Inside the Red
Cube: Rothko’s Seagram Paintings,
a case study of
obsessive practice.
Response to The
artist studio exhibition, Tate Modern 2018. (Visited 220318).
This
post considers: Practice through historical research - The role of
contextualising practice in the Laurentian Library and Rothko’s Seagram Mural
Project, practice through performance -
the staging of the ‘room’ with scaffolding to get the space right, practice
through communication - link with White Cube Thinking article, How to Exhibit
Practice? The Narrative continues, new stories about the paintings.
Continuing
from the post ‘White Cube Thinking’, Rothko
in his Seagram commission, was absorbed by and wanted to express the feeling of
being in (time, space, memory, time-based, Decartian body in space, in the Ingold
taskscape of the library) Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library (1525) – a Medici
quattrocento building next to il Duomo in Florence. This library was purpose
built for study, academia, grandeur and awe; it seems to me, built on the same
grand scale as the high alter by Bernini at the Vatican. The size of them
dwarfs the faithful by their giant proportions, just as the dimension of the
Seagram Mural is oversized, immersive is a word Rothko a Russian (now part of
Latvia) born American Painter from the Abstract expressionist movement.
The
whole idea of blocking up the windows, as O’ Doherty (2000) comments on the white
cube contemporary gallery space, is to create a rarefied atmosphere of the intelligencia,
academia and preservation. In this arena by which to communicate practice, natural
light is denied just as in the Laurentian Library, and this is one of the themes
Rothko was trying to portray in this series of paintings.
The Laurentian
Library is a veneration of the past, a cathedral to wealth and power in the form
of the written word and books (privileging type, expensive education and
literacy). Rothko’s paintings echo the emphasis of feeling, the Seagram
Building a Modernist Medici monument. This was a new American temple to
commerce, capitalism, new money, grand families, and idea of immortality. Interestingly
Rothko never completed the commission, he made the paintings and then changed
his mind and did not give them over to Seagram, Johnson or van de Rohe. Wonder what
happened? Instead they were donated to the Tate.
Sitting
in the Rothko room I am in a different white cube space, a deliberately ‘compact
and oppressive space’, the blurb on the wall reminds us (the wall which by the
way is cadmium yellow). The specific dimensions create a suffocating presence.
The original nine paintings on every wall in the room, huge in scale and dimension,
Rothko wanted the viewer to have an immersive experience. The reds and maroons
redolent of the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete where the hot scarlet walls are
a backdrop for live and roiling botanical frescos coupled with acrobatic bull
dancers and bare chested snake grappling priestesses. Religious ecstasy, and a collision
with the sublime in a hypnagogic state, is this what Rothko was trying to
induce? Intriguing triangles of connection drawn in my head. Some with dotted
lines some with coloured lines, solid lines, intersecting connecting subjects
and images and place and thoughts. Some of them golden.
Paintings imaginatively named, Maroon on Black,
Red on Maroon, all executed in 1958-9.
On the cusp of post modernism, on the cusp of the decade, on the cusp of
prosperity in a post war era, American dominance globally, monetarily, was
paramount, the power had shifted from ‘old’ broken post war Europe to the New World
Order.
The
paintings in oxblood, maroon and blood red. Making the viewer feel, as the information
puts it ‘trapped’ – imprisoned by art, by the visual, arrested, calling the
colour ‘brick’ and using the phrase ‘bricked up’, “all they can do is butt their heads against
the wall forever” Rothko states, the muted lighting and closed eyelid red give
a feeling of being buried alive. The four Seasons restaurant in the 1950s Seagram
building on Park Avenue where the paintings were originally destined for, was
the antithesis of the white cube or the feeling of being ‘bricked up’. All
glass and light and plants, airy high ceilings, open plan booths.
Rothko
built a mock-up in scaffolding of the Four Seasons space in an unused school
gymnasium where he could simulate the proportions of the private dining area. I
like the idea that he was rehearsing the space like a dancer or an actor – working
in the foot print of the area specifying the context of his practice, he never
finalised the schema or fixed order for the paintings. The Seagram building, epitome
of modernism and technology, and advances of the 1950’s – the restaurant, the
Four Seasons making the outside inside and the inside outside (opposite to the
white cube which demands that all the art be inside and all the nature and
world outside – maybe even all the people on the outside). Here in this room,
in the Tate Modern the Rothko paintings are divorced from the restaurant that that
they were intended for but never actually reached.
Black on
maroon 1958; the shine on the surface or the blending of paint – ‘demanding
complete absorption’ but like the library – the blinds are not are not usually
the main attraction. Smells of boy-deodorant and perfumed college girls shuffling
past in this especially constructed space – specified by Rothko – has many
associations for me.
At age
of 18months I moved to Cliff Road with my parents, a new start from mums back
recovery, more room to move around in – or fill up. Inside the Victorian house once
owned by Atkinson Grimshaw, painted in the 1960s was this exact colour of
Rothko womb-blood colour. As a child the moving day was a big moment, wandering
in these vast spaces of the new house, empty as yet of furniture with the
overpowering and intense colour schemes, overpowering reds and maroons and
purples. The memory of the empty house filled with the immersive colourscapes
now are redolent of the Rothko gallery – the red cube.
Sitting
in the Seagram Mural room, this set of paintings became my child hood home, and transforms
again into a the Laurentian Library – stuffy – hot – stultifying atmosphere of
a library in the summer with bricked up windows. Learning practice – slow
crafting, and stillness, that is what libraries mean to me, hours sliding by.
In the library there is much to be felt, smelt, heard, seen and touched in this
place, it would be an interesting idea to re-curate these paintings in a local
library or even in the Laurentian library.
A recent play also re-curates Rothko and his paintings in a stage play by
John Logan (2009) called ‘Red’, it discusses the tension between commerce and creation.
The central action is around the creation of the Seagram Murals, the process
and decision making in the studio, in order to paint the abstract paintings. The
practice of being an artist.
Rothko’s
painting practice can be contextualised linking his 1958 Seagram Murals to a
Florentine Renaissance. He emulates the feeling of being in a library, the
windows closed and blinds pulled down against the sun. Each painting in the series
is a vertical or horizontal, soft edged rectangle, light diffusing from under
and round the edge of blinds creating dark silhouettes and tonally analogous
colours in a hot palate. The images
would not exist without this contextualisation, this research into a historical
building and all it may mean politically, psychologically and emotionally.
Rothko has a vision of the library room and decides to recreate the feeling of
space and memory so that the paintings are arranged like a stage set, echoing
the feeling of being in Florence at the Laurentian.
An interesting
addendum is the addition Vladimir Umanets gave to Black on Maroon 1958. In 2015
he casually went up to the painting on display in the Tate and wrote with black
ink in the corner of the painting. It said “A potential piece of yellowism.” Thinking
about narrativity, this act is now part of the story of the canvas. Paintings
even very abstract ones like the Seagram Murals have an implied narrative
content, the deep pools of red and maroon also invite the viewer to project something
of their own story onto the reflective, dream-like surface of the painting.
The
image also contains the memory and history of the artist, their intention, who
bought it, where was it hung, who was it passed to. During communist rule post
WW2 the people of Albania were not allowed to go to church, synagogue or Orthodox
Church. Whilst in Albania doing aid-work I met a man who had buried pictures
and statues from the Catholic Church under his house to avoid them being
destroyed, if he had been caught he would certainly have been arrested. These items
now replaced in the partially destroyed church have layers of narrative
attached to them. Just like the Rothko canvas, the Yellowism incident adds to
its value, adds to its public interest, and it is now a collaborative work. The
practice of a dead painter is responded to by a contemporary artist.
There is a
precedent for this kind of work, Robert Rauschenberg in 1953 bought a Willem De
Kooning drawing and rubbed it out with an eraser. Ai WeiWei bought ancient Chinese
vases and filmed himself smashing and destroying it or dunking it in candy
coloured paint. Unfortunately Umanets did not own the Rothko he was ‘collaborating’
on and so ended up with a two year prison sentence, which is another element of
the story of ‘Black on Maroon’ 1958.
O’Doherty, B., (2000) Inside
the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Expanded Edition, London,
University of California Press.
exhibition seen
22/03/18, Curated by Helen Sainsbury
https://4wallsblg.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/restoring-the-graffitied-rothko-in-conversation-with-dr-bronwyn-ormsby-conservation-scientist-tate/,
Restoring the
Graffitied Rothko: In Conversation with Dr. Bronwyn Ormsby, Conservation
Scientist, Tate. JANUARY
14, 2015 ~ 4WALLSBLG,
accessed 24 March 2018.
Bernstien, F. A., 2013, Design Doyenne, WM Magazine, May 1,
2013 12:00 am
Keyes, B., (2015) EXPLORING THE TENSION BETWEEN COMMERCE AND
CREATION, ‘RED’ OPENS FRIDAY AT PORTLAND STAGE,
https://www.wmagazine.com/story/phyllis-lambert-seagram-building,
accessed 31 March 2018.
Maine Today online
magazine, Posted: March 25, 2015, http://mainetoday.com/theater/exploring-the-tension-between-commerce-and-creation-red-opens-friday-at-portland-stage/,
accessed 31 March 2018
Image: Rothko, untitled, section 2, 1959
Image: Laurentian Library Florence
Image: Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe and Phyllis Lambert with the model for the Seagram Building, New York,
1955.
image: maquette by Rothko of possible hanging schema.
Image: Seagram Murals Tate Modern
Image: Four Seasons 1950's
Image: Black on Maroon, 1958
Image: Stage set from 'Red' play
Image: Rothko graffiti.
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