In the summer of 1959, Mark Rothko, one of the greatest proclaimed masters of
the New York art scene, and soon to be the first living member of his
generation to have a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art, arrived in
England on holiday with his wife Mell and their eight-year-old daughter,
Kate. The visit was to inspire a deep affinity for England, which would grow
until his death on February 25, 1970, coincidentally the day that nine of
his large Seagram canvases arrived in London. They had been given by Rothko
to the nation for hanging in the Tate, as a mark of his affection for
Britain and in recognition of the British people’s response to his work.
Rothko was a quintessential early 20th-century New Yorker. He was born Marcus
Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, in the part of the Russian Empire now known as Latvia,
in 1903, the son of Jewish intellectuals. He moved to America with his
family at the age of ten, and spent all his life as an outsider, feeding
first off his struggle to be accepted as an artist and then, perversely,
when acceptance came, off his reluctance to be embraced. As an outsider he
felt bitter and deprived; as an insider he felt uneasy and contaminated. He
was a prickly man of depressive temperament, bear-like physique and
voracious appetite. He suffered from gout, but liked to smoke and to eat
rich food. His drinking exacerbated his frequent dark moods.
Yet his feelings for England were unexpectedly and uncomplicatedly warm.
During spring 1959, Rothko had been working on one of the major commissions
of his career: a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in the
Seagram Building in New York. Tired by the work and dissatisfied with the
way the paintings were developing, he decided to take his family on a trip
to Europe. As Kate Rothko recalls, they sailed from New York first to Italy,
and then travelled on to Paris before arriving in London in August. “We went
to stay in Somerset with the painter William Scott and his family, and then
went on to St Ives to stay with Peter Lanyon, who was another painter friend
of my father’s. I remember he was particularly eager to meet the group of
artists in St Ives, and seemed to develop a strong liking for the people and
the place.”
Rothko was received in St Ives with great excitement. Here was a real New York
art-world dignitary whose presence could validate the town’s importance as
an artistic centre and assuage any anxieties about parochialism. Lunches,
tea parties and drinks parties were thrown in honour of this famous visitor.
Looking the archetypal American tourist in his baseball cap, Rothko met the
artists Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Bryan Wynter and Alan Davie, among
others (he didn’t befriend St Ives sculptor Barbara Hepworth until after he
had returned to New York). He danced on the Penwith moors at midnight at
Bryan and Monica Wynter’s house near Zennor. He visited St Peter’s Loft
painting school and, although he managed to avoid debates with the students,
he enjoyed himself by dancing again (the twist) and helped with the
washing-up which, he said, he had once done professionally. Chris Stephens
later wrote in an essay to mark a 1996 Rothko exhibition at Tate St Ives:
“The significance of Rothko’s presence in Cornwall lies in the values and
intentions he shared with St Ives artists… It also reflected a dialogue
between British and American artists that was part of the increasingly
international nature of contemporary art production.”
Soon after they returned to New York that summer, Rothko and his wife had
dinner at the newly opened Four Seasons restaurant and were horrified by its
ostentation. Designed by Philip Johnson, it had been planned as an exclusive
and expensive restaurant where, in Rothko’s earlier words, “The richest
bastards in New York will come to feed and show off.” The artist later
wrote: “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.” By Christmas, Rothko had
withdrawn from the Seagram commission and had returned the money. He wrote
to his friend Scott, explaining his decision in milder language: “When I
returned, I looked again at my paintings, and then visited the premises for
which they were destined. It seemed clear to me at once that the two were
not for each other… The decision was easy and inevitable. What is depressing
is the thought that there is really no real place for them. Where in this
world are the edifices which share the motives from which our pictures are
painted?” Rothko was already wrestling with the vexing question of where to
hang the murals.
His fondness for England deepened further in 1961 when he came to London to
the opening at the Whitechapel Gallery of a travelling retrospective which
had first been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Bryan
Robertson, the director of the Whitechapel, had installed the Seagram
paintings at the beginning of the show, making them the first thing visitors
saw. The critic David Sylvester picked up on this and wrote very positively
and with thoughtful sensitivity about Rothko’s intentions in the work. He
commented particularly on their intensity.
“Rothko was very happy with the critical reception he received in England at
the time of the Whitechapel show,” says Achim Borchardt-Hume, curator of the
new Rothko retrospective at the Tate. “He worried about whether people
recognised the relevance of his work, and often felt his work wasn’t
understood in the right way, but he was very pleased with his reception
here. The show travelled to many other venues around Europe, but Rothko
didn’t go to any of them. After the show, when he’d returned to New York, he
wrote a very touching letter to Bryan Robertson about the show and about how
much care had been taken of his work.”
“I remember my father talked quite a bit about David Sylvester,” recalls Kate
Rothko, now 57. “This was very unusual for him because he didn’t generally
have such a smooth relationship with critics… but the Whitechapel show was a
very important event for him. It must have been important for him because he
sailed to England [he never flew] specially to be there for the opening. He
was very excited by the British audience for his work.”
Relations with Britain were kept warm in Rothko’s mind by the visits of Bryan
Robertson to New York, and of Lanyon, Scott, Heron and several other
“Cornwaller” friends of his. When he heard, for example, in 1964 of the
sudden death of Lanyon, to whom he had written of his “Anglophile heart”,
Rothko wept. And when Heron arrived in New York in 1965, he was greeted by
Rothko with the words: “What’s going on in St Ives?” In 1965, Norman Reid,
the director of the Tate Gallery, visited Rothko in New York to discuss what
was to become of the Seagram murals. Reid knew that Rothko wanted them to be
seen in the right place and in the right way, and went through years of
discussions with Rothko on the subject. Eventually they discussed the idea
that the Tate might be able to give them a room of their own. “Reid told him
that only Picasso, Matisse and Turner had rooms of their own, and Rothko
certainly understood the status attached to this,” says Borchardt-Hume.
The donation of his murals was probably inspired by the Tate’s extensive
holdings of paintings by Turner, whom Rothko greatly admired. In 1966,
Rothko visited the Turner show at the Museum of Modern Art. “Rothko was
completely taken by this show,” says Borchardt-Hume. “The idea of a room at
the Tate for his own paintings became more attractive. He loved the idea
that his work could be seen close to that of Turner.” Rothko and Turner
shared many interests, including a preoccupation with light and an interest
in what one might call the sublime. They were both deeply romantic in their
aspirations for art and what it could communicate.
With the donation in mind, Rothko wrote to Reid on September 4, 1966: “It
seems to me that the heart of the matter, at least for the present, is how
to give this space you propose the greatest eloquence and poignancy of which
my pictures are capable… I do want to add that never have I been
unmindful of the symbolic meaning of the acceptance of the gift by the Tate.
Nor have I been unmindful of the boldness of your imagination and courage in
implementing the whole idea.”
In November 1969, Rothko’s donation of nine Seagram mural paintings was
finally agreed. The long process of packing and shipping the works was
begun, but it wasn’t until February 25, 1970, that they finally arrived in
London. It was the day that Rothko committed suicide in his New York studio.
He was 66. Three months later, Reid officially opened the Rothko Room at the
Tate Gallery.
Rothko is at Tate Modern, London SE1, from September 26 to February 1,
2009. Sponsored by Fujitsu with additional support from Access Industries
and media partner The Times. For tickets, go to www.tate.org.uk/tickets
or call 020-7887 8888
Wonderful article. Can't wait to see the exhibit.
Karl R. , Austin, Texas , USA