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 thought I made that abundantly clear: art that cannot be fully appreciated by simply looking at it, but has to be propped up by written explication.

And I thought I was perfectly clear. Rothko's work needs no commentary, from Rothko or anyone else, to be fully appreciated.

Your personal lack of imaginative capacity does not translate to "failed art." Most people experience imaginative triggers in the tangible world in much the same way that Rothko's work triggers the imagination, by simply experiencing the subtle color variations that predominate over identifiable objects when viewing a vast sky, a dusky horizon, the ocean, trailing forests, earth-scapes viewed from an airplane window, or the depths of space through a telescope.

Scale representations of tangible objects are not the only thing capable of eliciting emotion, captivating the eye, or triggering contemplation and imagination.

I met Mr. Kelly a few years back and while I'm not overly fond of his or very much of minimalist Art his personality was the exact opposite of what I know of Rothko. He was a funny and totally delightful man. I think though that in his later years he has somewhat settled for redoing his more successful recipes rather than attempting further development.

Your personal lack of imaginative capacity does not translate to "failed art."

True - but the converse is also true. Any little stimulus that triggers someone's prolific capacity for imagination does not automatically qualify the producer of said stimulus as 'an artist'.

That is not to neccessarily deny Rothko this title - but simply to say that the title demands more than this one criteria.

the very fact that the work affected you so much shows that the artist was successful in conveying content through his works, whether you liked it or not. Perhaps works are even more powerful when we react viscerally against them.

That may be true, but I am not one to seek out visceral or painful experiences. I would rather see work that exemplifies ideals or delivers me for a little while from the mundane.

Your personal lack of imaginative capacity does not translate to "failed art."

Nor does being emotionally labile translate to artistic insight.

Many visual experiences — particularly those on a large scale — evoke an emotional response (but I hardly have to add that not all impressive visual experiences are art). It's no mistake that so many abstract painters work on a gigantic scale; scale all by itself is visually stimulating.

After that, an angsty personal biography is a must.

Any little stimulus that triggers someone's prolific capacity for imagination does not automatically qualify the producer of said stimulus as 'an artist'.

I would agree (then again . . . begging the question of what is art). With Rothko, however, the stimulus is neither singular nor small, which is what sets him apart from many abstract expressionists. Depth of field, color gradation, variations in perspective, peripheral mirage, etc. work toward a curiously engrossing imagery that seems to be larger than even the enormous canvases employed.

Nor does being emotionally labile translate to artistic insight.

Interesting choice of words. What is intriguing about many abstract impressionists is an ability to translate rather faithfully an emotional instability (or perhaps less derogatory, an ever-changing emotional state) into an ever-changing or unstable visual image. Perhaps it is the very mutability of the final image that separates the good from the bad in abstractions.

I paid thousands of Daddy's good dollars for art school, dipstick. For once, I have the qualifications to run my mouth off. I repeat: if you have to know the artist's history to understand the art, he has failed. He might be a really interesting case history, but he's no artist.

I paid for, and have another 5 year paying on, my BFA. You are free to dislike Rothko, or at least how the pretentious art world snobs go on about Rothko. I disagree with you on your dislike of his merit. But at least Rothko had people interested in supporting his work rather than expecting the taxpayers to take care of his needs.

art that cannot be fully appreciated by simply looking at it, but has to be propped up by written explication.

I think practically all art requires some kind of social context to be understood. For example, in Hopper's painting "Early Sunday Morning", here, without the context of the title, you don't know whether it's morning, an abandoned town, or what. Further, if you didn't have a social context, you might interpret the barber pole as a space ship and the fire hydrant as an alien. I know that's stretching, but artwork requires a social context for understanding.

Check out the Japanese Manga. If you don't understand that the Japanese read from right to left, and their extensive use of aspect to aspect illustrations (use of the same object at the same time from different angles to establish a mood), the strips are incomprehensible. Artwork uses numerous pieces of "shorthand" to convey information to the viewer.

That being said, I'm not a big Rothko fan.

What is intriguing about many abstract impressionists is an ability to translate rather faithfully an emotional instability (or perhaps less derogatory, an ever-changing emotional state) into an ever-changing or unstable visual image.

True enough. The problem is, that's all they can do, and emotional instability is pretty boring as a steady diet. Someone -- I forget who -- once said that atonal music is very expressive; unfortunately, the only thing it can express is anxiety. Abstract painting is similar: we got your rage, fear, depression, anxiety, nightmares. As an antidote to Victorian sentimentality, I suppose it deserved its hour on the stage. But modernism (and even post-modernism) is getting pretty long in the tooth.

"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..."

The remarkable thing is applying the word "great" to this stuff.

"In the dimness the paintings appear at first fuzzy..."

That's because they *are* fuzzy!

I think practically all art requires some kind of social context to be understood.

Understood, maybe, but not enjoyed. It isn't the same thing. If Hopper retitled that painting "Abandoned Town," would it suddenly be less (or more) good as a painting?

Not that I hugely care for Hopper, but his paintings are what they are without a lot of biography and backstory.

I guess that Rothko stuff doesn't even have a subject? Perhaps that is one of its problems in my mind.

Posting this reply to the Rothko thread....

Rothko's subject, according to something he wrote with Gottlieb, is the "tragic and timeless." I would say that any interpretations with blood, violence, and death is it. He painted his works large so that they could be intimate, and when you see one in person, they do fill the view all around you, and you feel the pulsing color almost physically.

There is a story that in his Russian family, at the end of the 19th century, the czar's soldiers came into his Jewish village and took all out to dig a large grave. Then they were shot and placed in the grave.

It may be an apochryphal story, but Rothko repeated it himself. I often think of the large blocks in his other works as grave-like and that the way the colors pulse is like a doorway to the beyond.

That's how they strike me: as quite deep, human, and tragic.

I'm copying this to the Rothko thread, BTW. (Also note: Rothko emigrated to the US with his family when he was ten.)

As an antidote to Victorian sentimentality, I suppose it deserved its hour on the stage. But modernism (and even post-modernism) is getting pretty long in the tooth.

Perhaps, as with other identifiable styles, it is limited in its capacity to portray and provoke response due to repetition and consequent saturation of its audience. Then again, I find it odd that certain works continue to captivate long after a given "style" has passed from the stage, undoubtedly due to the skill of the practioner.

Also, I wouldn't agree that instability in abstract expressionist/impressionist imagery conveys only emotion. The "ink blot" effect (not unlike cloud watching) provokes shifting visuals in works of note in much the same way that the well-rendered written word provokes shifting visuals. I would go so far as to say that expanding visual associations on repeated viewings is what sets apart the successful work from the poseur.

Richard Kimball: "I think practically all art requires some kind of social context to be understood."

Prion: "Understood, maybe, but not enjoyed."

Modern art needn't be positive or "enjoyable" to be powerful art. Yes, that bleak message is getting really redundant nowadays. But in the years after the destruction of WWII, that was still a relevant and powerful message. And when the Abstract Expressionists conveyed this content in their individual and Existentialist styles, they made a great impact worldwide.

Incidentally, Abstract Expressionism (especially that of Pollock) was promoted in Europe during the Cold War as examples of the freedom allowable in America. All abstraction is not Communist (to reply to an earlier comment in this thread). Some American congressmen made that same mistake: linking Communism with abstraction. However, the Communists cracked down on abstraction that they did not understand (like the work of Malevich) and solely supported propagandistic realism of the happy worker. So the Communism = abstraction equation doesn't fly.

Actually, I may be on your "side" in terms of a desire to see more positive art by the current "avant-garde." Perhaps there are emerging artists who have positive messages that are not (yet) being seen in the big name galleries.

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