Page 49 - Studio International - June 1971

of his own search for truth in this ultimate us grave, moving testimonies to the inherent 2 Isometric drawing of Rothko Chapel and Barnett
work in his oeuvre, a work in which he pessimism with which he lived. The murals Newman's Broken Obelisk.
3 Interior of Rochko Chapel.
renounces the sensuous reservoir of pleasure are not celebrations, whatever else they might be.
implicit in earlier works. The truth, as he saw
it up to the moment of his suicide, lay ensconced Among other things, Rothko had always had a
in these mute icons, glowing darkly and moving sense of mission as a painter. One of his wishes
upward (for the thrust to the light is carefully was to be in complete command of the emotional
planned in the proportions of each canvas). response elicited by his paintings. This would
Forcibly removed from graven images by what presumably be best achieved in the mural
he felt to be the terrors of modern life, Rothko situation. But in the Houston chapel, something
had to find the vehicle for his feelings. He was lost of the intensity of his brooding nature.
couldn't use the figure without mutilating it, Inevitably, I suppose, since Rothko was far
he said. The vehicle was at first emptied areas; from having the humility that would have
those fields in which light displaced whatever allowed for anything less than his complete
material image lay behind it; in which, as he control.
once told a student, the colours were compressed No one could have summarized birth,
like gases almost to the explosion point. They dissolution and death so well. It was his theme
were buoyant, and no matter how much he from the beginning. There, in Texas, an
protested that yellows and reds were not important territory in the United States of
necessarily cheerful colours, they did register America, the ecumenical idea struggles with
with most of us as quick, vital, even happy the truth in the Rothko murals. What they are
paintings. Rothko's truth bore down on him true to is rather the culture in which dissolution
toward the end, and no matter, again, that he is the most obvious force, and in which an
protested that dark colours were not necessarily artist can ask: will the world last another
somber colours, the last works were for most of decade ? q

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