Spirit in the (Monochromatic) Light

Often heralded as one of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko would not live to celebrate the 1971 opening of the chapel in Houston bearing his name. Rothko’s death by suicide in 1970 at the age of sixty-six sent shockwaves through an art world that he and his co-conspirators, in what became known as The New York School, had helped fundamentally to transform through their experimentations with abstract expressionism. Though he flirted with social realist aesthetics early in his career, Rothko became enamored by surrealism’s explorations of the power and possibilities of the unconscious mind, especially for artmaking. Attendant concerns about faith, myth, and spirituality led him to develop a practice that would ultimately yield hundreds of iconic works that have become celebrated for the “atmosphere of piety and wonder” they tend to arouse.1 “So seductive is the quality of Rothko’s color, and so complete is its hold on our attention, that we experience its later descent into the shadows as a very emphatic and concrete emotion,” New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer wrote in his review of the Guggenheim Museum’s landmark 1978 exhibition, Mark Rothko, 1903–1970: A Retrospective, curated by Diane Waldman.2 In addition to a nuanced engagement with color, Rothko’s work is distinguished by its idiosyncratic play with shape, scale, and light. His color-field paintings, in particular, have become venerated for their uncanny capacity to elicit a surprising range of affective responses.