ROTHKO AT 50
The Museum District’s Rothko Chapel celebrates a half-century of serenity. |
If the 18-month closure of the Rothko Chapel for renovations felt like a long time, consider its construction. That process spanned seven fitful years, leading to the grand opening of the Rothko Chapel 50 years ago this week.
The labored investment of time, creative energy and construction — involving debates about light, building materials, architectural design and location — ultimately yielded great rewards. The Rothko Chapel and the grounds surrounding it draw tens of thousands of visitors annually.
People come to Houston specifically to commune with the chapel, visits described not as tourism but pilgrimage. A $30 million restoration — the first stage of which was completed late last year — presents the chapel and grounds in better light. To further revel in its completion, the Rothko Chapel has a threeday celebration of virtual events planned this weekend that mirrors the three-day opening, Feb. 26-28, 1971, when patron Dominique de Menil introduced the space to the world.
On Feb. 26, a panel will present “Rothko Chapel & the Journey of Its Restoration,” a discussion of the process of aligning the chapel with the vision of its founders, artist Mark Rothko and de Menil. On Feb. 27, another panel will talk about the new book, “Rothko Chapel: An Oasis for Reflection.” Architectural historian Stephen Fox and Binghamton University professor Pamela Smart — who contributed essays to the book — will take part in the discussion. And on the afternoon of Feb. 28, the 50th Anniversary Interfaith Service and Community Celebration will take place.
In the foreword to the book, Christopher Rothko, the artist’s son, refers to the space as his father’s “invitation for us to experience things beyond ourselves.”
Perhaps to best understand how that invitation was created, consider what it was not meant to be. Rothko took the commission by Dominique and John de Menil having just six years earlier taken another commission to create paintings for a Four Seasons restaurant in the Park Avenue Seagram Building in New York. Upon seeing the dining room, Rothko decided the space was ill suited for his work, and he returned the commission.
Rothko remained intrigued by the prospect of a coordinated series of large paintings, an opportunity that arose in
BROKEN OBELISK, BY BARNETT NEWMAN,
IS LOCATED IN FRONT OF ROTHKO CHAPEL.
1964 when the de Menils sought to have built a chapel to honor a friend who had died. Even with architect Philip Johnson on board, Rothko was deeply involved in even the most granular details of the space, to the point that Johnson backed away from the project.
Rothko saw the space in totality. As James E. Breslin wrote in his Rothko biography, “A chapel like the one in Houston offered an environment in which Rothko’s silent, elevated paintings could receive their proper regard (silent contemplation) and their proper recognition (as sacred objects), and without migrating through the hands of a series of collectors, only to end up in an institutional home: a museum.”
Creating a destination
It’s funny to think of our city today, with a few million people, as “an obscure but sacred site,” as described by Breslin. But his point was more that Rothko sought a space outside of New York. A destination. And Rothko sought to create not a series of paintings or pictures but rather an ambiance that was interactive or experiential, where the dark variation in its plum colors revealed themselves differently to the same viewer over time. Rothko’s murals — and the space itself — feel like a realization of Hericlitus’ writing: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
The elements that have made the Rothko Chapel a draw for a half-century remain in place. It has inspired generations of artists: visual artists, such as the six with work on display at the Moody Center for the Arts, which is currently hosting “Artists and the Rothko Chapel: 50 Years of Inspiration,” featuring works that span 1974 to present. Classical, jazz, rock, ambient and folk musicians have found inspiration in the Rothko Chapel, from Morton Feldman’s moody 1971 instrumental composition “Rothko Chapel” to David Dondero’s folk song about an ex whose “heart is like the Rothko Chapel, cold dark void, yet simple and intriguing.”
After a lengthy restoration, a global pandemic and fraught cultural discourse, the Rothko Chapel feels imbued with an even greater urgency as a welcoming space, though because of the coronavirus, its ability to welcome requires timed entry for now. The de Menil family and St. Thomas University severed an association in the mid-1960s, so the Rothko Chapel would not be a Catholic chapel, but rather a nondenominational space. It is, by design, an environment that welcomes all with its enveloping painted canvases, sure, but also a harmony found from the light above to the asphalt paving stones below.
The importance of light
Lighting was a point of contention even before construction actually began, starting with Johnson’s initial design that would have placed an imposing cone atop the structure. The restoration has improved the space’s lighting and offers even the most regular pilgrim the opportunity to see the Rothko Chapel anew.
“On a day that’s partly cloudy, you could be there 30 minutes or an hour and there could be several different experiences in just that time,” says David Leslie, the Rothko Chapel’s executive director. “Central to Rothko’s intent was this engagement with the elements. Light and how light shifts, sometimes in a matter of seconds. And that’s just from the physicality standpoint. There’s also the life circumstances standpoint. Somebody who’s 16 who comes here from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts might come back 30 years later and experience it differently. It’s a consistent place of being, but not a consistent place of experience.”
Discussing only the harmony within does a disservice to the harmony outside the chapel. On the third day of celebration in 1971, Dominique de Menil dedicated “Broken Obelisk,” the steel sculpture created by Barnett Newman, who envisioned it accompanied by a reflecting pool. Coretta Scott King was in attendance, as the piece was a memorial to her husband, Martin Luther King Jr. The sculpture, the grounds and the chapel work as a harmonious whole, made more inviting by the new holly trees that surround the perimeter, as opposed to the bamboo that surrounded it previously.
Through a particular prism, the Rothko Chapel could be seen darkly. Rothko took his life 51 years ago this week. He was 66. Newman died of a heart attack four months later at age 65. So neither artist saw the project fully realized. Two years after the dedication of the chapel, John de Menil died.
But the assemblage of artists and patrons, engineers and tradespeople left behind something ageless that has provided contemplation and comfort, inspiration and escape. Though closed and dark for the last of its first 50 years, it appears ready to again welcome pilgrims as it begins the next 50 and beyond. As Dominique de Menil told Arts Magazine in the mid-1970s, she saw the space as “one of the most daring endeavors to express the infinite with the finite.”