A room full of violence, and the silence of death: Tate unveils new Rothko Room

Telegraph.co.uk ^ | 05/06/2006 | John Banville

[Republicanprofessor]

An interesting, although long, article on the saga of Rothko and the murals he planned for the dining room of the Seagrams building in NYC. Some rather unsavory aspects of his character are revealed. But the description of the new Rothko room is wonderful. I had quite a powerful experience viewing other Tate Rothkos a few decades ago.

[Republicanprofessor]

Views of the new Tate Rothko Room, London.

I have not seen these in person, but they do seem to convey more violence and anger than in his other work. They are almost like jails.

[Republicanprofessor]

Art ping #2 today.

Let Sam Cree, Woofie, or me know if you want on or off this art ping list.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

More art that I "don't get".

Don't worry. I'm sure it's me.

[IronJack]

they do seem to convey more violence and anger

They DO?

[Republicanprofessor]

If you really do want to know more about the form and content of Rothko's work, check out my home page for clickable "classes" on many periods in art history. The Abstract Expressionist lecture deals with Rothko.

I didn't like his work right away. I wanted to see the NYC Guggenheim once for its architecture and was initially disappointed to see that it was a Rothko retrospective that was on view. But after I circled through his colors and life, I had a much greater appreciation for his work. There is a breadth of colors, moods, and power in his work that is best experienced in person.

From the Seagram images on line, I had never liked that series as much as his other blocks. But now I am beginning to reconsider after reading this article.

[prion]

If you really do want to know more about the form and content of Rothko's work, check out my home page for clickable "classes" on many periods in art history.

Art that requires a learned dissertation to appreciate has failed as art.

[agere_contra]

Oddly enough, as as I look at these essentially rather placid daubs, I do get a sense of violence and anger - against modern Art and its heavily subsidised pieties.

[true_blue_texican]

I was thinking more like Stonehenge or just rectangles on rectangles.

[Dustbunny]

You have to be kidding calling this stuff 'art'.

[Little Ray]

Ummm, I don't see anything, violent or otherwise.

[agere_contra]

Art that requires a learned dissertation to appreciate has failed as art.

Agreed. Art expresses - it does not need to be interpreted. It absolutely doesn't need a priesthood.

[LexBaird]

Here we are in the presence not of religion, but of something at once primordial and all too contemporary. On a notecard from the 1950s, Rothko had written, in his usual clotted style that yet makes his meaning entirely clear: "When I say that my paintings are Western, what I mean is that they seek the concretization of no state that is without the limits of western reason, no esoteric, extra-sensory or divine attributes to be achieved by prayer & terror. Those who can claim that these [limits] are exceeded are exhibiting self-imposed limitations as to the tensile limits of the imagination within those limits. In other words, that there is no yearning in these paintings for Paradise, or divination. On the contrary they are deeply involved in the possibility of ordinary humanity."

It is exactly this sort of pretentious bullsh!t that extinguished the majority of my appreciation for later 20th c "art". And the equally pretentious author has the audacity to say this gobbledygook justification is "entirely clear". It is intentionally opaque. Yet, when you actually throw out the null language and b.s., it comes down to Rothko saying his paintings have no soul, and contain nothing but commonplace human existence.

[D-Chivas]

Art that requires a learned dissertation to appreciate has failed as art.

Thanks for reinforcing negative stereotypes about conservatives concerning art. If you had any knowledge of Rothko's history, you wouldn't make such asinine comments.

[D1X1E]

Where's the breathless and gushing "you can see how he's suffered for his art" comment? LOL

[aristotleman]

You don't need to interpret this, intellectually. What's your gut reaction to staring at a huge red painting with bars or squares -not as you see it on a screen but in reality, when it fills your field of vision ?
If your gut says nothing, then nothing needs to be understood. If you see red as the color of fire, blood or wounds, then you might react to the painting the same way.

[prion]

Thanks for reinforcing negative stereotypes about conservatives concerning art. If you had any knowledge of Rothko's history, you wouldn't make such asinine comments.

I paid thousands of Daddy's good dollars for art school, dipstick. For once, I have the qualifications to run my mouth off.

I repeat: if you have to know the artist's history to understand the art, he has failed. He might be a really interesting case history, but he's no artist.

[AnAmericanMother]

I don't like his stuff very much, and I think the only "violence inherent in the paintings" is cultural associations of dark red with violence, paired with Rothko's nasty personality. If I wanted to make up an alternative interpretation, I could interpret the dark red as being associated with a banked fire or working forge, and the straight lines the ironworker's bar stock, and praise the paintings as symbolic of the fire of creation and the birth of man's dominion over earth and iron . . . or something like that.

A lot of this abstract art seems to be more about what the viewer is bringing to the painting than what the painter put into it.

I'm not a painter, but I am a writer, and to say that his self-indulgent, opaque writing style "makes his meaning entirely clear" is just B.S. The impression it leaves is of an utter narcissist who was just seeing what he could get away with by being haughty and deliberately obscure.

[agere_contra]

Thanks for reinforcing negative stereotypes about conservatives concerning art

I'm sure that many of us would carry these negative stereotypes as a badge of honour. Rothko's appreciation of his own work is mystagogic twaddle and should be recognised as such.

But you touch on an interesting point: there is a fault line between Democrats and Conservatives, not least in the way the two groups engage with this sort of "art". It is similar to the way in which the two groups accept - or reject - communist dialectic and post-modernism.

The Democrats are more vulnerable to this sort of guff because they have a lack-of-belief system, a kind of extreme skepticism which can find no floor to the universe. As Chesterton famously said -

When people no longer believe in God, they do not start to believe in Nothing. They start believing in Everything

[kittymyrib]

One's understanding of art is largely determined by what is in one's soul. Today's art is meager, misshapen and malnourished because it is a product of that type of soul.