Rothko... It's a Mystery!

There are places you can lose yourself in for hours and never realise the time passing. They will vary for each and everyone one of us - a forest, a beach, a shop, a casino, a library, perhaps a grave-side for those who have lost someone dear, or where two lovers first kissed.

I may be lucky as I have a few special places - some Lake District hillsides for example, Hyde Park where I seem to have made my way to whenever I have had a big decision to make and Greenwich Park which has always been part of my life and where almost every blade of grass or tree holds a specific memory.

But one of my special places every now and then moves, often for a year or more, but then comes back, and in time departs again, possibly across the world, to come back again.

That place is the wonderful Rothko Room which has now ‘come back’ to the Tate Modern on London’s South Bank. I don’t know where it had been but it had been gone for quite a while and I caught up with it again recently. But coming back is an elastic term in itself because the last time I had visited it, the Room had moved again this time to Tate Britain over the Thames along Millbank, Westminster. It’s hard to keep track. Such is the pull of Rothko’s work - people everywhere want to see it.

The Tate Modern, on London's South Bank

I don’t much care for modern art - so much of it seems talentless and hit and miss. I get a lot of the ‘theory’ behind it all and can usually follow the thought behind pieces, but all too often I look at it and think why?, or really?, or REALLY?  Things I never say, for example,  about the Dutch Masters.

At the Tate Modern... Really?

I don’t denigrate those who do love modern art, I’m just saying that it is not my cup of tea.

So why is Rothko and his Room so different? Here we have a so called ‘modern’ artist - the famous or infamous Mark Rothko who painted a series of murals for a posh restaurant in New York, recanted and sent them to the Tate instead, eerily arriving on the day he committed suicide - what is it about his work, here specifically those murals, that so fascinates me and makes me lose time whenever I am in the Room?

I have no idea. Except that, for me, to be in the Rothko Room is about as near as I can get to a ‘religious’ experience. I am absolutely not religious but it’s a good way to describe what I feel.  Here are nine very large canvasses (the Seagram Murals), each in general shades of two or three deep or brighter major reds, which feature thick lines of a red in the outline of a window.  Not sure how many hours I have peered into those windows lost in thought and reverie but it must be quite a few.

One of Rothko's Seagram Murals

For many, the Rothko murals must simply look like fairly blank panels of red paint and read nothing into them. Somehow, I look at them, step through the gaping windows and see worlds I never knew existed before. How come? I can look at another modern artists' blank panels of paint see nothing at all and pass them by without a murmur.

More Seagram Murals in the Rothko Room

This is the unfathomable power of art. It's a mystery. The reason why some pieces hit you slap in the face and others slip by without a trace. It's a deonstration why we are all utterly unique.

You like heavy metal rock, lillies and the color green. She likes country music, roses and yellow. He likes jazz, tulips and blue. We all have different tastes.

So when you read a film review which says the latest flick is awful, it might be but go see it and you might think differently. A book rubbished in the media could be the best thing you could ever pick up.

Not sure a review of a new modern art exhibition will change my mind on all that stuff but I will always keep an open mind.

Meanwhile the Rothko Room is always calling… until, of course, it is time for it to move again.

Mark Rothko at the Tate Modern - https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/mark-rothko-1875