Rothko's Seagram Murals - Part VII

Mark Rothko
Rothko's Seagram Murals: 
A Tumultuous Journey to the Tate
Part VII

Mark Rothko, Maroon on Red (Section 4), 1959
Taking into consideration the many merits of the Tate Museum, it becomes possible to see how Rothko would have been acquiescent in displaying his paintings there, despite his general aversion to museums. Against the backdrop of the Seagram Murals commission, the advantages of the Tate exhibition space ultimately sets up an opposition with the Four Seasons restaurant. “Rothko had always wanted his single paintings hung low, so they would confront and surround the viewer. But throughout the Four Seasons room, his mural would have to be hung above the diners’ heads, or they would not be seen” (Breslin 378). The huge amount of dissatisfaction felt after the Seagram commission weighed next to the compliance of Reid and the Tate Museum, made the Tate become an infinitely more attractive possibility. Reid successfully addressed all of the disappointments of the Seagram Murals commission by eventually providing Rothko with an ideal space for the display of his paintings. Although Rothko gave only a small selection of paintings from the Seagram commission to the Tate, the rest of the known Seagram Mural panels were given to his newly formed foundation (Clearwater and Rothko 46-7). Since his donation, the panels have been spread across the globe: nine at the Tate Museum, seven at the Kawamura Museum of Modern Art in Japan, thirteen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and a few others remain in the ownership of Rothko’s children.

Works Cited
Ashton, Dore. About Rothko. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. 

Breslin, James E. B. Mark Rothko: A Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Clearwater, Bonnie, and Mark Rothko. Mark Rothko, Works on Paper. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Mark Rothko Foundation and the American Federation of Arts, 1984. 

Rothko, Mark. Mark Rothko, Paintings, 1948-1969: April 1-30 1983, the Pace Gallery. New York: Pace Gallery Publications, 1983. 

Rothko, Mark, and David Anfam. Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas : Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. 

Rothko, Mark, and Marc Glimcher. The Art of Mark Rothko: Into an Unknown World. New York: C.N. Potter, 1991. 

Rothko, Mark, and Miguel López-Remiro. Writings on Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 

Rothko, Mark, and Oliver Wick. Rothko. Milan: Skira, 2007. 

Seiberling, Dorothy. “The Varied Art of Four Pioneers: Mark Rothko.” Life, November 16, 1959.  

Ed. Note: Barstow alumna Sydney Ayers, '09, has graciously allowed My Kid Could Paint That to publish one of her recent papers on Mark Rothko. We will present the paper in seven parts. Ayers studies art history at Dartmouth University, and this spring she will complete her senior honors thesis on the English country houses of architect Robert Adam.
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Rothko's Seagram Murals - Part VI

Mark Rothko
Rothko's Seagram Murals: 
A Tumultuous Journey to the Tate
Part VI

Mark Rothko, Red on Maroon (Section 74), 1959

Also extremely imperative to Rothko was that his paintings would have a space of their own at the Tate—they would have their own room and be the focal point of the space. As Rothko said in an interview with Life in 1959: “A painting is not a picture of an experience, it is an experience” (Seiberling, 82). He believed that the paintings needed to be looked at and confronted in a neutral space so that the viewer can engage with the experience the paintings present. Upon a visit to Rothko’s studio to see the murals, art critic Dore Ashton commented:

“Rothko watched my reaction as I examined the arrangement of large canvases and said, ‘I have made a place’… It was a long visit, with intermittent conversation, and at the end, as I was taking my leave, Rothko said: ‘They are not pictures’” (155). Through his claim of “making a place,” Rothko exposes his belief that the murals were an entity that created its own sense of place, not needing or wanting outside influences as a physical anchor.

This leads to the consensus that Rothko rejected the Seagram commission because his paintings would not be the focus of the restaurant goers; instead the paintings would fade into the background as potential viewers became lost in the expensive food and frivolous conversation. On the contrary, through the Tate exhibition “he was being offered ‘a separate space’ for a selection of already existing paintings, and that space was not a dining room” (Breslin 513). The stark contrast between the commercial Four Seasons Restaurant and the Tate’s Gallery 18 was never more clear—previously devalued as merely “wall decorations” (Breslin 373), Rothko’s paintings were now being offered a sanctuary of their own.

Ed. Note: Barstow alumna Sydney Ayers, '09, has graciously allowed My Kid Could Paint That to publish one of her recent papers on Mark Rothko. We will present the paper in seven parts. Ayers studies art history at Dartmouth University, and this spring she will complete her senior honors thesis on the English country houses of architect Robert Adam.
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Rothko's Seagram Murals - Part IV

Mark Rothko
Rothko's Seagram Murals: 
A Tumultuous Journey to the Tate
Part IV

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Section 3), 1959

Following the confusion and distress of the Seagram commission, Rothko wanted complete authority over the exhibition of any of his works. “When Sir Norman Reid, Director of the Tate Gallery, visited Rothko in 1965 with the proposal that a special room be allocated in the Tate for his work, Rothko saw another opportunity to ‘control the situation.’ He rejected Reid’s proposal that he give a ‘representative’ group of paintings, offering instead a group of the Seagram Murals” (Ashton 156). Of course flattered by the proposal, Rothko saw the opportunity to secure a permanent one-man show. He had previously offered the whole of his 1961 Whitechapel exhibition to the New York Museum of Modern Art, only to be declined due to a lack of available gallery space (Breslin 513). So the fact that the Tate was willing to commit a permanent gallery space most certainly attracted him. Additionally, Rothko would have liked that this space would guarantee the continued unification of his paintings. As John Fisher, the fellow passenger abroad the USS Constitution in 1959, remarked: 

"Moreover, he repeatedly remarked that ‘no picture can be judged by itself.’ Everything an artist produces, he believed, was a part of his continuous development, and therefore his entire output should be regarded as a single whole. This view, it seemed to me, implies a museum or a private collection large enough to keep at least a substantial sequence of a painter’s work on permanent display" (Rothko and López-Remiro 134).

Believing that an artist cannot be judged by a single painting, Rothko would have been pleased to have a collection of paintings hanging together permanently on the walls of the Tate.

Ed. Note: Barstow alumna Sydney Ayers, '09, has graciously allowed My Kid Could Paint That to publish one of her recent papers on Mark Rothko. We will present the paper in seven parts. Ayers studies art history at Dartmouth University, and this spring she will complete her senior honors thesis on the English country houses of architect Robert Adam.
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Rothko's Seagram Murals - Part III

Mark Rothko
Rothko's Seagram Murals: 
A Tumultuous Journey to the Tate
Part III
Mark Rothko, Untitled (Section 2), 1959

With the disillusionment of the Seagram commission in the recent past, Rothko was cautious about finding a new home for his paintings. This is illustrated by the fact that it was not until six years after his 1959 resignation from the project that he thought of donating the works to the Tate: “In October 1965 Rothko began discussions with Norman Reid, director of the Tate Gallery in London, regarding a large gift of his paintings, which was to include the Seagram mural group. Rothko felt that the Tate was the best museum to house a large group of his paintings” (Clearwater and Rothko 46). As the eventual home for a group of his Seagram Mural paintings, the Tate Museum would have appealed to Rothko for a number of reasons—as the Tate had already shown its admiration and approval of Rothko’s work in a number of different ways. In 1959, the Tate purchased Rothko’s Light Red over Black (1957) because Reid “had come to explore the possibility of adding to Rothko’s representation at the Tate” (Breslin 513). The fact that the Tate already had one of his works in their collection would have most certainly pleased Rothko; it was a sign of their past and continuing true interest in his artistic pursuits. Another factor would have been the warm reception and admiration that he found amongst European audiences, in particular the English viewers. Dore Ashton writes,

"The British painters had responded with exceptional fervor to their first exposure to his work in 1956 when the traveling exhibition Modern Art in the U.S.A. was shown in London. On each subsequent occasion when Rothko’s work appeared in London (in The New American Painting at the Tate in 1959, and in his one-man exhibition at the Whitechapel in 1961) enthusiasm mounted. Critics in Britain were generally reverent and often wrote lengthy articles that must have gratified Rothko, who always felt the critics in the United States were short of breath. The adulation of younger painters and their unreserved praise warmed him (182)."

His favorable and continuing reception in London must have made him extremely pleased; it is safe to say that England had endured itself to Rothko through its praise, respect and appreciation. With this in mind, he must have wanted his works to be in a place where he could be sure they would be welcomed and valued.

Ed. Note: Barstow alumna Sydney Ayers, '09, has graciously allowed My Kid Could Paint That to publish one of her recent papers on Mark Rothko. We will present the paper in seven parts. Ayers studies art history at Dartmouth University, and this spring she will complete her senior honors thesis on the English country houses of architect Robert Adam.

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Rothko's Seagram Murals - Part II

Mark Rothko
Rothko's Seagram Murals: 
A Tumultuous Journey to the Tate
Part II

Mark Rothko, Black and Maroon, 1959

The project took him nearly two years to complete, as he altogether restarted and repainted the murals several times. As Rothko supposedly told John Fischer in 1959 while aboard the USS Constitution and on his way to Italy: “So far I’ve painted three sets of panels for this Seagram job. The first on didn’t turn out right, so I sold the panels separately as individual paintings. The second time I got the basic idea, but began to modify it as I went along—because, I guess, I was afraid of being too stark. When I realized my mistake, I started again, and this time I’m holding tight to the original conception” (Rothko and López-Remiro 131). Rothko was not pleased with the first set of murals, and the second set laid the groundwork for the final successful series of murals (Rothko and Glimcher 65). With so many canvases painted, it is hard to know, in the present day, which paintings actually belong in the intended mural group. “It would be very difficult to say that one was intended as a part of the mural and one was not. There were, even given the exact dimensions, three separate sets of murals, two of which were rejected, plus a lot of individual paintings that were done in almost exact terms” (Rothko and Glimcher 68). While we can only speculate how many canvases Rothko intended to hang and how many were actually made for the project, we do know that Rothko was deeply conflicted about the appearance of the paintings he was creating.

In fact, Rothko was so morally conflicted over the commission itself that he eventually abandoned the project in 1959. “Upon completion of the third and final set, Rothko refused to deliver the works to the Seagram Building and cancelled the commission” (Rothko and Glimcher 65). However, his reasons for resigning the commission remain largely debated into the present day. One claim is that Rothko did not know that the murals were envisioned for the Four Seasons Restaurant (Clearwater and Rothko 44), and perhaps thought they were for some other part of the Seagram building. However, it was only after dining at the restaurant itself that he decided to pull his works from the commission (Breslin 404-6). “He decided that this series of canvases, on which he had spent so much labor and emotion, amounted to a good deal more than a malicious gesture to rich gourmands, and deserved a better setting than a fashionable dining room” (Rothko and López-Remiro 136). But as we will probably never know what his reasons for giving up the Seagram commission actually were, the bigger question remaining is what would happen to these paintings after he did so.

Ed. Note: Barstow alumna Sydney Ayers, '09, has graciously allowed My Kid Could Paint That to publish one of her recent papers on Mark Rothko. We will present the paper in seven parts. Ayers studies art history at Dartmouth University, and this spring she will complete her senior honors thesis on the English country houses of architect Robert Adam.

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Rothko's Seagram Murals: Part I

Mark Rothko
Rothko's Seagram Murals: 
A Tumultuous Journey to the Tate
Part I 
Mark Rothko, Black on Maroon, 1958

After returning home from a voyage to Italy, France, Belgium and England, Mark Rothko went to dinner with his wife at the fashionable Four Seasons Restaurant on Park Avenue in New York City (Rothko and Wick 216). While this sounds like the extravagant lifestyle of a wealthy man about town, Rothko was, in fact, simply an unassuming artist. For the majority of his career, since the 1920s, Rothko struggled to find success within the New York art circles; it was not until the late 1940s that he developed his famous and signature style of painting. In 1958 Rothko received one of the largest commissions of his time in the form of the Seagram Murals for the Four Seasons Restaurant. However, Rothko eventually resigned the commission, leaving dozens of canvas works without a home. Eventually, in 1970, Rothko donated a series of paintings from the Seagram project to the Tate Museum in London. Now the real question becomes why Rothko chose the Tate as the destination for this bequest. Several factors come into play in his decision, including the appreciation that he felt from viewers, artists and critics in England; however, his decision was ultimately hinged on the guarantee that his works would be kept together as per his specifications, and as the focus of the Tate’s Gallery 18—a vast difference from the realities of the Four Seasons Restaurant and the Seagram commission.

In 1958, Rothko was offered the commission to decorate the walls of the Four Seasons Restaurant with new original murals: “On June 6, 1958, Sidney Janis wrote a letter to Phyllis Lambert, confirming conversations between Johnson and Rothko in which they had agreed that the artist would provide ‘500 to 600 square feet of paintings’ for $35,000… According to Phillip Johnson, Rothko ‘was given carte blanche to design the wall decorations any way he chose'” (Breslin 373). Rothko accepted the commission for the restaurant and quickly began to paint. He set up a new studio in a former YMCA gymnasium building located at 222 Bowery (Breslin 380-1). With total creative freedom over the project, Rothko was able to paint whatever he wanted and create however he chose.

Ed. Note: Barstow alumna Sydney Ayers, '09, has graciously allowed My Kid Could Paint That to publish one of her recent papers on Mark Rothko. We will present the paper in seven parts. Ayers studies art history at Dartmouth University, and this spring she will complete her senior honors thesis on the English country houses of architect Robert Adam.
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