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1. Vue d'installation de l'exposition Mark Rothko, galerie 4, niveau 0, salle Les années 1950, exposition présentée du 18 octobre 2023 au 2 avril 2024 à la Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko - Adagp, Paris, 2023
Mark Rothko, from dreamy to vaporous
Vaporous and colourful, the works of the American artist Mark Rothko dazzle the spaces of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris until April 2024. However, what do we know about this American artist, so little represented in museum collections ( private and public) in Europe?
Mark Rothko, his early works, little known
Following the first retrospective dedicated to Mark Rothko (1903-1970) in France at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1999, by Suzanne Pagé (current director of the Louis Vuitton Fondation), the Fondation realises 24 years later, a feat of engineering. The exhibition brings 115 works from international museums and the artist's family collection in one place.
Exceptional, due to the fact that French public museums only keep a few works by the American artist, three works: two canvases kept at the National Museum of Modern Art - Center Pompidou and a drawing at the Cantini Museum in the city of Marseille In both cases, it's only his late works that are collected.
However, beyond his vertical and horizontal color bands, Mark Rothko went through figuration; discovery and revelation for the public in the basement of the fondation.
2. Mark Rothko, Self Portrait, 1936, Huile sur toile, 81,9 x 65,4 cm, Collection de Christopher Rothko. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel @ Christopher Rothko - Adagp, Paris, 2023
The one and only “self-portrait” of the artist introduce the first section dedicated to the urban city of New York.
Of Russian origin (now Latvia), Marcus Rotkovitch comes from a Jewish and religious family. While the artist left his native country at the age of ten after a stint at Talmudic school, the artist was forever enriching his approach to painting with readings and reflections on art and philosophy.
A decade later, he began his passion for art following classes at the Art Students League of New York. After leaving Yale, where he had studied a broad range of subjects (mathematics, economics, biology, physics, philosophy, psychology, languages), he became a naturalized American citizen in 1938, and took the name Mark Rothko two years later.
In a few months he became passionate about street scenes and daily life showing his new life in the United States, during the interwar period. In the 30s and 40s, he abandoned figuration, because according to him, he destroyed the human figure, thus asking the importance of the subject in a painting.
3. Mark Rothko, Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea, 1944, Huile sur toile, 191,1 x 215,9 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Bequest of Mrs. Mark Rothko through the Mark Rothko Foundation, inc. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko - Adagp, Paris, 2023
He then focused on neo-surrealism, mixing the figurative intention of American artists such as Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman, and European surrealists such as Max Ernst, to whom he was introduced during the MoMA exhibition: “Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism” in 1936. He was also influenced by his readings, especially Nietzsche "The Birth of Tragedy".
Powerful in his inspirations and ancient mythologies, he creates a form of universal and pictorial language using linear and fine shapes around ornamental motifs.
4. Vue d'installation de l'exposition Mark Rothko, galerie 7, niveau 1, salle La "Rothko Room" de la Phillips Collection, exposition présentée du 18 octobre 2023 au 2 avril 2024 à la Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko - Adagp, Paris, 2023
In 1946, Rothko was choked by the end of the Second World War and failed to dream with his surrealist characters, he then focus on what would later be called the "Color Field", an artistic movement centered on the exposure and implosion of colors through bright and bold colors on a pictorial support, quite often large.
His first experiments, dense and organic, present canvases with various shapes, vertical and horizontal, like a painter's palette stretched out on a stretched canvas. More and more, the colored touches become larger and larger, vertical and representing only 3-4 colors maximum, dark and light, never mixing or depicting strong contrast in his paintings. The webs become vaporous, without fixed edges.
Those “Multiforms” canvases will move onwards to the "Classic" works, which are the most iconic works of the artist. Like Rothko said : "paint large pictures because I want to create a state of intimacy. A large picture is an immediate transaction; it takes you into it.".
Those pictures came to be when the artist saw Matisse "The Red Studio", which was recently acquired by MoMA, in which a colourful space populated by objects is unified by monochrome color and flattened along the picture plane, to the point that you became that color.
5. Vue d'installation de l'exposition Mark Rothko, galerie 5, niveau 1, salle Seagram Murals, exposition présentée du 18 octobre 2023 au 2 avril 2024 à la Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko - Adagp, Paris, 2023
Over the course of his career, he accepted numerous commissions. The first and perhaps most formative were the “SeaGram Murals” (Tate Modern Collection), where the artist was asked to decorate the restaurant with a set of canvases in Mies van der Rohe's building, the Seagram Building. The second, rather minimal, was the “Rothko Room” of the Phillips Collection, where three paintings enter into dialogue, it's also the first permanent room for the presentation of Rothko’s work.
The last, which closes the exhibition, is an escape, under Frank Gehry's stamping structure, black and gray canvases are attached, created between 1969 and 1970, where his painting becomes deliberately fragmented.
The overall scale of the work is reduced, and the surface of the painting is delimited by a white border establishing a distance that makes us feel less like standalone canvas but rather frames pictures around a white boarder. But they are still structured in two contrasting zones of black, brown, and blue-gray tones, separated by a continuous line.
He decided to change technique and size for health reasons, but also that his work would be less fragile to present at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, where, following an order, it had to enter into dialogue with a certain number of sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, an artist with whom he felt close.
During the summer of 1969, he gave up the commission, while continuing his work on this series until his death in February 1970.
The legacy of Rothko in Europe
The legacy of Mark Rothko is deeply linked to his first presentations in galleries and institutions in Europe. In Paris, the artist had its first presentation in 1962, in the Museum of Modern Art of Paris, with works from MoMA. It was a disaster. Maybe because the works were not part of its own space.
Because Rothko created pictures for their own spaces. And the architecture need to suits it's works, like the artist imagine the future of his paintings in buildings designed by the greatest twentieth-century architects: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson for the Seagram building, and Johnson again for the chapel in Houston devised by John and Dominique de Menil.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Fondation Louis Vuitton
Date: 18 October 2023 - 2 April 2024
Curators: Suzanne Pagé and Christopher Rothko
Ticket: Available on the website of the Fondation Louis Vuitton OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Fondation Louis Vuitton
Fondation Louis Vuitton
8 AVenue du Mahatma Gandhi
75116 Paris