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.
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)
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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.
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)
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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.
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