A room full of violence, and the silence of death: Tate unveils new Rothko Room

As Tate Modern unveils its new Rothko Room, Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville reveals the story behind the paintings it contains, and reflects on one of the most compelling experiences to be had in any gallery in the world.

In 1959, while travelling in southern Italy with his family and that of magazine editor, John Hurt Fischer, Mark Rothko discovered a surprising classical precursor to his contemporary art…

Red on Maroon (1959) by Mark Rothko, who said: 'I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room'

On the journey down from Naples the party had fallen in with a couple of Italian youths who offered to act as guides. At Paestum, where the odd-assorted little band picnicked at noon in the Temple of Hera, the young men expressed their curiosity as to the identity and occupations of the Americans. Fischer's daughter, who was acting as interpreter, turned to Rothko and said: "I have told them that you are an artist, and they ask whether you came here to paint the temples," to which c replied: "Tell them that I have been painting Greek temples all my life without knowing it."

The set of colossal canvases housed in Tate Modern's Rothko Room originated, as every art-aware schoolboy knows, in a commission for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building on New York's Park Avenue. The commission, one of the more remarkable instances of incongruity in the history of art patronage, was for 600 square feet of mural-sized paintings to decorate the walls of the restaurant - "a place," according to Rothko, "where the richest bastards in New York will come to feed and show off " - although it is not clear if Rothko realised from the outset that his paintings were intended as a backdrop for fine dining. The architect Philip Johnson, who assisted Mies van der Rohe in the design of the building and who was chief commissioner of the Rothko murals, always insisted that the painter knew that they were to be hung in the restaurant.

Great art can be fitted into the oddest places - on a chapel ceiling, for instance, or in a millionaire's bathroom - but it does seem remarkably brave on Johnson's part to call on Rothko, one of the most uncompromising of the Abstract Expressionists (a label Rothko vigorously rejected), to soothe the savage breasts of New York's richest bastards and their mates.

Rothko himself was straightforward, at least in private, about his motives in taking on the Seagram commission. He told John Fischer: "I accepted this assignment as a challenge, with strictly malicious intentions. I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room. If the restaurant would refuse to put up my murals, that would be the ultimate compliment. But they won't. People can stand anything these days."

Back in New York, Rothko and his wife went to dinner at the Four Seasons, and in the spring of the following year he returned Seagram's $35,000 fee and withdrew from the commission. One supposes that his experience that night of the restaurant and its rich and powerful diners turned his artistic stomach. Eventually, he decided instead to donate the paintings to Tate.

This transaction was also to prove fraught, for Rothko, despite, or, as is more likely, because of the great critical and commercial success that had come to him in the 1950s, tended to detect slights and veiled insults at every turn. After a visit to London in 1966 to discuss "the gift of some of my pictures to the Tate", he wrote in icy fury to Norman Reid, the Tate director: "Your complete personal neglect of my presence in London, and your failure to provide adequate opportunities for these discussions, poses for me the following question: Was this simply a typical demonstration of traditional English hospitality, or was it your way of indicating to me that you were no longer interested in these negotiations?" Reid himself said that he had been waiting for Rothko to approach him, worrying that otherwise he might put off the notoriously prickly artist by seeming too eager.

In the end, as we know, artistic feathers were smoothed and the Rothko Room opened at Tate in 1970. Rothko knew exactly in what way he wanted the pictures hung and lit. In a list of "suggestions" to the Whitechapel Gallery for a 1961 show of his work, he had stipulated how the walls should be coloured - "off-white with umber and warmed by a little red" - and said the pictures should be hung "as close to the floor as possible, ideally no more than six inches above it" in a room with ordinary daylight, since it was in daylight that they were painted. As we can see in the Rothko Room, the Tate Gallery and now Tate Modern followed these instructions to the last detail.

The room is one of the strangest, most compelling and entirely alarming experiences to be had in any gallery anywhere. What strikes one on first entering is the nature of the silence, suspended in this shadowed vault like the silence of death itself - not a death after illness or old age, but at the end of some terrible act of sacrifice and atonement. In the dimness the paintings appear at first fuzzy, and move inside themselves in eerie stealth: dark pillars shimmer, apertures seem to slide open, shadowed doorways gape, giving on to depthless interiors.

Gradually, as the eye adjusts to the space's greyish lighting - itself a kind of masterwork - the colours seep up through the canvas like new blood through a bandage in which old blood has already dried. The violence of these images is hardly tolerable - as Rilke has it: "Beauty's nothing/ but beginning of Terror we're still just able to bear."

Here we are in the presence not of religion, but of something at once primordial and all too contemporary. On a notecard from the 1950s, Rothko had written, in his usual clotted style that yet makes his meaning entirely clear:

"When I say that my paintings are Western, what I mean is that they seek the concretization of no state that is without the limits of western reason, no esoteric, extra-sensory or divine attributes to be achieved by prayer & terror. Those who can claim that these [limits] are exceeded are exhibiting self-imposed limitations as to the tensile limits of the imagination within those limits. In other words, that there is no yearning in these paintings for Paradise, or divination. On the contrary they are deeply involved in the possibility of ordinary humanity."

In a way, the murals would have suited the Four Seasons, one of those modern-day temples and Houses of Mysteries where the sons of man - and sons of bitches - feed daily upon the blood sacrifice of their own ferocious, worldly triumphs.

I guess you don't believe that the sublimation of the animal instincts, the sex drive, for example, can result in creativity. Artists, not only of the Nietzschean ilk, believe this to be true -- as well, boxers and athletes also attest to how this drive can be channeled toward different ends.

It's a conscious decision to do the channeling. Rage, love, passion sex drive, etc. may be employed as a fuel. Emotions are not in themselves creative.

What do you think of the surrealists who see and draw upon the connection between the unconscious and their art? The language of dreams totally pervades their art.

A key phrase here: the language of dreams. Language denotes communication and dreams are an universal human condition. A surrealist like Magritte is bringing that universal dream language into his dialog with his audience, but his constructs are the work of his conscious mind.

As well, if creativity is a necessary component of free will, why can't we turn it on at will, like a light switch

You can, as any human not in a vegetative state can. When you decide what words you use to reply to me, you are creating. That does not mean you can force it into unaccustomed pathways at will. That takes the all too familiar creative struggle. I think "writer's block" occurs when a previously productive pathway plays itself out or the emotional fuel is exhausted. Maybe that's what happened to Rothko. His pathway became repetitive and his solution was to pour ever increasing amounts of rage into the path, with ever diminishing return.

"Emotions are not in themselves creative."

While emotions may not be creative, their repression has led to creative expression -- what comes up through the floor boards to consciousness. The conscious mind has no part in determining the imagery. It usually is quite surprised and shocked by it all. The conscious mind may decide to do the channeling of rage, love, etc., but it doesn't determine how these emotion will be modified or creatively expressed.

"A surrealist like Magritte is bringing that universal dream language into his dialog with his audience, but his constructs are the work of his conscious mind."

I'm not sure about that. I would think that the constructs (imagery) are given to him by the dream. I think that on some unconscious level there is judgment involved in choosing the image for the dream, though the dreamer is not consciously aware of this.

"When you decide what words you use to reply to me, you are creating."

I agree but this would have to be a lower order of creativity. It doesn't take emotional fuel to write this stuff. On an everyday level we use free will to create the most mundane things. It is still creative in the sense that the outcome of our choices may be something new, but not terribly profound.

The conscious mind has no part in determining the imagery.

Of course it does. It is the interpreter and the editor. It's not as if the artist is going into an amnesiac fugue and ending up with a work of art without knowing how it got there. Any artist who claims he doesn't know why or how an image was derived is either lying to himself, lying to others, or randomly flinging paint like a chimp in hopes of a happy accident.

It usually is quite surprised and shocked by it all. The conscious mind may decide to do the channeling of rage, love, etc., but it doesn't determine how these emotion will be modified or creatively expressed.

On the contrary, that is exactly the conscious function: to determine the use of the emotions and imagery in order to convey that to the audience, using craftsmanship as the medium. You can express your rage by painting, or by beating up your neighbor, but you consciously decide which path to express the rage; the rage doesn't decide the path.

Free will, again. You are responsible for the actions of your body. The "devil doesn't make you do it"; you choose and act. Uncontrolled actions don't create art, they create random patterns.

"It is the interpreter and the editor."

You're right about the functioning of the conscious mind, but interpretation is not creation. And editing, again, may be similar to craft. The artist, on an intuitive level, knows what the images mean. He probably knows that it came from some working deep inside himself and he has a choice (free will) to either go with the images or wait for a more inspiring insight or expression to come to him. Creation, art, personality, all imply an ordering process. This ordering can be done consciously or unconsciously, and I think that some great art has come about through the latter.

"the conscious function: to determine the use of the emotions and imagery in order to convey that to the audience, using craftsmanship as the medium."

I agree that it determines the use of the emotions and imagery (free will in choosing amongst various emotional laden images) but I doubt if it actually creates the images. It waits upon judgment from some other source, and then will choose whatever images may come.

We are rapidly reaching the level of semantics. I believe imagination (literally: the creation of images within the mind) is consciously controlled. It is a function of taking billions of discrete things from our experience and combining them in unique ways.

You posit that it springs from some unknowable outside source, which we are helpless to act without. We are compelled to await its input. At that point, our discussion passes beyond provable posits into the realm of faith. My faith is in Free Will; you are, to some extent, a predeterminist.

Hi Professor!

I think I promised to report back if I got to the Tate Modern and saw the Rothkos. I did. So, ok, I love the modern as a building and a museum. Its absolutely wonderful, I had a great time, looking up, looking down, looking out, checking out the floor, admiring the greenish cast of glass, the grey light......the industrial strength impact the building makes. One of the best recyling jobs I have ever seen. Its a great museum.

The Rothko room, however, was a massive disappointment. Your pictures show it quite well lit, no doubt to enhance the photograph, but it was so dim, I could barely make out the subtle changes that might have been going on in the paintings. I could just dimly make out the paintings themselves and it was very irritating straining to see. Normally, I like to look at Rothkos work. It is a bit mesmerising the way the colours shift, come forward, retreat. And I like the raggedy edges and the layered colours. Seeing them in real life is a very active experience.

But not to be. anyway, I sat on the bench and watched the crowd come and go. They came, looked, moved closer, stayed not long and left. I think perhaps it was too frustrating to try to connect with the works. Was for me. But what do I know. I think that the "brilliant" lighting scheme sabatoged the presentation.

And I guess here the argument moves to what exactly Rothko intended in this type of work, and his instructions for display. If he didn't mean for it to be seen, then that's just mean, and he's more about attitude than art. Which is another discussion.

I only ask of art that it capture and communicate the essential honesty of a visual experience without becoming a manifesto. If ya need a manifesto to go along with it, its something else, if you want to fool people and laugh at them, then its something else. I find that kind of dishonesty offputting and offensive. But I can look at something ugly like a Bacon, and be powerfully moved, it doesn't have to be pretty, but it doesn't have to reek with self importance. ooooh boy. Better stop or I'll have a manifesto of my own.

Anyway, lots of "modern" art to me fails, just because it isn't about art, its about one artist. I can't buy into the unmade beds, stuff strewn in heaps, bodily fluids and other "statements" as art. I like to say that many modern artists need to put their diapers back on and learn to sublimate. I find too much concept, too little craft, leaves me laughing, not the least bit embarrassed by my bourgeois sensibility. LOL.

So I don't know what the intention of the Rothko Display was.(was he having one over on us after all, sons-of-bitches that we are?) Maybe.

Thank you so much for the update! I'm sorry that the Rothko room is so darkly lit. I think he used to go around to his galleries and turn down the lights. But it is too dark if you can't even see his subtleties.

The rest of your post reminds me of my students' journals this semester, and I am beginning to agree. Most of the shocking work after 1955 or so is just that: shocking, and it does not wear well with time.

I only ask of art that it capture and communicate the essential honesty of a visual experience without becoming a manifesto.

I totally agree with you. I like the word manifesto in there. You are so right.

You are making me want to write more about contemporary art, but I have another project I have to do right now, so back to work. Thanks for the diversion.

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