"Untitled" (1964)

The smallest of the paintings in this installation, the untitled work from 1964 is also the most square. It features what feels like a compressed or flattened version of the spatial relations governing the other works in the series. It presents a reddish, slightly glossy "form" on a bluish purple matte ground. Several of the other works in the group of seven feature reddish grounds, this is the only work with a reddish "form". Interestingly, "No. 5" from this numbered series, owned by Rothko's son, is almost an exact inversion of the colour relation presented by this work but with more verticality and expansion. The top margin between the edge of the stretcher and the top edge of the form is slightly narrower than at the bottom. As these paintings are illuminated primarily from above it is at the top that the difference of reflectance and hue between form and ground is most "present". Depending on the direction and intensity of the light (and your position in space and hence the angled distance from the work) this difference alters each time the work is seen: in the morning the difference is plain, enough to make you doubt the description of these admittedly dark works as "black" but by the afternoon they have all darkened substantially. 

In effect, through the day they faded away: a long morendo or diminuendo as if they were recoiling from the light that makes them visible, however faintly, in the first place.

I can only imagine what this work in particular would have done to my eyes had I been able to stand in the gallery as the light outside faded: I imagine that as twilight descended you could probably see a crescendo of ever more intense virtual colour as your eyes adjusted to the fading light, making colours that are not properly speaking "there" appear. 

I walked past curator Harry Cooper in the corridor later that afternoon and was filled with the desire to beg him, bribe him or cajole him into letting me see these works after the gallery had shut. I can hardly expect being left alone with paintings that must be worth millions by now. Still I can dream about what they would have done. 

I think that Rothko himself did this, observed the works as the light left them gradually, at the close of the day, after painting in the morning. Their darkness is necessary to make light itself the subject: we are the subject matter of these works, the "void" they present is ourselves confronted by them.

What did he see in them? Did he see what I see? What you might see? How can we know? 

If he saw in his work what I see in it, I can imagine him happy with these works. The idea that their dark colour and sombre tone reflects a depression on his part is a good story but I don't believe it myself. 

If "black" was ever full of life, questioning open life, life exuberant and expansive, it is here.

In the Tower: the works "themselves"

Moving clockwise around the room from the far corner the works featured in the space are listed below. The three walls feature two or three works, evenly illuminated by the filtered sunlight streaming in from the ceiling, grouped by similarity of size.

Across the whole series of around sixteen dark works painted in the years immediately before the preliminary "Rothko Chapel" paintings there are echoes and resonances of size and proportion set into play. Indeed at this stage in his work I think that Rothko had reduced the pictorial means of his art to such an extent that the matter of proportion, especially between the "form" and the "ground" of the work, became something of an obsession for the artist: no two paintings, even when they are of similar overall size, bears the same relation of "form" and "ground" as another.

This installation amplified and allowed these relations to resonate. This installation continued and allowed for the most precise delineation of those relationships by presenting duets and trios of works of similar size, regardless of their numerical place in the series.

These works were never exhibited publicly as a group during Rothko's lifetime - only No. 2, owned by the Jane and Robert Meyerhoff Collection, was briefly exhibited before Rothko's death in 1970.

The titles are those given in the David Anfam catalogue of the works on canvas and are not, as far as I can tell, titles given by Rothko himself. The numbers appear to be authentic but questions arise over the lack of numbering attached to some and the duplication of the number "5" in the numbered series.

Firstly on the left hand wall, two large paintings, almost identical in size, roughly 93 inches tall by 76 inches wide:

No. 7 (Black on Dark Maroon)

No. 6 (?) (Black on Black)

Perhaps because of the unusual angles of the wall I had to check and reconfirm the small printed catalogue of the exhibition to verify that these first two works were in fact almost exactly the same size: they never felt identical in size. At times No.6 definitely "felt" smaller than No. 7 and at other times, depending upon your position in the space, the opposite was the case. No. 7 is, in fact, an eighth of an inch taller and a quarter of an inch wider than No. 6 but such small differences in size seemed to vary in importance depending on where you were standing. They were hung just far enough apart that while looking at one you were always aware of the presence of the other but it was enough away that its relative size could not quite be perceived. Intriguingly the two black wooden benches in the room were at yet another oblique angle relative to the walls and the works they supported, creating further perspectival distortions: in its own quiet way the space was extremely disturbing.

On the main and largest wall of the gallery space, from left to right, we see three large works, the first two 105 inches tall by 80 inches wide, the third one 104 inches tall but 89 inches wide.

No. 2 (Black on Deep Purple)

No. 8 

and No. 4

Finally on the right hand side wall two smaller, more "compressed" works, 81 inches tall by 76 inches wide and the last 69 inches tall by 66 inches wide.

No. 5

"Untitled" (1964)

According to the Anfam catalogue this last, unnumbered and untitled painting was the first of the series of dark paintings begun before the work began on the Rothko Chapel paintings immediately after a stunning brown on bright red painting visible in the famous Hans Namuth photograph (copied below) of Rothko sitting on a somewhat incongruous outdoor chair in his studio. The seven dark paintings presented in the Tower therefore sit somewhere between this red and brown painting, by now an emblematic late Rothko and the large monochromes and black-form paintings of the Rothko Chapel. The dark, slightly glossy (wet?) painting to the right of the artist in this photograph is difficult to identify but I believe it to be No. 5 illustrated above.

In the Tower: Rothko 1971 / Feldman 1964

I travelled recently to Washington D.C. to see an exhibition of seven (drawn from a series of at least thirteen) large, dark paintings by Mark Rothko from 1964. This series of works, unusually given numbered titles, is often called the "black on black", the "black-form" or more simply just the "black" paintings. In this and the following posts I will embed some photographs of the pieces and the place in which I encountered them: easily one of the most beautiful spaces for this sort of subtle, nuanced art I've ever encountered.

From the left, No. 4, No. 5 and the "Untitled" work from 1964

Unfortunately photographs of this exhibition, however (aside from the fact that they cannot capture many of the nuances of the actual works in situ), cannot capture the effect of the space itself, my emotional state upon encountering them, nor indeed the effect of the playing, over loudspeakers, a looped 24 minute-long composition by Morton Feldman, the beautiful piece "Rothko Chapel" from 1971. I am listening to the piece again right now, the same recording used by the National Gallery of Art in this exhibition: wondering (but unsurprised) at the way this piece now is so powerfully associated with this set of works that it brings my imagination and memory immediately back to the experiences I had in the room. 

Rothko painted these thirteen works immediately before his work on the paintings that would end up in the Rothko Chapel in Houston Texas so it is particularly appropriate to join the two series of works in this way, using the musings of the solo viola and the calls from the solo soprano in the Feldman piece almost as a connecting thread between the two spaces: I almost hear the calls, flicking down a major second, from E to D in the soprano, as a call, coming from the Chapel itself, calling up my imagined version of the Rothko Chapel inside this space devoted to showing works that relate to it.

Perhaps this is not one space but (at least) two?

These works are extraordinarily hard to write about: they are not declarative statements, despite their size and impact, they are questions in themselves. I have to ask myself what I am seeing, indeed, am I seeing? These works throw everything back on the viewer, more so than other Rothko works I have seen. There is a strong sense of the "answers", were there any, being withheld indefinitely in these implacable variations of surface, proportion and tone: they are gnomic, enigmatic and virtually incommunicable.

While I am there I wonder to myself if "Rothko Chapel" is Feldman's response to Ives' "Unanswered Question", with the solo viola taking the role the solo trumpet has in the Ives and the string chords re-appearing in Feldman as the wordless chorus. How typical of Feldman: to respond to an unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question with further, open and undelimitable questions.

From the left, No. 6, No. 2, No. 8 and No. 4

First of all I simply have to describe the experience itself, in as much detail as I can recall, or derive from the notes I took whilst there. I came out of the large slow elevator, for which I seemed to have waited an age, paced the corridor outside in my impatience (I didn't know at that stage that there was a small spiral stairway into the tower), moved down an angular and angled corridor with early Rothkos from prior to 1948, into a light-filled, cathedral-like space. I didn't notice at first its trapezoidal form, but I was immediately aware of the almost gothic height of the ceiling, the absence of artificial light, the shifting colour, intensity and direction of ambient filtered sunlight and most of all, while registering the shock of seeing these works finally for the first time, aware of having come into the quiet slow processional of the composition at some point or other.

From the left, No. 7, No. 6 (?) and No. 2

This is one aspect of the installation that intrigued me greatly, as soon as you enter into the room, unless by chance one entered into the room within the silent 6 minutes that held sway between the half-hourly repetitions of the Feldman piece, you were immediately surrounded by resonance, by the echoing fall of bells and vibraphone, timpani rolls, little fragments of viola solo or dense, wordless chords in the voices.

There was a strong sense of coming into a musical space as much as a visual one. In this way I was also immediately being made aware therefore of the pre-existence of the works themselves, as if they had been humming away to themselves before you entered the room.

From the left, No. 2, No. 8 and No. 4

And that they did, they hummed quietly on the walls: if earlier, more refulgently coloured works from the 1950s could be said to "sing", these works, in their quiet intimacy, "hummed" like the hummed chorus required by Feldman (he asks for a non-nasal "ng" sound, with slightly opened mouth but wordless, inarticulate but able to evoke a whole world of colour and sensation).

Almost not there at first (of course I had travelled for so long and such a distance to see these works which I felt had been waiting for me), the calm light and beauty of the space itself as well quickly became apparent.

I think to myself that I have not seen many installations of art more sensitive and beautiful, challenging and fascinating than this.