These paintings can be viewed on the Tate website by clicking here.
I was aware of Mark Rothko and the seagram murals before this research point came up. However, I had only seen the work in reproduction. In fact, the context in which I had mainly seen Rothko paintings was as in large framed prints which went nicely alongside Ikea furniture so my attitude initially was along the lines of - 'nice colours for interior decor but so what?'
I realised that I may not be getting the full experience in the mass reproduced prints and online photographs so I visted Tate Modern to look at them 'in the flesh'.
The paintings are housed in a relatively small room considering their large size so this contributes to a somewhat claustrophobic feeling. There is no getting away from them or casually drifting past (although there are two doors so it is theoretically possible to just skip through the room) - the dim lighting abd the layout encourage you to sit on the benches provided and stare for a while. I found this quite meditative.
The paintings are large in scale - some are in portrait and some in landscape format and they are created in various shades of red, burgundy, maroon and black. The paintings are completely abstract each with a main colour and then a frame-like square or rectangular shape. The shapes are not regular or hard- edged though. If you get up close to the paintings you can see that there are many thin layers of paint applied and they are feathered over each other to create this uneven and irregular/indistinct edge.
Sitting and looking, I became aware that this created an optical illusion - as my eyes started to lose focus slightly there was an illusion of depth - this I found particularly marked with the red on maroon painting(Click here for image of this painting). It felt as though there was a space behind the red frame through which you could be drawn to a more misty, nebulous background- then the painting came back into focus and once again looked as it was - a flat picture plane. This was quite disconcerting. The feathered edges of overlapping colour had a strange throbbing/vibrating appearance against each other.
I looked at one of our set textbooks 'This is Modern Art' by Matthew Collings Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1999 for more information on the Seagram paintings. There was some information about Rothko in the chapter 'Nothing Matters' (pg 141-182) but I found the writing style quite flippant and it didn't give me much useful information :
'His most famous dark paintings are fourteen virtually all-black paintings completed in 1967 as a commission for a chapel in Houston. He did some other really murky maroon ones for a restaurant in 1959 but then changed his mind and they went to the Tate gallery in London instead.' (more about this chapter in the 'reading and reflection' section of this blog)
So I needed to research elsewhere to make sense of the paintings.
Searching for information about Rothko's painting technique I found this video in the moma multimedia section (The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko . No 16 (Red, Brown and Black) Abstract Expressionist New York - The Museum of Modern Art. October 3 2010- April 11 2011)
In this video the presenter demonstrates how Rothko mixed his paints with a large amount of turpentine and applied it vigourously to rub it into the surface of the canvas like a stain rather than a surface application. Multiple very thin layers of paint were built up on top of one another often of markedly differing colours - the underneath layers of paint could be read through the surface layers giving a complex result. He would also sometimes take a rag soaked in turps and scrub back into the margins of the shapes he had applied to the canvas in order to break up edges and make them more indistinct.
I also read this article in the Guardian by Jonathan Jones
www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/dec/07/artsfeatures
The above article/essay was more informative than Matthew Collings and most of the following information has been taken from this.
The paintings were produced in response to a lucrative commision to provide artwork for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York which was completed in 1958. This was an opulent restaurant in which the city's rich and powerful would dine. The awarding of the comission was a major success for Rothko - particularly given his under-privileged start in life.
Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz, - a Russian Jew. His family moved to the USA when he was 10 so he may have felt like an outsider and was certainly poor during his childhood. In adulthood he was left wing and he was also reputed to be quite an intense personality who was prone to depression (he eventually committed suicide in 1970). So what might have motivated him to accept a commission to decorate such a symbol of capitalism? He described the Four Seasons restaurant as, 'A place where the richest bastards in New York will come to feed and show off'. He is also quoted as saying, 'I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room' - he wanted to feel that they were, 'trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up'
Rothkos's concept for this series of paintings was partly inspired by Michelangelo's vestibule of the Laurentian Library which is off the cloister of the Medici church of San Lorenzo in Florence. There are apparent windows in the room but they are actually sealed and dark making the atmosphere oppressive or claustrophobic. Click here for an image of the Laurentian Library Vestibule
His other inspiration was the dining room in the Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii. Click here for an Image from Wikipedia The frescoes in this room are in shades of red and black and depict dionysian (bacchanalean) rituals creating a luxurious but unsettling place to eat. Rothko talked about wanting to 'create a place' rather than just to hang pictures.
Rothko dined once at the Four Seasons restaurant. This may have made him realise that the type of diners he encountered there would not have the commitment to engage with his paintings and he would, therefore not achieve the interaction and effect he intended. His paintings would after all become just expensive pieces of decoration. He withdrew from the commission and never delivered any paintings to the Seagram Building. He agreed to donate some of the paintings to the Tate gallery on condition that he would have his own input into how they were displayed.
Having experienced the paintings at the Tate I would say that he did achieve his intention of giving the impression of closed off claustrophobic windows that tantalise you that there might be some depth or something beyond and that then show themeselves just to be flat planes. They are, therefore, successful paintings but Rothko's intention to upset and unsettle the super-rich patrons of the restaurant for which the paintings were intended was always somewhat overly ambitious.
Reference Material Used:
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/rothko/room-guide/room-3-seagram-murals
'This is Modern Art' by Matthew Collings Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1999. 'Nothing Matters' (pg 141-182)
The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko . No 16 (Red, Brown and Black) Abstract Expressionist New York - The Museum of Modern Art. October 3 2010- April 11 2011)
http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/123/689
'Feeding Fury' Jonathan Jones. Guardian Culture Section. Saturday 7th December 2002
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/dec/07/artsfeatures
Images in the public domain from Wikipedia:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Laurentian_Library_vestibule.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Roman_fresco_Villa_dei_Misteri_Pompeii_008.jpg
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