Green and Maroon: Mark Rothko

ART AND IMAGES IN PSYCHIATRY Green and Maroon Mark Rothko James C. Harris, MD I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, element provides vitality and passion. Although opposed, these ecstasy, doom…. poles are intertwined. Rothko, who was born in Russia, drew Mark Rothko1(p309) on the themes of faith and doubt in Dostoevsky’s novels and on In Rothko, there is no pictorial reference at all to remembered expe- existentialism as presented in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. In his rience. What we recall are not memories but old emotions disturbed Fear and Trembling (which Rothko kept at his bedside), Kierkeg- or resolved—some sense of well being suddenly shadowed by a aard referenced Philippians 2:12, “continue to work out your sal- cloud…or the fire diminishing into a glow of embers, or the light when vation with fear and trembling.”Rooted in philosophy, Rothko the night descends. showed little interest in psychoanalysis.5 Rothko’s paintings are 2(p290) Duncan Phillips said to arouse the aesthetic sense of the sublime.6 Kant de- fined the sublime as the playful interface between the imagi- On the morning of February 25, 1970, at 66 years old, Mark nation and reason. Yet considering Rothko’s works, the Ger- Rothko was found dead in his studio by his assistant. The au- man philosopher Fichte’s contributions to the phenomenology topsy report was consistent with an overdose of the antide- of art are more pertinent to Rothko’s intentions. Fichte wrote pressant Sinequan (doxepin hydrochloride), but his death re- that the imagination is the faculty that oscillates “between what sulted from exsanguination from deep cuts into both is determinate and that which is indeterminate between that antecubital fossae, one nearly completely severing his right bra- which is temporal and that which is eternal,”6(p79) a model con- chial artery. He had neatly placed his trousers on a nearby chair, sistent with Rothko’s designs. but he left no suicide note. Rothko (1903-1970), one of Ameri- Rothko was anxious about viewers misinterpreting his ca’s leading abstract expressionists (although he denied this work. Thus, he gave advice about how his paintings should be designation), was at the peak of his career and his work had viewed, prescribing the type of space and the lighting needed received international recognition. Although Rothko re- for maximal effect. He attended to the interrelationships of mained creative and continued to paint until the end of his life, color choice, spatial composition, the height and width of the he was increasingly demoralized and despaired over his fail- rectangles, the edges between them, and the distances from ing health following treatment for a dissecting aortic aneu- the edges. These edges fuse into their surrounding space. He rysm. The autopsy documented severe emphysema and ad- layered and blended colors to enhance surface texture lumi- vanced heart disease.1 He viewed constant pressure to nosity and created surfaces by applying paint with rags and rub- commercialize his art as a threat to his integrity. His biogra- bing wet colors together. To vary texture, he built up brush- pher believes that Rothko’s decision to kill himself was a last strokes to create the needed effect. effort to maintain “some sense of dignity and control.”1(p543) When asked how close the viewer should stand, Rothko Rothko is best known for his large-scale paintings that fill once suggested a viewing distance of 18 in. However, most view- the viewer’s field of vision and stimulate the viewer’s full at- ers position themselves to face the middle of his canvas and tention. His luminously colored pictorial space is designed to stand several feet back to allow the forms and colors to fill their produce what has been called “the Rothko effect.”3 Rothko’s peripheral vision. Once positioned, they shift forward and back- art elicits the fundamental emotions (first epigraph). His rect- ward to experience the “activation of the work.”For some who angular clouds of color stacked one on top of another were de- view Rothko’s paintings, the experience can be intense, just as signed to poignantly bring out elemental emotional re- Rothko described them as “portraits of states of the soul.”1(p282) sponses (second epigraph). Such focus on subjectivity was the Rothko said that “[t]he people who weep before my pictures are province of the New York School, the uniquely American con- having the same religious experience as I had when I painted tribution to world art. them.”1(p309) Two-dimensional photographic reproductions in The pivotal year for Rothko was 19494; that was the year he print do not do justice to Rothko’s work because photography completed his long transition from figurative images through reduces the nuances of his coloring and the perception of over- mythological themes in painting to color field painting. He was lapping color; it nullifies the texture in his art. Thus, no photo- a student of philosophy and was particularly drawn to Greek graphic reproduction accompanies this commentary. tragedy, particularly the tension between the poles of Apollo- Rothko preferred that museums provide special rooms nian reality and Dionysian reality that Nietzsche presented in dedicated to his art. So particular was Rothko about the set- The Birth of Tragedy.3 He believed that both realities are re- ting for his art that he returned his advance of $35 000 (a very quired for the creation of art. The Apollonian element pro- large sum in the 1950s) and broke his contract with the Four vides the form and structure for coherence, and the Dionysian Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York for jamapsychiatry.com JAMA Psychiatry February 2014 Volume 71, Number 2 107 Copyright 2014 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 09/25/2021 Art and Images in Psychiatry providing art in the dining room when he realized that din- dation. Several months later, Rothko entered into an agree- ers, engaged in social conversation, might view his art as merely ment with the owner of the Marlborough Gallery to sell his decorative. His decision regarding the Four Seasons installa- works of art only to them for a period of 8 years. It is believed tion is powerfully dramatized in John Logan’s play Red.In1969, that he intended that his daughter Kate, who was 18 years of shortly before his death, Rothko arranged for his Seagram age at the time, and his son Christopher, who was 6 years of Building paintings to find a home in the Tate Modern art gal- age, would be given some of his paintings. Rothko was es- lery in London, England, where a dedicated room displays 9 tranged from his wife Mary Alice (Mell) at the time of his death. of Rothko’s former Seagram Building murals hung to his speci- Unfortunately, she died of a stroke (at the age of 48 years) 6 fications. The nondenominational Rothko Chapel at the Uni- months after his death, leaving the children to grieve the loss versity of St Thomas in Houston, Texas, his last commission, of both parents. displays 14 black-hued paintings on its walls. Rothko put in his Rothko’s children and family were notified by the founder final and best effort to complete them. They were finished in of the Marlborough Gallery that the gallery owned all of Roth- 1967 and installed in 1971. Although dark, they are radiant and ko’s paintings, including those he may have intended for his elicit a contemplative attitude rather than a depressed feel- children. There ensued a protracted legal dispute over the own- ing. Thus, the room succeeds in its mission to create an inspir- ership of his paintings between the recently bereaved Kate ing and contemplative space. In 2000, it received recognition Rothko and the estate executors and the directors of Marlbor- by being placed in the National Register of Historic Places. ough Fine Art that lasted 6 years (1971-1977). During those years, The Phillips Collection was the first American museum to the greed, the abuses of power, the conflicts of interest (Reis dedicate a room to Rothko.7 Duncan Phillips reminded the was both an executor and Marlborough advisor), and the con- viewer (second epigraph) that, in this room, Rothko’s fields of spiracy of the estate executors to defraud were recognized by color facilitate the elicitation of emotions stored in our minds the New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, as affect images. The room displays 4 of Rothko’s paintings. It as “manifestly wrong and indeed shocking.”8(p338) Kate Rothko, also is the first installation in the United States designed in col- a medical student at Johns Hopkins University School of Medi- laboration with the artist. There is no other art in the Rothko cine in Baltimore, Maryland (and later a professor of pathol- room to detract the viewer’s perceptions. The room is sparsely ogy), at the time the case was settled, had prevailed in suing furnished with a single rectangular brown wooden viewing one of the most powerful art galleries in New York City. She bench. Each wall displays 1 color field painting; the subdued reclaimed more than 650 of her father’s paintings and be- lighting amplifies the resonance of the colors in each of them. came the administrator of her father’s estate, allowing her to Ochre and Red on Red is placed on the far wall facing the preserve her father’s legacy. She donated the bulk of his art- viewer who enters the room.7 Like Rothko’s other mature works, work to museums around the world, allowing the public to view it is painted on a large scale to allow viewers to place them- a considerable portion of her father’s work as he would have selves imaginatively inside the composition and immerse them- wanted it displayed as a continuing tribute to him.

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