A Serious House on Serious Earth
An Afternoon at the Rothko Chapel
“ The People who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point” - Mark Rothko
My mom is visiting from out West and I want to take her somewhere special. After some internal deliberation, I settled on the Rothko Chapel. It’s a once coveted destination from my art school days back in California, that I now live down the street from. When I mention that we should go here she agrees, but seems confused by the name.
The word “chapel” conjures a specific connotation for a person of religious faith, and any attempt to repurpose this meaning seems a subversive act. I am curious to see what she thinks of the whole experience.
The day is a little hot but the sky is clear. The clouds are so perfectly shaped that they seem fake and remind me of the painted ceilings in Las Vegas. Old oaks line the edge of the paved walkways throughout the neighborhood with branches that meander all the way down to the ground in some places. People picnic and walk small dogs nearby.
There is an oddly picturesque natural quality to this cute little street in downtown Houston. No more than a mile away, there are loud billboards for questionable ambulance-chasing attorneys and aggressive drivers whizzing past going out of business sale posters. In this quiet oasis, an octagonal shaped brick building rests, unassumingly in the heart of the 4th largest US city. In this small brick shelter, there is something transcendent and important inside.
We open the heavy iron doors that lead to a dark vestibule. When we enter the building from the glaring outdoors, we see several holy books laid out on a table with a black cloth covering. A Quran, a bible, a torah and others are strewn on the surface that we see upon entry. The admission is free but we drop a small tithing into a clear acrylic donation box.
We make our way past a greeter at a podium and into the chapel. The chapel space is quiet, fairly large and is illuminated slightly by an opening in the center ceiling above.
There are many people sitting in the pews, for lack of a better word, that are arranged in an octagonal configuration which echoes the shape of the building. On the walls, large black triptychs hang and some of the middle canvases are elevated. This seems reminiscent of old catholic altarpieces. Some walls contain only a single large canvas and each is painted in the quintessential Rothko color field style. But these works are not colorful and, in fact, they are simply various shades of black or deep brown. Open voids that reveal small drip marks if you get up really close, as I often do. Drips are the only hint of the artist’s hand; imperfections in an otherwise solid block of color with subtle gradient variations.
I look around and see the various people sitting in the chapel. It seems that many of them associate with different faiths and cultures. I watch as a skinny man with a ponytail sits in a double lotus pose as he meditates atop one of the benches. Two women with burkas sit across from him with arms crossed looking up at the walls. An older woman simply looks down contemplatively and my family and I are near a wall standing.
It’s sometimes hard to know what to do in church, but in a gallery, I like to stand as close as I can to paintings and examine them, which is why I stand. The space is quiet and there is an unspoken imperative to reflect and to introspect in some way, considering how quiet everyone is.
Some Background:
This space was first opened as a non-denominational chapel that functioned also as an installation of 14 Rothko paintings. Mark Rothko was already a well-known abstract expressionist painter when he was commissioned by the Menil family to create this work. After an arduous architectural design process that spanned seven years, the chapel opened in 1971.
The chapel’s doors opened one year after Rothko took his own life. He never saw the final result of his troubles.
There is an undeniable solemness to the space that I expected, knowing this history. I had expectations prior to seeing the chapel which were confirmed after visiting. This is a monument to quiet reflection. The giant black paintings that surround the interior space are wordless. They are huge and are truly voids that expand the space of the interior.
"My paintings' surfaces are expansive and push outward in all directions, or their surfaces contract and rush inward in all directions. Between these two poles, you can find everything I want to say." - Rothko
It is as if Rothko painted himself out of these works entirely in an attempt to paint the transcendent quiet. Black surfaces to reflect a viewer’s psyche. When viewing these, I consider how horror films operate. I mean this in the sense that the scariest monster is always the one that is not shown by the camera; the creature of our own mind is far graver than anything a sound and makeup studio could conjure.
In this way, this monumental series of black painted rectangles reflect the expanse of our own spiritual depth or vacancies, maybe both. They are an imprint of the action of Rothko’s painting process and his motivations and aspirations, but they are also for us, the viewer, objects to conceptually engage with. Art always invites an active conversation with a viewer and this can lead one to a different meaning than the artist proposed.
These pieces remind me of Goya’s black paintings, which are among my favorite works of art. Each series was painted near the end of the artist’s life, and were large, dark and ominous in some ways. But these Rothko’s paintings are not grim, grisly or horrific but rather hopeful in some sense. At least it seems this way to me, perhaps the construction of the space and the attitudes of the guests is why I think this. After all, inspiration is to be expected in holy places. Art has a magic which is not unlike that of the religious texts and spaces. Museums and chapels both function as places to grow wiser in.
Raw materials on surfaces which contend with the big ideas; things which are eternal, and mine the depths of the human condition, are the reason why paintings have endured for thousands of years. Art has the power of transcendence. The intangible importance of such works is why they command such high prices at auction. One might also consider the chapel as a monument to the significance of art in our world
Some will say they are just big black simple rectangles in an old building but I would implore you to visit and make that determination for yourself if you are in town.
Contact Info
Thanks for reading Painters Paint!! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Anish Kapoor gets some flack for being a complete hack with the whole ‘the art is you watching yourself.’ But to your point about reflection, I recall he did have a string of installations of aluminum and lacquer that I think nailed what Rothko chapel was also accomplishing. Check out “Corona.”