photo Peter Madden
“A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience.” –Mark Rothko
“Pictures must be miraculous.” – Mark Rothko
Few artists of the 20th century are so universally beloved as Mark Rothko, whose canvases virtually ache with longing, with passion, with emotion at its most primeval, distilled into the purity of form and color. Now his work is on view at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, which is hosting the first exhibition of Rothko’s paintings in the Netherlands in 40 years.
Even before the show opened, the anticipation was strong, if comments on the Gemeentemuseum’s web site are any indication. (Note to other museums: allowing visitors to comment on your announcements of upcoming shows is a very nice idea.) Visitors will not be disappointed.
The works in this exhibition, which will not travel, all come from the National Gallery in Washington, DC, whose troves, according to its web site ,boast an astounding 296 paintings on canvas and paper by the artist, along with “a study collection of more than 600 drawings and watercolors.” For the Gemeentemuseum—which, in turn, holds the world’s largest collection of Mondrian’s work –organizers have attempted to draw strong lines between the two artists, identifying them as the “pioneers of abstract art” – one European, the other American. Notes the exhibition press release, “Rothko was not the first abstract painter for whom the spiritual was important; artists such as Mondriaan and Kandinsky also viewed their work as exercises in spirituality. But he was the first for whom the emotional stood central within an abstract art that had been until then relatively removed and distant.” (Note: Mondrian was born Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan; he changed the spelling of his name in 1906. The spelling with two “a”s refers to his work prior to that date.)
Pretty much any exhibition of an individual artist’s work will bring unexpected surprises: a painting you’d never seen before, an aspect of the artist’s personal life you’d never known about. For those who have seen little of Rothko’s art – which is most Dutch viewers – the surprises to be found here are rich indeed, from the early, surrealist-inspired paintings to the unimpeded power of Rothko’s color fields, in all their transcendental splendor.
Untitled, 1953 National Gallery of Art, Washington. Copyright K.ate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko, ARS
But for others of us, who have been fortunate to see more of Rothko’s work, the surprise is something different: the discovery of just how transplendent, how transformative, these paintings are, no matter how many times you see them. Those deep purple-black voids, the color that I think your mind must see just before you begin to dream; those dazzling hot reds, and dancing sunlit yellows, those mesmerizing blues…. Here, a dark wine field melds into blood red and black in a painting from 1956; there, a breathtaking all black canvas from 1964; or the misty taupe and ivory that seeps, creeps like Sandburg’s “little cat feet,” into the space of a page from 1969, and rests on its “silent haunches,” until you yourself move on.
But Rothko was not a colorist, as he himself insisted any number of times. Rather, color, along with form and even abstraction itself, was a material, a tool through which he pursued only pure expression. It is this fact which forms the theme of this exhibition, which curator Franz Kaiser based on Rothko’s own statement: “I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else[… ]I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on – and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate with those basic human emotions.”
Kaiser has also pointed to Mondrian in this vein, in part because of Rothko’s love-hate relationship with the artist (he despised being compared to him – some had called his work “blurry Mondrians” – but he was quick to declare his admiration for Mondrian’s art) and in part thanks to their shared, Romantic aspiration to meld the spiritual – even the sublime – with art.
photo Peter Madden
To this end, Kaiser has installed Rothko’s final painting, a bright, almost electric-red-orange canvas, alongside Mondrian’s – the “Victory Boogie Woogie,” and hung other, early Mondriaan paintings nearby. The visual connection between the Dutch artist’s early works and Rothko’s “classic” paintings is intriguing; but sadly, the placement of the two star works together did not work for me. In fact, the effect was jarring: the pulse and vibrancy of the Mondrian disrupted the embrace of Rothko’s warm glow, giving it a sharp, dissonant edge; and the Rothko felt lost, hung low beside the overpowering presence of the other. (Nor did the horizontal/vertical of the Rothko canvas do well beside the Mondrian’s diagonal thrust.) The wall felt empty, abrupt, unbalanced, and left me feeling somewhat the same way. How much better it would have been, I think, if the two had been placed on opposing walls, to bask in the other’s reflected light.
But many other experiences to the exhibition brought more welcome surprises. Most notable, for me, at least, was the discovery that the museum offers, built right into Hendrikus Berlag’s inspired architecture, the ideal setting to experience Rothko at his best. As Kaiser notes, “Rothko often remarked that his paintings would best come into their own in a chapel”; and in the chapel-like spaces of cabinet-rooms outside the main galleries, they do. Here, with one work in each cabinet, the installation (deliberately) parallels the monastic cells of Fra Angelico which so influenced Rothko at the Museo di san Marco in Firenze. You cannot look at them simply by standing outside the space, in the museum hallway: to experience them rightly you must enter the cabinet and sit – which is part of the architectural intent of these spaces, and the glory of this particular museum. And in this moment, the paintings become meditative experiences, the focus of a moment in art.
It is just, I think, as Rothko would have wanted it to be.
