, 14; psychological effects of, 13–14, 142; romantic character of, 175; R on, 53–55, 105–8, 110; in Seagram murals, 139–42; warm and cool, 13. See also brighter paintings; darker paintings color-field painting, 17, 32, 110, 173, 177, 197, 221, 275, 278 commissions. See Harvard mural commission; Phillips Collection; Rothko Chapel, Houston; Seagram mural commission; UNESCO commission communication: as central goal of R’s art, 19, 20, 58, 136, 235–36, 281; emotional, 8, 12; myth as means of, 26, 30–31, 86; paradoxes involving, 35; primal/ universal, 3, 7, 21, 25, 26, 36, 49–50, 220, 274–75. See also experience and interpretation of R’s work; expression conservation, of works on paper, 227–33 Constable, John, 81 contrast, 201–2 crying, 11 Cubism, 103–4 Dada, 43–44 Dahl, Roald, 239 Dalí, Salvador, 162, 242–43; Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln—Homage to Rothko, 243

darker paintings: chronological position of, 65; emotional quality of, 11, 37; formal qualities of, 37, 65–66; inward-turning character of, 34; responses to, 36–37; R’s mental state and, 247; Seagram murals and, 139–42; time and temporality in, 203; visual impact of, 82. See also 1960s works; Black and Grey works; Blackform works; Brown and Grey works Daugavpils, Latvia. See Dvinsk (now Daugavpils), Latvia death, 19, 243–44 Debussy, Claude, 180 De Kooning, Willem, 81, 202 Derrida, Jacques, 237 dichotomies, 215 the Dionysian, 195, 215 door, as analogy for paintings, 41, 50, 51, 280 drama: of the Greeks, 45, 172; in Mozart’s music, 171–72; R’s works as, 8–9, 28, 84–85, 171–72; space and form in, 34, 56–57. See also urban psychodramas drawing, 28–29, 221, 224–25 Duchamp, Marcel, Fountain, 44 Dufay, Guillaume, 178 Dvinsk (now Daugavpils), Latvia, 5, 250–61, 254, 256 dynamism and movement, 8, 119. See also action, as artistic element École des Beaux-Arts, 138 economy, 170, 198. See also simplicity/simplification; stripping away Egyptian culture, 98, 172, 192, 220 Eisenstein, Sergei, 256 emotion: in 1960s works, 37, 202, 205–6; in Black and Grey works, 212; in classic works, 6; color and, 11, 32; complexity of, 9, 34–35, 171, 202; in figurative work, 8; as fundamental element in R’s art, 3, 9, 175, 182; in Multiforms, 31–32; in Schubert’s music, 176; in viewers, 10–13 emptiness/nothingness, 6–7, 35, 41–43, 50–51, 124–26, 216, 218, 258. See also the irrational and unknown; screen, blank; tabula rasa; void(s) existential character of R’s work, 19, 26, 38, 51, 129, 149, 155–56, 172, 186, 216, 222, 235, 243–45 experience and interpretation of R’s work: artist’s biography as influence on, 234–49, 257–58, 262, 266, 275–80; concretization and familiarization as strategies in, 9, 40–45, 49, 116, 161; crying, 11; defensiveness in, 12–13; as drama, 9; emotional quality of, 10–13; formal elements affecting, 58–59, 63, 67, 73; individuality of, 36, 38, 117, 125, 162, 166, 175–76; inner world as element of, 7–8, 11–12, 19; intangibility of, 3–4; intensity of, 10–13; interaction of painting and viewer in, 5, 7, 9–13, 18, 20, 36, 43, 47, 58, 83, 123–24, 139–40, 145–47, 156, 162, 206, 211–12, 215–16; laypersons,’ 9–13, 40–41; negative, 11–12, 47–50; paradoxes in, 35–39; projection in, 17, 215–16; relationship with the artist in, 4, 7, 18, 19–20, 162; in Rothko Chapel, 38–39; size and scale as factors in, 33–34, 80–93; titles’ effect on,

295

INDEX

158–66. See also psychology of art; self-reflection and self-discovery, in viewing R’s works expression: Abstract Expressionism and, 110–11; ambitions for, 85, 86; of humanity, 3, 7–8; mechanisms of, 13–14, 17–21, 32–33; stripping away means of, 37, 102–3, 110–11, 138, 200; universality of, 7. See also communication fear, 18–19, 23 feelings. See emotion Feldman, Morton, 179–81, 179; Rothko Chapel, 126–27, 179, 181 figurative work: abandonment of, 45; abstraction in, 99–100; abstract work compared to, 94–96; emotional meaning of, 8; form and space in, 73–74, 102, 108, 174; realism in, 21; transition from, 26, 75, 98–99; urban psychodramas, 21, 23–24 films, 185 Fischer, John, 134, 140, 145, 147–49; “The Easy Chair,” 193–94 float, in R’s classic works, 115–19 Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 191–92 Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland, 207, 249, 249 form and composition, 52–79; biographical explanations of, 279; in Black and Grey works, 207–8; classical, 172–73, 177; in classic works, 34, 37, 77; color as, 54–55; in figurative vs. abstract works, 95; influences on, 172–73; Latvian environment as influence on, 251–52, 275–77; musical, 172–74, 177; rectangles and, 52–53, 56–59, 65–67, 70, 72, 77–78, 112–19; rejection of traditional, 7, 24; R’s concern with, 54–55, 63–73, 173–74; in Seagram murals, 63, 68–69, 137; space as, 55, 180–81; stripping down to essential, 102; vertical and horizontal in, 174, 199; viewer’s experience shaped by, 58–59, 63, 67, 73. See also balance and proportion Four Seasons Restaurant, Seagram Building, New York City, 132–33, 144–46, 148, 155 fragility, 3–4, 119, 158, 192, 201, 232, 258 frames, 34, 73, 210, 228, 229 freedom, 29–31, 46, 75 Freud, Sigmund, 28 Germany, 196, 258 gestalts, R’s works as, 6, 14, 174 Giacometti, Alberto, 24, 208–9 Giotto, 105, 106–7, 276; The Last Judgment, 107 Glass, Philip, 180 God, 278 Goldwater, Robert, 45, 284 Gorky, Arshile, 239 Gottlieb, Adolph, 50, 85, 158, 170, 267, 275, 278 Goya, Francisco de, 47 Great Depression, 86 Greek culture, 45, 98, 172–73, 192, 220, 282 group exhibitions, refusal of, 3 Guggenheim, Peggy, 159

296

Hall of Mysteries, Pompeii, 142, 151

hand, painter’s. See paint quality and handling Harper’s Magazine, 133 Harvard mural commission, 63–64, 65, 68–69, 139, 192, 198 Haydn, Joseph, 161, 169, 172 Heller, Ben, 139 history and the past, 280–83 Holocaust, 254–55, 257, 258, 269, 275 human condition/humanity: act of painting as sign of, 18; drama and, 9; existential character of, 155–56; expression of, 3, 7–8; form and composition as evocative of, 143; inner glow expressive of, 17–18; modernity lacking in, 103–4; in R’s art, 1, 3, 7, 17–18, 21, 35–36, 51, 83, 86, 92, 104, 118, 130, 285–87; as standard by which artistic achievement is measured, 54; tragic character of, 19–20, 171, 243–44; universality of, 130, 281–82 humor, 183–95, 285–86 the idea, 100–102, 110–11, 181 immersion, in paintings, 89, 91, 210 imperfection, 18 Impressionism, 53–54 inner glow, 17–18 inner world: classic works and, 9, 33–34; as subject of R’s art, 2, 6–9, 277; of the viewer, 7–8, 11–12, 19, 182 installation of works, 3, 34, 35, 71, 83, 124, 164 intangibility, 3–4. See also tangibility intimacy, 2, 33, 81–90, 135, 142 irony, 186, 188–95 the irrational and unknown, 50, 142. See also emptiness/nothingness Italy, 137, 172–73, 281 Janis, Sidney, 159–60 jazz, 178 Jewish Center School, New York City, 185 Jews and Judaism, 253–58, 260, 264, 275, 278 Johnson, Philip, 132, 135, 144–45, 152 Jung, Carl, 26, 28 Kahlo, Frida, 239 Kawamura Memorial Museum, Sakura City, Japan, 136, 137, 151, 195 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 239 Kline, Franz, 17, 202, 278 Kuh, Katherine, 80, 83, 169 Kunitz, Stanley, 188 landscapes, R’s paintings as, 46, 66–67, 82–83, 280 language: of the idea, 181; of myth, 26, 30–31, 163; R’s artistic, 7, 20–21, 50; structuralist and post-structuralist critique of, 44–45 late paintings, 246–49 Leonardo da Vinci, 104 light, 104–5 linear perspective, 105–7, 276 Liszt, Franz, 172 Logan, John, Red, 155, 193

Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, 139 Magritte, René, La trahison des images (Ceci n’est pas un pipe), 44, 44 Mahler, Gustav, 178 Malevich, Kazimir, 52 Marden, Brice, 127 Marin, John, 226 Mark Rothko Arts Centre, Daugavpils, Latvia, 257, 259–61, 260 Mark Rothko Foundation, 116, 228 Marlborough Gallery, 196, 210 Matisse, Henri, 81, 281, 286; Harmony in Red, 108, 108 Mendelssohn, Felix, 172 Menil, Jean and Dominique de, 122 Menil Collection, Houston, 224 Menil Drawings Center, Houston, 227 Michelangelo, 284; Laurentian Library, 133, 137, 147; Sistine Chapel, 125, 133, 151 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, Seagram Building, New York City, 132, 138, 140, 144, 155 minimalism, 12, 104, 179–80 Miro, Joan, 162, 281 mirror, as analogy for paintings, 38–39, 128 modern art, Rothko on, 101–4, 177 modernism: in architecture, 138; art as biography rejected in, 236; in music, 178–80; Rothko and, 177–78 Mondrian, Piet, 191 Monet, Claude, 53–54 monochrome, 38, 71, 75, 128, 140, 141, 156, 198, 207 Motherwell, Robert, 208, 278 movement. See dynamism and movement Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 19, 169–73, 181, 286; Divertimento Trio, 171; Don Giovanni, 272; The Magic Flute, 185, 272; Piano Concerto No. 26, 171 Multiforms: abstraction in, 31; color in, 75, 77; emotional quality of, 31–32; form in, 75, 77, 102; movement in, 17; nebulousness in, 14; second marriage and, 266–67; size and scale of, 87; transitional nature of, 30 Munch, Edvard, 235 murals. See Harvard mural commission; Rothko Chapel, Houston; Seagram mural commission Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 227, 266; retrospective exhibition (1961), 138, 150, 190 music, 167–82; classical, 172; conversations with the author about, 272; Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, 126–27; form and composition in, 172–74, 177; importance of, for R, 167, 169, 185, 272, 282; as model for painting, 167–69, 172–74, 176–77, 181–82, 205; modernist, 178–80; titles given to classical compositions, 161–62; the tragic in, 19. See also individual composers myth: abandonment of, 30–31; communicative capacity of, 26, 30–31, 86, 163, 175; content of, 26, 28; limitations of, 30–31, 163; in neo-surrealist works, 75, 86, 98; R’s interest in, 26, 28, 98 Nabokov, Vladimir, Pale Fire, 236

narrative and anti-narrative, 7–8, 47 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 136, 151; works on paper retrospective exhibition (1984), 228–31 nebulousness, as artistic element, 14, 17 neo-surrealist works: form in, 14, 102, 174; intellectual influences on, 28, 98–99; myth in, 75, 86, 98; on paper, 219–21; second marriage and, 265–66; titling of, 163 Nevelson, Louise, 278 Newman, Barnett, 18, 175, 188, 267–68, 275, 278 New Yorker cartoon, 41, 42 New York school, 110, 217, 267–69, 275, 278. See also Abstract Expressionism/ists Nietzsche, Friedrich, 18, 26, 186, 215; The Birth of Tragedy, 26, 98 nothingness. See emptiness/nothingness novels, as analogy for paintings, 84 paint quality and handling: in 1960s works, 201–4; with acrylic pigments, 209–10; assertiveness in, 29; in Black and Grey works, 209–10, 212–13, 248; in classic works, 66–67; human factor conveyed by, 18; in late paintings, 248; layering of paint, 34–35; reflectivity achieved by, 143; in Seagram murals, 138; in watercolors of 1940s, 221; in works on paper, 90–91, 223. See also washes/stains Panza, Giuseppe, 139 paper, works on. See works on paper paradoxes, 35–39 Parks, Rosa, 57 Parsons, Betty, 159 patron-artist relationship. See artist-patron relationship perspective, linear, 105–7, 276 phenomenology, 176 Phillips, Duncan, 53 Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 35 philosophy and philosophical attitude, 28, 32, 53, 55–56, 85, 113, 117, 146, 151, 169–70, 181, 185–86, 189, 195, 200, 204, 212, 235, 241, 273, 278, 280–85; The Artist’s Reality, 94–111 physicality, of paintings, 41, 43, 49, 113–15, 118, 138. See also sensuality/sensuousness Piano, Renzo, 124–25 Picasso, Pablo, 239, 281 Piero della Francesca, 272 pity, 18 poetry, 167 Pollock, Jackson, 17, 178, 202, 251, 267, 278, 282 Pop art, 12 portraits, R’s paintings as, 46, 66–67, 82–83 postmodernism, 12 Post-Structuralism, 43, 237–38 Pound, Ezra, 239 Pratt Institute, New York City, 274 prayer books, synagogue, Daugavpils, Latvia, 254 the preconscious. See the unconscious/preconscious the primitive/primal/elemental: color as, 14, 141; in communication, 3, 7, 21, 36, 49–50; emotion as, 3,

297

INDEX

10, 195, 206; expression as, 24, 212; geometry as, 173; in humanity, 26, 130, 142, 220, 277; movement as, 21; mysteriousness of, 49; in thought, 28, 86, 110; in the world, 29, 102 Prizel, Kate Rothko, 1, 116, 119, 159, 169, 172, 187, 190, 194, 231–32, 250, 253, 256–59, 264, 269, 271–72 projection, 17, 215–16 proportion. See balance and proportion psychoanalytic practice, 230–31 psychology of art, 5–6; color and, 13; components of painting and, 13–14, 17–19; mechanisms of expression, 13–14, 17–21. See also experience and interpretation of R’s work

298

Raphael, The School of Athens, 106, 106 realism, 21 reception of R’s work. See experience and interpretation of R’s work rectangles: as form, 52–53, 56–59, 65–67, 70, 72, 77–78; misconceived as stacked, 112–19 Red (Logan), 155, 193 reflectivity, 37–39, 143, 202 refrigerators, 40–41, 41 Reich, Steve, 180 Reid, Norman, 285 Reinhardt, Ad, 18 religion, 278 Rembrandt van Rijn, 104, 279; Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem, 104, 105; The Night Watch, 133 Renaissance art, 104, 137, 173, 282 representational art, 46–47 retrospective exhibitions: Museum of Modern Art (1961), 138, 150, 190; National Gallery of Art (1984), 228–31 Rivera, Diego, 153 Rockefeller, Nelson, 153 Rodin, Auguste, The Gates of Hell, 133 Rodman, Seldon, 171 Roman culture, 172 romanticism, 7, 175–78 Rorschach tests, 14 Rosenblum, Robert, 175, 220 Rothko, Christopher, 269, 271–72 Rothko, Edith (née Sachar), 218, 264–65 Rothko, Mark: anger of, 148–49, 186, 194; artistic ambitions of, 85, 86, 145, 149, 286; artistic struggles of, 24; depression of, 32, 216, 237, 246–47, 269; employment of, as art teacher, 98, 185; eyesight of, 279–80; financial circumstances of, 86, 219; health of, 90, 245–46, 269; height of, 83; hometown of, 5, 250–61, 275–77; humility of, 285–86; insecurity and self-deprecation of, 189–95, 264, 268; Jewishness of, 253–58, 264, 275, 278; marriages of, 262–70; personality of, 2, 32, 36, 53, 183–95; photographs of, ii, 129, 263; politics of, 24; reputation of, 192, 286; sense of humor of, 183–95; suicide of, 2, 234, 237–49 Rothko, Mark, art works of: assistants’ work on, 121;

City Phantasy, 22, 23; Family, 15; Green on Blue, 1956, 59, 61, 101; Harvard Mural Panel Five, 64, 65; Homage to Matisse, 158; Intimations of Chaos, 163; Mother and Child, 8, 99–100; No. 5, 1963, 65, 66, 198, 202; No. 5, 1964, 199; No. 7, 1963, 59, 61; No. 9, 1958, 63, 64; No. 11/20, 1949, 77; No. 12, 1960, 33, 197; No. 14, 1946, 30, 31; No. 14, 1957, 59, 62, 65; No. 14, 1960, 10, 17, 201; No. 15, 1951, 16, 17, 77; No. 15, 1957, 59, 62, 63; No. 16 [?], 1951, 34, 34 (detail); No. 20, 1949, 77, 78; No. 30, 1962, 68–69, 70; Oedipus, 26, 27, 99–100; Portrait, 24, 94–96, 96, 99, 174; Processional, 28, 29, 99; Rites of Lilith, 29, 30, 87, 266; Rothko Chapel, 38–39, 39; R’s treatment of, 164; Seagram mural commission, 38; searching and exploratory character of, 35, 128, 130, 168–69, 205, 246; Seated Figure, 23, 23, 101; Self Portrait, 1936, 184, 279; signing and dating of, 265; Sketch for Seagram Mural No. 7, 173; Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea [Mell-Ecstatic], 265–66, 267; Subway (1935), 24, 27; Subway (1938/39), 108, 109; Tiresias, 75, 76, 266; titling, 157–66; Untitled, 1933/34, 22, 23; Untitled, 1938/1939, 24, 25, 102, 174; Untitled, 1944–46, 17; Untitled, 1945, 75, 76, 174; Untitled, 1946, 30, 31; Untitled, 1948, 16, 30, 77; Untitled, 1949, 88; Untitled, 1950s-60s, 67, 68; Untitled, 1954, 77, 94–96, 97; Untitled, 1956, 58–59, 60; Untitled, 1958, 68–69, 70; Untitled, 1959, 67, 68; Untitled, 1965, 70–71, 72; Untitled, 1968, 91; Untitled, 1969 (fig. 8), 17, 18, 102; Untitled, 1969 (fig. 43), 68, 69, 210, 216, 247; Untitled, 1969 (fig. 71), 210, 211; Untitled, 1969 (fig. 75), 247, 247; Untitled, c. 1934, 73–74, 74; Untitled, c. 1943–45, 15, 102, 220; Untitled [Subway], 1937, 24, 26; Untitled [Subway Entrance], 1939, 74–75, 75; Untitled [Three Women Talking], 1934, 108, 109; Untitled [View of Portland, OR], 1925/34, 218, 219; Untitled Sketch, 1930s, 225; Untitled Sketches, c. 1940–43 (fig. 68), 184; Untitled Sketches, c. 1940–43 (fig. 74), 225; Yellow over Purple, 1956, 58–59, 60. See also 1920s works; 1930s works; 1940s works; 1950s works; 1960s works; Black and Grey works; Brown and Grey works; classic works; experience and interpretation of R’s work; figurative work; Harvard mural commission; late paintings; Multiforms; neo-surrealist works; Rothko Chapel, Houston; Seagram mural commission; series paintings; works on paper Rothko, Mark, writings/statements of: on abstraction, 99–101; “The Artist’s Dilemma,” 149; The Artist’s Reality, 54–55, 57, 94–111, 95, 149, 150, 276, 282, 284; on being an artist, 167, 182, 189–90, 191, 192–93, 199, 276; on Cézanne, 53–54; on classic works, 189; on color, 53–55, 105–8, 110, 140; drama and theater analogies in, 57; on family life, 187; on figurative art, 45; on the human condition, 19; humorous, 187–94, 285–86; on Latvia and Germany, 258; letter to New York Times, 50, 85, 170; on the meaning of paintings, 35, 55, 158–59, 170, 235, 273, 274; on modern art, 101–5, 177; on

music, 19, 171; on Rothko Chapel, 71; on science, 103; “The Scribble Book,” 54–55, 98; on Seagram commission, 133–34, 147, 193–94; on size and scale, 81, 83, 84, 85, 91; on the tragic, 19 Rothko, Mary Alice (Mell) [née Beistle], 159, 185, 187, 194, 254, 262–70, 263 Rothko Chapel, Houston, 38–39, 39, 120–30, 253; architecture of, 124; contradictory aspects of, 120–21; duration of work on, 70; Feldman’s Rothko Chapel and, 126–27; formal concerns in, 70–71; Johnson’s role in, 144; octagonal shape of, 130, 173; painting-environment relationship in, 71, 121–23, 127–28, 139; place of, in R’s oeuvre, 198; R in studio with murals for, 129; second marriage and, 269; silence of, 125–27; study for, 70–71, 72; traditional murals compared to, 121–22; visitor’s experience in, 123, 125, 127–29 Rothko’s Rooms (documentary film), 152 sadness, 11 scale. See size and scale Schachtel, Ernst, 14 Scharf, Sally, 187 Scharf, William, 162, 187 Schneider, Lynn, 190 Schoenberg, Arnold, 178 Schubert, Franz, 169, 172, 176–77, 239; Trout Quintet, 272 science, 102–3, 220 screen: as analogy for R’s paintings, 41–42; blank, 43 Seagram mural commission, 131–56; cohesiveness of groups painted for, 138–39; color in, 139–42; eventual homes of, 136, 137, 151, 193, 195, 196, 285–86; formal concerns in, 63, 68–69, 137; history of, 132; inspirations for, 137–38, 142; interaction of painting and viewer in, 139–40, 145–47; Johnson’s role in, 132, 135, 144–45, 152; misunderstandings in, 132–33, 144–45; mythical character of, 131–34, 153–55, 194; painting-environment relationship in, 135–38, 141, 143; paintings for, 132, 135–43; reflectivity in, 37; responses to, 140; R’s attitude toward, 133–37, 143–51, 193–94; Section 2, 38; significance of, for R’s career, 142–43, 151, 197; Sketch for Seagram Mural No. 7, 173; works on paper produced in conjunction with, 89, 222 sectional works, 6, 8, 17, 24, 30, 32, 56, 67, 77, 95, 101, 108, 110, 170, 265, 275. See also classic works; 1950s works; 1960s works Seitz, William, 191 self-reflection and self-discovery, in viewing R’s works, 5, 9–13, 35–39, 46–47, 50–51, 125, 127–29, 156, 205–6, 216, 235 Selz, Peter, 272 sensuality/sensuousness, 9, 37, 49, 52, 102–3, 106–7, 110–11, 142, 175, 182, 204, 212. See also physicality, of paintings series paintings: Black and Grey works, 72, 214, 246; Blackform paintings, 70; Brown and Grey works, 72; Harvard mural commission, 63, 68; titling of,

165; works on paper, in conjunction with Seagram mural commission, 89. See also Rothko Chapel, Houston; Seagram mural commission sexuality, 187–88, 191 Shakespeare, William, 163 Shapiro, Joel, Untitled, 118, 119 Sidney Janis Gallery, 159 silence, 125–27, 140–41, 180–81, 230–31 simplicity/simplification, 21, 37, 51–52, 66, 77, 87, 90, 111, 116–18, 139, 170–71, 173–75, 177, 180, 198, 222–23. See also economy; stripping away Siskind, Aaron, 263 size and scale, 80–93; of 1960s works, 203; of classic works, 33–34, 67, 82, 85, 87–89, 178; of early works, 85–86; large paintings, 80–83, 93; of Multiforms, 87; of Rothko Chapel, 123; of Seagram murals, 135; small paintings, 80–81, 83–93; time and temporality affected by, 203; vertical vs. horizontal, 82; viewer’s experience shaped by, 33–34, 80–93; of works on paper, 89–92, 209 socialism, 24, 132, 237, 285 solitude, 2, 128–30, 155–56 space: in figurative vs. abstract works, 96; as form, 55, 180–81; manipulation of, with paint handling, 66; music and, 180–81; rectangular form suitable for conveying, 56–57; small paintings and, 83–84 spirituality, 205 “stacked,” as misconception about R’s rectangles, 112–19 stage, as analogy for paintings, 9, 28, 34, 52, 55–57, 102, 132, 149 Stevenson, James, New Yorker cartoon, 42 Still, Clyfford, 81, 268, 275, 278 stripping away, 37, 102–3, 110–11, 138, 200. See also simplicity/simplification Structuralism, 43–44, 237–38 subjectivity, 36, 103, 176, 276 Sugimoto, Hiroshi, 42, 50–51; Al Ringling, Baraboo, 43 suicide, 234–35, 239, 242–44. See also Rothko, Mark: suicide of surrealism, 25, 175, 267. See also neo-surrealist works symmetry, 199 tabula rasa, 216, 258 tangibility, 49. See also intangibility; physicality, of paintings Tate Galleries, London, 136, 137, 151, 193, 195, 196, 285–86 temples, 137, 172–73 temporality. See time and temporality tension, as characteristic of R’s work, 82, 115, 117–18, 195, 215 Thomas, Morgan, 4 time and temporality, 126, 140–43, 202–4 Titian, 81 titles, 157–66, 213–14 the tragic, 11, 18–20, 171, 243–44 transcendence and transformation, as result of an artistic experience, 116, 118–19, 123, 183, 216, 236, 277, 287

299

truth, 176, 278 Turner, J. M. W., 47, 139, 285–86 Turrell, James, 203 the unconscious/preconscious, 26, 28–30, 86, 163, 220–21, 278 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) commission, 208 unity, 103–5, 111 universality: of abstraction, 87, 100–101, 277; of expression/communication, 7, 20, 25–26, 35, 49, 220, 274–75; of the human condition, 130, 281–82; of myth, 26, 87, 163 the unknown. See the irrational and unknown urban psychodramas, 21, 23–24

INDEX

Van Gogh, Vincent, 235, 239, 240 Vatican II, 122 viewer’s experience. See experience and interpretation of R’s work void(s), 6–7, 47, 51, 127, 180–81, 213, 216. See also emptiness/nothingness Wagner, Richard, 172, 185, 239 washes/stains, 66, 201, 204, 209. See also paint quality and handling watercolors, 218–22 Webern, Anton, 178 Wilke, Ulfert, 71 Williams, Dar, Mark Rothko Song, 238–39, 242 window, as analogy for paintings, 9, 41, 280 works on paper: in 1920s and 1930s, 218; in 1940s, 219–21; in 1950s and 1960s, 222–23; analysis and appreciation of, 217–23; conservation of, 227–33; emotional quality of, 91; exhibition of, 224–33; form in, 67–68; late, 90–91; misconceptions about, 224–25; mounting and presentation of, 223, 225–26, 228–33; paint quality and handling in, 223; size and scale of, 80, 89–92, 209; valuation of, 224–27 Yale University, 186 Zalitelo, Farida, 252–53, 261

300

Illustrations and Credits All paintings and drawings not otherwise credited are by Mark Rothko. Rothko paintings listed as oil on canvas are often, in fact, mixed media on canvas. I have not listed them as such because such nomenclature tends to imply collage or nonpainted objects attached to the canvas. In the case of Rothko paintings, the exact combination of media is often not known and may include a variety of dried pigments, non-oil pigments, binders, and egg. All paintings on canvas or board by Mark Rothko: Copyright © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. All drawings and paintings on paper by Mark Rothko: Copyright © 2015 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. photography Christopher Burke, Quesada/Burke, New York: figs. 1, 3–19, 21, 32, 36, 40–41, 43–54, 56–57, 62, 63, 66, 69–71, 75 Lee Ewing: figs. 42, 68, 72–74 Cover. Untitled, 1950s–60s. Pen and ink and graphite on wove paper, 11 × 81⁄2 in. (27.94 × 21.59 cm). NGA Acquisition #1986.56.642. National Gallery of Art, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 1. Mother and Child (1940). Oil on canvas, 361⁄4 × 221⁄8 in. (91.4 × 55.9 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #176. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 2. No. 14, 1960. Oil on canvas, 1141⁄2 in. × 1055⁄8 in. (290.83 × 268.29 cm). SFMOMA, Helen Crocker Russell Fund purchase. 3. Family (c. 1936). Oil on canvas, 201⁄4 × 31⁄8 in. (51.4 × 76.5 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 4. Untitled, c. 1943–45. Watercolor on paper, 225⁄8 × 28 in. (57.6 × 21.1 cm). Estate #1103.44R. Collection of Christopher Rothko 5. Untitled, 1948. Oil on canvas, 60 × 493⁄4 in. (152.4 × 126.4 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #371. Private collection. 6. No. 15, 1951. Oil on canvas, 441⁄4 × 373⁄8 in. (112.4 × 94.9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 7. Untitled, 1944–46. Watercolor and ink on paper, 63⁄4 × 10 in. (17.15 × 25.4 cm). Estate #1044.nd. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 8. Untitled, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, 693⁄4 × 117 in. (177.2 × 297.2 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #826. Private Collection. 9. City Phantasy (c. 1934). Oil on canvas, 441⁄2 × 331⁄2 × 1 1/4 in. (100 × 72.4 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #62. Collection of Christopher Rothko.

truth, 176, 278 Turner, J. M. W., 47, 139, 285–86 Turrell, James, 203 the unconscious/preconscious, 26, 28–30, 86, 163, 220–21, 278 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) commission, 208 unity, 103–5, 111 universality: of abstraction, 87, 100–101, 277; of expression/communication, 7, 20, 25–26, 35, 49, 220, 274–75; of the human condition, 130, 281–82; of myth, 26, 87, 163 the unknown. See the irrational and unknown urban psychodramas, 21, 23–24

INDEX

Van Gogh, Vincent, 235, 239, 240 Vatican II, 122 viewer’s experience. See experience and interpretation of R’s work void(s), 6–7, 47, 51, 127, 180–81, 213, 216. See also emptiness/nothingness Wagner, Richard, 172, 185, 239 washes/stains, 66, 201, 204, 209. See also paint quality and handling watercolors, 218–22 Webern, Anton, 178 Wilke, Ulfert, 71 Williams, Dar, Mark Rothko Song, 238–39, 242 window, as analogy for paintings, 9, 41, 280 works on paper: in 1920s and 1930s, 218; in 1940s, 219–21; in 1950s and 1960s, 222–23; analysis and appreciation of, 217–23; conservation of, 227–33; emotional quality of, 91; exhibition of, 224–33; form in, 67–68; late, 90–91; misconceptions about, 224–25; mounting and presentation of, 223, 225–26, 228–33; paint quality and handling in, 223; size and scale of, 80, 89–92, 209; valuation of, 224–27 Yale University, 186 Zalitelo, Farida, 252–53, 261

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Illustrations and Credits All paintings and drawings not otherwise credited are by Mark Rothko. Rothko paintings listed as oil on canvas are often, in fact, mixed media on canvas. I have not listed them as such because such nomenclature tends to imply collage or nonpainted objects attached to the canvas. In the case of Rothko paintings, the exact combination of media is often not known and may include a variety of dried pigments, non-oil pigments, binders, and egg. All paintings on canvas or board by Mark Rothko: Copyright © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. All drawings and paintings on paper by Mark Rothko: Copyright © 2015 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. photography Christopher Burke, Quesada/Burke, New York: figs. 1, 3–19, 21, 32, 36, 40–41, 43–54, 56–57, 62, 63, 66, 69–71, 75 Lee Ewing: figs. 42, 68, 72–74 Cover. Untitled, 1950s–60s. Pen and ink and graphite on wove paper, 11 × 81⁄2 in. (27.94 × 21.59 cm). NGA Acquisition #1986.56.642. National Gallery of Art, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 1. Mother and Child (1940). Oil on canvas, 361⁄4 × 221⁄8 in. (91.4 × 55.9 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #176. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 2. No. 14, 1960. Oil on canvas, 1141⁄2 in. × 1055⁄8 in. (290.83 × 268.29 cm). SFMOMA, Helen Crocker Russell Fund purchase. 3. Family (c. 1936). Oil on canvas, 201⁄4 × 31⁄8 in. (51.4 × 76.5 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 4. Untitled, c. 1943–45. Watercolor on paper, 225⁄8 × 28 in. (57.6 × 21.1 cm). Estate #1103.44R. Collection of Christopher Rothko 5. Untitled, 1948. Oil on canvas, 60 × 493⁄4 in. (152.4 × 126.4 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #371. Private collection. 6. No. 15, 1951. Oil on canvas, 441⁄4 × 373⁄8 in. (112.4 × 94.9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 7. Untitled, 1944–46. Watercolor and ink on paper, 63⁄4 × 10 in. (17.15 × 25.4 cm). Estate #1044.nd. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 8. Untitled, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, 693⁄4 × 117 in. (177.2 × 297.2 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #826. Private Collection. 9. City Phantasy (c. 1934). Oil on canvas, 441⁄2 × 331⁄2 × 1 1/4 in. (100 × 72.4 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #62. Collection of Christopher Rothko.

10. Untitled, 1933/34. Oil on canvas, 321⁄2 × 251⁄2 in. (82.6 × 64.8cm). Catalogue Raisonné #50. Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel. 11. Seated Figure (1939). Oil on canvas, 273⁄4 × 20 in. (70.5 × 50.8 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #172. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 12. Untitled, 1938/1939. Oil on canvas, 40 × 30 in. (101.6 × 76.2 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #163. Private Collection. 13. Untitled [Subway], 1937. Oil on canvas, 201⁄8 × 30 in. (51.1 × 76.2 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 14. Subway (1935). Oil on canvas, 24 × 18 in. (61 × 45.7 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #71. Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel. 15. Oedipus (1940). Oil on linen, 36 × 24 in. (91.4 × 61 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #179. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 16. Processional (1943). Oil and charcoal (?) on canvas, 187⁄8 × 127⁄8 in. (47.9 × 32.7 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #222. Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel. 17. Rites of Lilith (1945). Oil and charcoal on canvas, 817⁄8 × 1065⁄8 in. (208.3 × 270.8 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #266. Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel. 18. No. 14, 1946. Oil on canvas, 54 × 271⁄2 in. (137.8 × 69.9 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #313. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 19. Untitled, 1946. Oil on canvas, 541⁄8 × 273⁄8 in. (137.5 × 69.5 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #317. Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel. 20. No. 12, 1960. Oil on canvas, 1201⁄8 × 1051⁄4 in. (305.1 × 267.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #678. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Panza Collection. 21. No. 16 [?], 1951 (detail). Oil on canvas, 675⁄8 × 445⁄8 in. (171.8 × 113.4 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #462. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 22. Seagram Mural, Section 2 (1959). Oil on canvas, 105 × 180 in. (266.7 × 457.2 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #657. Tate Gallery. Presented by the artist through the American Federation of Arts. 23. Interior, west walls, Rothko Chapel, Houston, TX. Photographer: Sofia van der Dys. Copyright © 2008 Sofia van der Dys. 24. Refrigerator with spacewoman (c. 1971–75) 25. James Stevenson/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank. August 29, 1964. 26. Hiroshi Sugimoto, Al Ringling, Baraboo (1995). Gelatin silver print, 47 × 583⁄4 in. (119.4 cm × 149.2 cm). Edition of 5. Copyright © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Pace Gallery. 27. René Magritte, La trahison des images (1928/29). Oil on canvas. 233⁄4 × 3115⁄16 × 1 in. (60.33 × 81.12 × 2.54 cm). Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 28. Josef Albers, Study for Homage to the Square: Light Rising (1950, altered 1959). Oil on wood fiberboard, 32 × 32 in. (81.3 × 81.3 cm). National Gallery

of Art. Collection of Robert and Jane Meyerhoff. Copyright © 2015 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 29. Rosa Parks riding the bus, December 21, 1956. Copyright © Bettmann/CORBIS. 30. Rosa Parks riding the bus (cropped). 31. Yellow over Purple, 1956. 691⁄2 × 593⁄8 in. (177.2 × 150.8 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #558. Private Collection. 32. Untitled, 1956. Oil on canvas, 911⁄4 × 69 in. (231.8 × 175.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #561. Private Collection. 33. No. 7, 1963. Oil on canvas. 691⁄8 × 64 in. (175.6 × 162.6 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #748. Kunstmuseum, Bern. 34. Green on Blue, 1956. Oil on canvas. 90 × 631⁄2 in. (228.6 × 161.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #543. The University of Arizona Museum of Art. Gift of Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. 35. No. 14, 1957. Oil on canvas. 1013⁄4 × 82 in. (258.5 × 208.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #588. Private Collection. 36. No. 15, 1957. Oil on canvas, 105 × 1163⁄4 in. (261.6 × 295.9 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #589. Private Collection. 37. No. 9, 1958. Oil on canvas. 105 × 166 in. (266.7 × 421.6 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #616. Glenstone. 38. No. 9, 1958 (digitally manipulated). 39. Harvard Mural Panel Five (1962). Oil on canvas. 1051⁄8 × 117 in. (266.7 × 297.2 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #741. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. Gift of the Artist. 40. No. 5, 1963. Oil on canvas, 90 × 69 in. (228.6 × 175.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #746. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 41. Untitled, 1959. Tempera on paper, 381⁄16 × 25 in. (96.7 × 63.5 cm). Estate #2120.59. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 42. Untitled, 1950s–60s. Pen and ink and graphite on wove paper, 11 × 89⁄16 in. (28 × 21.7 cm). NGA Acquisition #1986.56.321. National Gallery of Art, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 43. Untitled, 1969. Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, 537⁄8 × 423⁄8 in. (136.8 × 107.7 cm). Estate #2069.69. Private Collection. 44. Untitled, 1958. Oil on canvas, 557⁄8 × 941⁄2 in. (141.9 × 240 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #613. Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel. 45. No. 30, 1962. Mixed media on canvas, 45 × 1051⁄2 in. (114.3 × 266.7 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #730. Private Collection. 46. Untitled, 1965 (unfinished Rothko Chapel Study). Mixed media on canvas, 177 × 961⁄2 in. (449.6 × 245.1 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #783. Collections of Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. 47. Untitled, c. 1934. Oil on hardboard, 24 × 301⁄8 in. (61 × 76.5 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc.

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48. Untitled [Subway Entrance], 1939. Oil on canvas, 24 × 32 in. (61 × 81.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #167. Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel. 49. Tiresias (1944). Oil on canvas, 797⁄8 × 397⁄8 in. (202.6 × 101.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #247. Private Collection. 50. Untitled, 1945. Oil on canvas, 221⁄8 × 30 in. (56.2 × 76.53 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #270. Private Collection. 51. No. 20, 1949. Oil on canvas, 56 × 48 in. (142.2 × 121.9 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #404. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 52. No. 11/20, 1949. Oil on canvas, 933⁄4 × 53 in. (238.1 × 134.6 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #419. Private Collection. 53. Untitled, 1949. Oil on canvas, 32 × 235⁄8 in. (80.7 × 60 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #432. Private Collection. 54. Untitled, 1968. Acrylic on paper mounted on panel, 391⁄8 × 253⁄4 (99.4 × 65.4 cm). Estate #1166.68. Private Collection. 55. Original manuscript page from Mark Rothko, The Artist’s Reality (c. 1935–41) National Gallery of Art Library. Gift of Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. Copyright © 2015 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. 56. Portrait (1939). Oil on canvas, 397⁄8 × 301⁄4 in. (101.6 × 76.5 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #164. Private Collection. 57. Untitled, 1954. Oil on canvas, 911⁄8 × 591⁄2 in. (231.9 × 151.1 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #513. Private Collection. 58. Rembrandt, Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem (1630). Oil on panel, 181⁄8 × 223⁄4 in. (58 × 46 cm). Rijksmuseum. 59. Raphael, The School of Athens (1509–11). Fresco, 197 × 303 in. (500.38 × 769.6 cm). Apostolic Palace, Vatican City. 60. Giotto, The Last Judgment (c. 1305). Fresco, 3933⁄4 × 3303⁄4 in. (1000 × 840 cm). Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. 61. Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red (1908). Oil on canvas, 693⁄4 × 857⁄8 in. (180 × 220 cm). The Hermitage. 62. Untitled [Three Women Talking], 1934. Oil on canvas, 32 × 24 in. (81.3 × 61 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #137. Private Collection. 63. Subway (1938/39). Oil on canvas, 341⁄4 × 297⁄8 in. (87 × 75.9 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #145. Private Collection. 64. Joel Shapiro, Untitled (2005–6). Bronze 9 ft. 33⁄4 in. × 71 in. × 52 in. (283.8 × 180.3 × 132.1 cm). Photograph by Ellen Labenski, courtesy Pace Gallery. Copyright © 2015 Joel Shapiro/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

65. [Mark Rothko, 1964] 69th Street studio with chapel murals. Photograph by Hans Namuth. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona copyright © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate. 66. Sketch for Seagram Mural No. 7 (1958–59). Oil on canvas, 105 × 1681⁄4 in. (266.7 × 437.4 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #645. Private Collection. 67. Morton Feldman. Photographer unidentified. 68. Untitled sketches, c. 1940–43. Ink on paper, 81⁄2 × 11 in. (21.59 × 28cm). Inventory #P 89. Collections of Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. 69. Self Portrait, 1936. Oil on canvas, 321⁄4 × 253⁄4 in. (81.9 × 65.4 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #82. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 70. No. 5, 1964. Oil on canvas, 90 × 69 in. (228.6 × 175.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #777. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 71. Untitled, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, 92 × 787⁄8 in. (233.7 × 200.3 cm). Catalogue Raisonné #814. Collection of Christopher Rothko. 72. Untitled [view of Portland, OR], 1925/34. Watercolor on paper, 12 × 151⁄2 in. (30.5 × 39.4 cm). Inventory #62. Collections of Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. 73. Untitled sketch, 1930s. Graphite on paper, 12 × 81⁄2 in. (30.5 × 21.6 cm). Inventory #30 W. Collections of Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. 74. Untitled sketches, c. 1940–43. Graphite on paper, 11 × 81⁄2 in. (28 × 21.6 cm). Inventory #P 17. Collections of Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. 75. Untitled, 1969. Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, 537⁄16 × 423⁄8 in. (135.8 × 107.8 cm). Estate #2066.69. Private Collection. 76. Installation photo, Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2004). Photographer: Adriano A. Biando. 77. Prayer books, synagogue, Daugavpils, Latvia (2003). Courtesy Christopher Rothko. 78. Children’s choir at city gate, Daugavpils, Latvia (2003). Courtesy Christopher Rothko. 79. Daugavpils Mark Rothko Arts Centre (2013) Photographer: Romuald Stashans. 80. Mark and Mary Alice (Mell) Rothko (1952/53). Photographer: Henry Elkan. Copyright © 2015 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko. 81. Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea [Mell-Ecstatic] (1944). Oil on canvas. 751⁄4 × 85 in. (191.1 × 215.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art. Bequest of Mary Alice Rothko.