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In the Tower: Mark Rothko

Introduction

 

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) was a leader of the abstract expressionists, a loose-knit group of painters who by midcentury had made New York the center of the art world. Unlike Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who wielded the brush with great energy, Rothko painted soft-edged rectangles of color, at once veiled and radiant.

 

Black was a frequent, sometimes imposing presence in Rothko's early work (nos. 1–9)—from his expressive figures of the 1930s to the surrealist-inspired canvases of the mid-1940s to the abstract "multiforms" of the late 1940s. Interestingly, black did not play a major role in Rothko's classic works of the 1950s. Thus his dramatic turn to black in 1964, with the black paintings featured in this exhibition (nos. 10–16), was something of a return, but one whose significance remains mysterious.

 

Some critics have seen these paintings as Rothko's pointed reminder that there was more to his work than lyric color—that his real subject was (as he had declared in 1943) the "tragic and timeless." Others have seen them as tokens of the illness and depression that began to plague Rothko in the 1960s, even as harbingers of his suicide at the end of the decade.

 

But does black = tragedy and despair? While it does absorb more light than any other color, it is not just a void. Depending upon the quality of paint and its application, as well as shifting angles of light, the blacks here can look like steel or velvet, silver screens or black holes. Other colors lie in wait under a surface or peek around an edge. But to notice all this takes time: unless we look at the paintings slowly, we will not see what Rothko called their "inner light."

 

That phrase is almost religious, and indeed these works led directly to eighteen monumental dark canvases that Rothko painted for a non-denominational chapel in Houston. To recall that connection, this exhibition includes music composed for it by Morton Feldman (Rothko Chapel, 1971). The result is an experiment, or at least a set of questions. Do the paintings fulfill Rothko's ideal of an abstract art that reflects the range of human passions? Does the music deepen or dilute their effect? Is their blackness brooding? Or are they euphoric in their passage from black to light?

No. 2, 1964, mixed media on canvas, 266.5 x 203.2 cm (105 x 80 in.), Collection of Robert and Jane Meyerhoff

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Untitled (man with green face), 1934/1935, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.100

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Abstracted people and buildings nearly fill this vertical painting around a sky painted moss green with a white crescent moon. Two people at the bottom center of the composition have peach- and gray-toned skin. One appears to wear a narrowly brimmed hat, a black coat over a white shirt and red bowtie, and brown pants striped with red. A second smaller person stands in front of the first, wearing a blue, white, and red striped hat and a pale pink, shin-length dress dotted with white. Their hands and the second person’s legs are painted tomato red. A person with all-over, red-colored skin wears a muted blue, long-sleeved dress stands along the right edge of the painting. A tan-colored form under an archway in a smoke-gray building to the left could be another person, and a fifth person with peach-colored skin walks toward us on the plum-purple street a short distance behind the front pair. A building with a straw-yellow façade facing the street and black side facing us is to the right. More structures painted in tones of navy and ultramarine blue, shell-pink, white, and charcoal gray rise against the green-toned sky. The artist signed the painting near the lower right corner, “Rothkowitz.”

Street Scene, 1936/1937, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.45

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Untitled (reclining nude), 1937/1938, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.50

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Untitled, 1942, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.109

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Untitled, 1945, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.89

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Untitled, 1945/1946, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.68

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Untitled, 1946, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.64

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Vision at End of Day, 1946, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.13

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No. 10, 1948, oil on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.136

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No. 2, 1964, mixed media on canvas, 266.5 x 203.2 cm (105 x 80 in.), Collection of Robert and Jane Meyerhoff

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No. 4, 1964, mixed media on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.152

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No. 5, 1964, oil, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.133

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No. 6 (?), 1964, oil, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.140

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No. 7, 1964, mixed media on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.134

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No. 8, 1964, oil, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.139

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Untitled, 1964, oil and mixed, media on canvas, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 1997 Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, 1986.43.137

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