Any exhibition is by definition a snap shot, reflecting both the mood of the artist as depicted in the work and the choice of the curator in deciding what works to include in the exhibition. In the Tower: Mark Rothko at the National Gallery of Art is no exception.
The current Rothko exhibition is noteworthy because it features works from the beginning and end of Rothko's career. Both depart from the colorful blocks that are so characteristic of Mark Rothko.
According to Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art, the works were donated to the National Gallery of Art from Rothko’s estate. The four black paintings in the tower were studies for the Catholic chapel in Houston commissioned by the collector Dominique de Menil and now the non-denominational Rothko Chapel. The 1964 works are hung as they are in the chapel .Music composed by Rothko's close friend Morton Feldman to play in the chapel high lights Rothko’s works. Feldman composed the music a year after Rothko's death, also as a commission by de Menil.
The curators of the exhibit focus on the depths of color in Rothko’s texture black works, but it is hard to look at the paintings and not feel an incredible anger at the art world that collectively championed Rothko’s art but failed to see the despair of the artist.
It does not take a clinically trained psychologist to see that these haunting paintings were a departure from Rothko’s breathtaking use of color. Rather than evidencing a maturity in his work as an artist, they seem to represent a not very oblique call for help from a man sinking deeper and deeper into despair.
The fact that those purporting to represent the man apparently attempted to swindle his heirs after his suicide demonstrates the callous indifference the art world sometimes shows individual artists. Years of litigation over the ownership of Rothko’s work restored his children with ownership and control over Rothko’s estate. They formed the Mark Rothko Foundation and donated 295 paintings and works on paper, and more than 650 sketches, to the National Gallery of Art in 1985 and 1986 so that Rothko’s works can be enjoyed by the public in exhibits like the current exhibit in the Tower. The large donation makes the gallery the most important repository and study center of the art of Mark Rothko.
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