Viewing Rothko

I've been thinking about the Rothko room at the Phillips Collection since I first saw the space about six months ago. I can't seem to get it off my mind....which means it's time for a second visit. It's rare that an artist commands the installation of his or her work in a museum, especially within a permanent collection which normally is the pride and joy of a senior curator, and so this room is quite extraordinary. The floorplan was organized by Mark Rothko in 1960 for his benefactor and museum founder, Duncan Phillips, with the intention of providing visitors with the best possible environment to view his paintings. He wanted the large canvases to be installed in a "small, intimate space - in a scale of normal living - so that they would overwhelm the walls, saturating the room with color and sensation." The gallery would have one door, a simple bench in the center, and the paintings to be hung low to the floor.

So that when visitors enter the room, like I did earlier this year, they couldn't help but want to sit down on the little bench and let the paintings take over the space, and eventually, their sensations, just as Rothko intended. This viewing experience, as well as Rothko's very intentional planning for this room, reinforces my personal point of view about art - that when we talk about art, it's not necessarily about what "is" art, but where it is. In this small gallery, sitting on a humble bench, art is present - within the space between the paintings and the viewer, as well as between the artist and the viewer - knowing that in that moment, Rothko's hopes and vision for the experience were being fulfilled.

When the Rothko Chapel in Houston opened 32 years ago, it was inaugurated with an small evening reception - lit solely by candlelight - as told to me by a professor in graduate school who had attended. Imagine viewing one of these luminous paintings by the flickering light from a candle - adding movement and dimension to the cloudy, layered spaces in the margins between each color field. The intersection between art and spirituality, embraced within this chapel that night, perhaps fully realized.

Rothko room, Phillips Collection, Washington DC