#the rothko chapel

[gregdotorg]

seeing photos of Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk being installed reminded me of this 1980 photo I bought and then never posted, because it just seemed like fuel on the fire, but the fire's been stoked plenty without it, and it feels dishonest to not point out that there were white supremacist nazis in Houston in 1979, and that no one, probably including the deMenils who commissioned him, knew Philip Johnson was a nazi too.

[dailyrothko]

[baravaggio]

i’m serious i need to go to the museum and stand 18 inches from a rothko…..

[lilacsinthedooryard]

Mark Rothko ( 1903-1970)

Central triptych of the Rothko Chapel, 1966

 oil on canvas

[eternal--returned]

Seven months or so after Rothko concluded his second European sojourn, which included four weeks in Rome, the Houston-based art patrons John and Dominique de Menil paid Rothko the first of what would be many visits. In February 1960, the couple met him at his Bowery studio to see the paintings he had intended for the Four Seasons restaurant in the newly completed Seagram building, an edifice designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson to present high modernist architecture in terms of maximally luxurious effects. Within weeks of returning from Europe, Rothko had withdrawn his paintings from their originally intended destination in that environment of princely splendor and conspicuous consumption. This act of principled renunciation impressed the de Menils, who were also captivated by the Seagram canvases themselves; later, Dominique de Menil would remember, 'They made for an extraordinary mystical environment, a mix of intimacy and transcendence that can be found in certain churches, certain mosques'. Two days after their first visit, the de Menils returned to Rothko's studio to propose acquiring the canvases for a future Catholic chapel to be built on the campus of the University of St Thomas in Houston, an institution they served as prime benefactors. But both the artist and his prospective patrons agreed that the significance of the undertaking would require freshly conceived art. And there the idea rested for another four years.

Thomas Crow ֍ "Illuminations Past and Present in the Painting of Mark Rothko." Toward Clarity (2019)

Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas

[mysticplaces]

Broken Pillar at Rothko Chapel | Houston, TX

[conformi]

Mark Rothko, Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas, USA, 1971 VS Roman Opałka, installation view at “Icônes”| Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy, 2023 ph. Matteo De Fina

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

anyway! the children are safely on the plane and i am finally safely home. feel a little bit dead. very glad i have tomorrow and monday off to recover

[anythingbyadriannelenker]

one insane thing that i keep forgetting happened was when my mom took me to the menil collection for the first time when i was 10 and she took me into the rothko chapel (because she gets it) and i jus fucking. sat there. and stared. overcome with some indescribable feeling. anyways shoutout to my mom

[2amdifferentimezone]

Outside the Rothko Chapel feeling the air away from home

[lost-teeth]

[gregdotorg]

Carol Mancusi-Ungaro X Ben Fino-Radin

An extra amazing episode of the Art & Obsolescence podcast, a conversation with conservator Carol Mancusi-Ungaro about Rothko, Cy Twombly, the Menil, Barnett Newman, Replication, and on and on.

https://www.artandobsolescence.com/episodes/063-carol-mancusi-ungaro

[dailyrothko]

"It is Rothko's scale that removes any argument over the proportions of one area to another, or over its degree of symmetry or asymmetry. The sum of the parts does not equal the whole; rather, scale is discovered and contained as an image. It is not form that floats the painting, but Rothko's finding that particular scale which suspends all proportions in equilibrium." - Morton Feldman

Mark Rothko looms large over Morton Feldman, rehearsing musicians at The Rothko Chapel for a performance of his composition of the same name. April 9, 1972

Data provided by the University of California, San Diego

© Adelaide de Menil Carpenter

© 2024 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko /Artists Rights Society (ARS)

It's not Rothko himself, but this is a rare picture that you rarely see. Feldman was good friends with Rothko and the music for the chapel is excellent.

[admiralbliss]

today i went to the rothko chapel, and the menil collection.

i had a great time staring into blue black oblivions,

theorizing and fantasizing about the obelisks,

and questioning the histories and placards of antiquities.

[philosohappy]

Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and a vision of its resolution. Take, for example, the languorous sentences of Proust or the haiku of Basho, the late quartets and sonatas of Beethoven, the tragicomic brushwork of Sengai or the daunting canvases of Rothko, the luminous self-portraits of Rembrandt and Hakuin. Such works achieve their resolution not through consoling or romantic images whereby anguish is transcended. They accept anguish without being overwhelmed by it. They reveal anguish as that which gives beauty its dignity and depth.

Excerpt from Buddhism Without Beliefs, by Stephen Batchelor

Photo of the Rothko Chapel, a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas, founded by John and Dominique de Menil

[eternal--returned]

The reticence of the architectural envelope, so freighted with the aura of primitive Christianity, gave undisputed priority to the artists suite of paintings.

Thomas Crow ֍ "Illuminations Past and Present in the Painting of Mark Rothko." Toward Clarity (2019)

Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas