Page 48 - Studio International - June 1971

wished to divest it of sectarian associations. canvases answering each other; the triptychs murals, as he told me during one of my visits
But the resulting barren concrete shed (albeit complicated, but only in the authentically on a rainy day, when the triptychs loomed
roughly similar in scale to the 69th Street austere terms in which he sought, as he said, somberly, enfolded in their inner darkness, was
studio) is like nothing so much as a Southern `precision'. to 'paint both the finite and the infinite'. And a
minister's fundamentalist idea of sinlessness. Ned and I saw the murals in the bleak few minutes later he asked me a characteristic
The downright Americaness of this great unnatural light provided by obtrusive ceiling question, one I believe he truly felt with
misunderstanding of simplicity is seen in the fixtures during the night's ceremonies. Neither eschatalogical acuteness : Will the world last
tasteless, low skylight with its cheap aluminium of us could 'see' the murals we once had known. another decade ?
mullions, its naked I-beam supports and its Even so, their sober dignity could be sensed There he was, months on end, weighing
exposed bolts. Ever so functional. But despite such anomalies as a folk-singing guitar out the light. Trying to reach the heart of the
fundamentally dis-functional, for the searing group (where was Mozart whom Rothko loved mystery of scale. Scale was the thing. These
Western light invades the entire chapel from precisely for his lightness ?). The next morning murals followed his earlier work only to a point.
its lowbrowed, shallow dome, and annuls the we hiked out early, to really see what we had The fact is that he had edged closer and closer
very essence of Rothko's work: its slow seen. At 9.3o in the morning the light was to the idea of a scheme throughout his life, but
revelations in time. already lying full upon everything within that he had never, until he began his murals for the
I was sitting next to the Catholic poet Ned octagon. At first, I saw the panels (they had Seagram building, and later for Harvard's
O'Gorman at the ceremonies, watching the once seemed so rich in their oxblood depths) Holyoke Center, really known the satisfaction
businesslike procession of cardinals, bishops, a blank, dull brown. And I saw even the of that 'intimacy' he once said he sought in
rabbis and metropolitans, and finding myself triptychs that way for a long time, and gradually large-scale paintings. Alas, the Texas chapel
as disappointed as he at the studied lack of the paintings within the paintings turned black, didn't serve. (He said he wanted it to be like
ceremony: its damned downrightness. It was and the black sheen then turned silver, and the his studio, but his studio was so much a part of
with Ned that Mark used to talk of his great rectangular edges enframing a centre began to his mind's eye that I wonder if he really knew
love for Fra Angelico. That was quite a different seem like an aura. Even struggling against that what it would look like.)
genre of simplicity. brash Texas light, Rothko emerged. In the late Silence accurate ? But then he did once in a
(This old confounding of simplicity and afternoon, we could have a nearly correct while talk about his work. And he talked about
simplicism. St Bernard in his 'Apologia' impression, and then if you shielded your eyes, it as an oeuvre. His 'transaction' was in his own
criticized the churches for 'their superfluous and tried hard not to see the mean-proportioned mind an 'oval'. The elliptical character of his
breadth, the costly polishings, the curious doorways flanking the triptychs, you could see thought about his own work bears out his need
carvings and paintings which attract the the 'ballet' of interior crimson lights and the to present a spiritual schema at the end, an
worshipper's gaze and hinder his attention'. gentle contemplative gloom Rothko knew so octagonal paen to transcendence.
But then there was the Abbot Suger, arguing well how to cultivate.
that 'it behooves us most becomingly to serve He was ambivalent in many ways. He reacted
our Saviour in all things in a universal way— I always thought of Rothko as very Russian. Or with irritation to those who dared use the word
Him who has not refused to provide for us in at least, Russian like the Russians in Turgenev transcendant about his work. But didn't he say
all things in a universal way and without any —those Russians who sat around drinking tea in a public lecture that Know Thyself is a fine
exception'.) in the afternoon and talked about life and motto, but a painter should strive to speak about
philosophy, those long, innocently recondite something outside himself? He disliked the
In the summer of 1964 we had lunch in a speeches that filled the provincial afternoons. reverent suggestions of mystical experience made
summer cottage the Rothkos had rented on In all the years I knew him, Mark talked like by well-meaning art critics. 'When I wrote the
Long Island. I remember the appropriate small that with me. About, as he so often said, life, introduction to the Still catalogue,' he once
talk—of children and the price of eggs, quite dissolution and death: He was, after all, a told me, 'I spoke of earth worms—far from
literally—and then we all went to the beach. Russian, even if a Jew. His childhood language otherworldliness.' And yet, when he refused
There Mark took me aside and told me with was Russian, and he remembered the knout on the Guggenheim International prize, he said he
unaccustomed excitement that he had moved the end of the Cossack's whip. His preoccupation looked forward to the time when 'honours can
into a huge new studio, and that he had been with spiritual values was almost traditional. be bestowed simply for the meaning of a man's
commissioned by the de Menils to design a Maybe he remembered icons glowing in the life work'.
Catholic chapel. Years ago, he told me, he had dark. At any rate, he certainly remembered
read the Patristic fathers, especially Origen. He the clean linens and twilight hush of the Letter to the Bishop at the Consecration of the
liked what he called the 'ballet' of their thoughts, Sabbath. It was not so peculiar as some thought Vence Chapel :
and the way everything went toward ladders. that this Russian Jew would have longed to `...This work has taken me four years of
He already conceived of the murals in an create a religious masterpiece. exclusive and assiduous work and it represents
octagonal setting in which, he said, he would `Genius doesn't give faith, but there is between the result of my entire life. I consider it, in spite
make East and West merge. mystical inspiration and that of heroes and of its imperfections, to be my masterpiece. May
I think that Mark always intended to do a great artists a profound analogy ... The artist the future justify this judgment by an increasing
Catholic chapel, and not a fundamentalist who succeeds in the miracle of evoking for interest over and above the high significance of
setting. believers the things of their faith—is it really this moment. I count, your Excellency, upon
He worked for a long time on the scheme of faith that animates him ? Let us not presume your long experience of men and your wisdom
the fourteen canvases. For him the scheme was to penetrate the secret of hearts and let's not to judge an effort which issues from a life
quintessential. There were times when the vast usurp the judgment of God.' consecrated to the search for truth.'
stretchers—wooden carriers without their Le Pere Couturier Henri Matisse
canvas —were leaned against the walls and
contemplated for days. Times when the entire `Silence is so accurate.' That is what Rothko Matisse was careful never to answer the questions
canvas on one of those stretchers had to be told Elaine de Kooning. His own silences, as of the vulgar. His answer lies in this letter to
given up because the scale was not quite right. read in the depths of these vast paintings (for the Bishop, who would understand the
For months he measured and measured with there are minute variations even in the so-called religiousness of the mere search for truth.
his eye. The scheme was to be like his Patristic monochrome panels) were meditative to the Anyone who knew Rothko, with all his
fathers' balletic thoughts, the monochrome infinite degree. What he wanted to do in those contradictions, would understand the nature
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