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

7 years later

I lieu of my own words, here is an op-ed titled "Lost Horizon" that was posted today in the New York Times, written by artist Ed Ruscha:

WHEN the 9/11 attacks took place, I thought of this photograph. I’d taken it many years before — on my first visit to New York, in 1961, in fact — but I looked for it anyway. It reminded me of Lower Manhattan, the twin towers, and then, of course, of their absence.

The view is from the back of the Staten Island Ferry. I remember it as the first all-American moment of my life, looking at the Statue of Liberty while eating a hot dog. I also remember the Financial District skyline, which appeared to me to be forlorn and empty, as if you could feel the buildings that were supposed to be there but weren’t.

I’d come to the city from Oklahoma and I was on my way to Europe. Then, as now, New York seemed a delicious place to visit, but not somewhere I could live. It was too big, too expensive, too accelerated. There was no way I could carry a two-by-four across town.

But it was an inspiration. I walked around with my Yashica camera, filled with black and white film, shooting whatever interested me: bricks, the street in front of my hotel on 34th Street, the old-fashioned scissor fence in this picture.

For me, it’s that scissor-gate on the back of the ferry that dates the image. It comes from another time. A slice of history that goes way back.

But everything else seems modern, up-to-date. When I look at the picture, which is over my desk in Los Angeles, I look for the towers, even though I know it’s impossible for them to be there. It’s hard to look at a photograph of that part of the city, no matter when it was taken, and not want to see them.

Market Boom

Life is ironic. Business had been slow for almost a year at the art advising company at which I worked in San Francisco, following the tragic death of one of our busiest and most beloved clients. But yet we carried on, eagerly anticipating the next major painting to be offered our remaining clients by a dealer, and wrapping up the installation of our largest corporate contemporary art collection. Paintings and other artworks came to our attention in bits and spurts, and when they did, we were elated and quickly became busy with the art (and minutiae) of making the deal; and when they didn't, we returned to reorganizing our library and assembling private collection catalogues. Then in 2005, when I reluctantly left the company in order to begin the cross-country move with my husband, the art world witnessed the biggest market boom in recent history - the Chinese art explosion. And I missed it, entirely.

So for the past several years I've been reading, watching, and keeping an eye on the evolution of the art world in China, and in Barbara Pollack's current article in this month's ARTnews she gives a good synopsis of the major developments. Following are some of the artists whom she references as being the most successful at auction, along with an example of their work:

Yue Minjun:


Zhang Xiaogang:


Liu Ziodong:


Liu Ye:


And finally Zeng Fanzhi, the most successful at auction, with Mask Series No. 6 (1996) selling at Christie's Hong Kong this past May for $9.6 million, the highest price ever paid for a Chinese contemporary work:


Hard to believe that Fanzhi's paintings - a mere 5 years ago - sold for under $50,000. Talk about a boom indeed.

The conversation about price speculation and the ensuing role of the 1,600 auction houses on mainland China, the tidal wave of artists in mass becoming elevated without critical review and selection, and the anticipated next steps of buyers in China beginning to look overseas for contemporary artwork continues to fascinate me.

First Up

Love him or hate him (I'm still not sure) the work of Damien Hirst is first up for auction this month. Titled "Beautiful Inside my Head Forever", the sale will be held at Sotheby's in London, with evening sale scheduled for September 15. A recent article by Time Magazine art blogger Richard Lacayo includes an interview with Hirst where the artist talks about his infamous and terrifying glass tank works and influence of Francis Bacon.

Hirst is one of the most sought-after artists in the current art market and his works are among the most lucrative for today's auction houses. The sale should be note-worthy especially because some of these pieces we've never seen before, including several original paintings and butterfly collages that appear to be a progression of his assistant-produced spin paintings. Stay tuned.

Another season begins

It's the beginning of the Fall season in the art world, when galleries re-open after a long haitus in August, dealers and art advisors begin reconnecting with clients, artists prepare for their first showings, wine bottles are opened, invitations for galas and luncheons pour into collectors' mailboxes, calendars are organized for the season ahead, and everyone is waiting in anticipation for the art fairs and auctions coming this Fall when the market is tested, paintings and other objects trade hands, and careers are made or broken. Already critics have begun chronicling the goings-on in their various communities, such as writer Paul Klein in Chicago, whose Art Letter should begin appearing regularly in the Huffington Post. It's an exciting time.

Looking at Art -- In the Eyes of the Beholder

Another perspective I plan to include in my blog are images of other people observing art - because everyone's experience is unique unto themselves. Some people sit and look, others walk by, others stand, some draw, or take photographs, some stay, some go. These posts will be my nod to Thomas Struth's investigation along similar ideas.

Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884, Art Institute of Chicago, 2006

Ryan McGinness at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2004

Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877, Art Institute of Chicago, 2007

Into the Blue -- Yves Klein

I fell in love with the work of Yves Klein not because of the varying subject matter or medium, but because of the drenched, intoxicating color that he virtually invented, inspired by the lapis lazuli pigment used to paint the Virgin Mary's robes during the Renaissance, named International Klein Blue (IKB). It is impossible not to get lost in this space, framed and contextualized by color alone, and then to work your way back out of it, perhaps changed, perhaps not, but either way, affected by it.

Yves Klein, IKB 191, 1962