Original subtitles

♪ Somber music ♪

This is Christopher Rothko.

I'm Mark Rothko's son.

And I have been told by many people

who've known both of us

that we had similar voices.

♪

Born Dvinsk, Latvia 1903.

Migrated to Portland, Oregon 1913.

♪ Somber music ♪

"You don't know what it is

to be a Jewish kid dressed in a suit

from Dvinsk,

not an American suit,

traveling across America and not able

"to speak English."

♪

"I was never able to forgive this transplantation

to a land where I never felt

entirely at home."

♪ somber music ♪

(clackety-clack of train)

Like, she... she, like, realizes...

(vehicles passing)

Do you know this building?

I know it's a landmark.

(chuckles)

Do you know that Mark Rothko

was living here?

No, I didn't.

Do you know his name?

No.

I just know the people

who live in there.

They are kind of your friends or...

Yeah, they look out for me.

You know, they always look out for me.

(horn honks)

"When I was a younger man,

art was a lonely thing.

No galleries, no collectors,

no critics...

no money.

Yet, it was a golden time,

for then, we had nothing to lose,

and a vision to gain.

Today, it is not quite the same.

It is a time of tons of verbiage,

activity and consumption.

Which condition is better for

the world at large?

I will not venture to discuss.

But I do know

that many who are driven to this life

are desperately searching for those pockets of silence

"where they can root and grow."

♪

Everything about Rothko is about...

changes, about voyages,

about travels.

You know, first of all,

the geographical travels.

He was born in Russia in 1907

in the Russian Empire,

in a city called Dvinsk,

now Daugavpils now in Latvia.

And at the age of 10,

his family moved to the United States.

Then he moved all over the United States,

and he came back many times to Europe.

So, basically, all those geographical

travels...

I mean, made him what he was.

♪ Somber music ♪

"I became a painter because I wanted

to raise painting to the level

of poignancy of music and poetry."

"The struggle is beyond painting,

not with painting."

♪ piano music ♪

(inaudible chatter)

(train screeching)

This is 77th Street.

♪ Drone music ♪

"Myths are the symbols of man's primitive fears

and motivations,

no matter in which land or what time,

changing only in detail

"never in substance."

♪ drone music ♪

"I sense a deep affinity.

The same feeling,

the same broad expanses of somber color."

♪

So, there is, in himself,

you know, a tension,

a tension between, uh, the new world

in which he lives,

the abstraction,

the abstract art that he's going

to be part of...

but also these original myths

from Europe that he originates from.

And when he goes back to the Greeks

and the Greek myths,

and he starts painting again

mythological.

So, that's a way of grounding

his own art in the...

in the b... in the basics

of European culture

and European history.

Uh, from then on, he's going to be able

to evolve and find his own language.

♪ Drone music ♪

He's such an articulate

intellectual,

such an articulate scholar that, uh,

it's not this, you know,

there's no wonder that today

Rothko is talking to us

much better than anybody else.

(hammering)

(inaudible chatter)

I don't know if it's this one.

I have to check the room number: 43264.

43264.

(drilling)

I've arranged the exhibition in two ways.

The reason is that during the preparations I often came across people saying:

"Rothko? That's emotion."

That is not my usual approach.

My initial approach is always that I want to understand something.

And that does not exclude emotion. On the contrary.

I think that art is where those two connect.

Most people think the two are incompatible and cannot be brought together.

But precisely in art they come together. I've tried to show that in the exhibition.

By saying bluntly: If you walk straight on, you will understand something.

If you prefer an emotional experience, turn left.

♪ somber music ♪

"Art is an adventure

into an unknown world,

which can be explored only by those willing

to take the risks."

"I'm not an abstractionist,

I'm not interested in the relationship

of color or form or anything else.

I'm interested only in expressing

basic human emotions;

tragedy, ecstasy,

doom, and so on.

And the fact that lots of people

break down and cry when confronted

with my pictures shows that I can

communicate those basic human emotions.

The people who weep before my pictures

are having the same religious experience I had

when I painted them.

And if you are moved only by their color,

"then you miss the point."

♪ somber music ♪

♪

"I quarrel with surrealist and abstract art

only as one quarrels with his father and mother,

recognizing the inevitability

and functions of my roots,

but insistent upon my dissensions.

I am both them and a new integral

"completely independent of them."

♪

These three paintings here...

...off the top of my head 1946, 1948, 1949...

...you see an enormously chaotic colour mixture...

...you can't recognize:

It's not abstract, it's not expressionist or geometric...

What is it? Clouds? Indeterminate.

But it crystallizes in this direction.

Until there you arrive at something...

...that is a reduction of the imagery to make it more clear.

He wants direct communication.

That's too complex for communication. This is clear.

♪ drone music ♪

"I'm not a mystic.

A prophet, perhaps.

But I don't prophesy woes to come.

I just paint the woes already here."

The height is wonderful, isn't it?

He must've loved that.

Hmm.

We are wondering if this is Mark Rothko's paint?

I don't know, it's hard to say, isn't it?

I mean, you can't say definitively.

I'm sure there have been other painters in here.

This certainly has a feel of it,

but it seems like a lot of it right there.

It doesn't seem...

I think there's no reason to think

there isn't some of Rothko's paint,

but one can't say with any...

Any surety.

I don't even know what it tells us that much, really.

I mean, we know he had the paintings on pulleys,

we know they were on the... stretched,

we know that they were on the wall.

Um...

There's a lot of white.

I don't think that...

(laughs)

-Too much white. -Yeah.

I don't know, a floor is a history.

I mean, it's...

it tells so much about what's happened

in this space as opposed

to who necessarily was in the space.

It was more about the space, I think,

than the painter.

In that regard, it's kind of wonderful.

Yeah, hm.

♪ Drone music ♪

(cars passing)

What is the sadness of life, sir?

Excuse me?

What is the sadness of life?

Not having a mother.

You know?

Mom left me when I was two,

my father left me when I was 12, you know?

That's what hurts, you know?

When I see family, you know,

sometimes I cry because...

I wish that was me, you know?

It hurts real bad.

You know?

But that's life, you know?

In America you have accidental babies,

you have trick babies, sex offender babies,

abused babies, adopted babies,

mommy's babies, and daddy's maybes.

You know?

I don't know what ground I'm on.

You know?

♪ Drone music ♪

What does this one cost? - I don't know by heart.

This is from a period...

...a transitional period to his classical period. The last step.

1949.

And they are usually in the order of...

...eight or nine million.

But there is one with yet another zero.

(laughs)

Which one? - It's not yet unpacked.

If you look at the back...

...how...

...the canvas was stapled on...

...it's all very fragile.

It shows that he was not a professional painter.

He was a philosopher...

...who used canvas and colour to express philosophical thought.

What are you looking at?

A first impression. Is there anything odd?

I don't know the painting but I can see there's no big scratch on it.

But the courier is coming to take a more specific look.

And then we both sign for approval.

♪ somber music ♪

"The recipe for a work of art,

its ingredients, how to make it,

the formula.

Number one:

there must be a clear

preoccupation with death.

Number two:

sensuality.

It is a lustful relationship

to things that exist.

Number three:

tension,

either conflict or curbed desire.

Number four:

irony.

This is a modern ingredient.

Number five:

wit and play

for the human element.

Number six:

the ephemeral and chance,

also for the human element.

And number seven:

hope.

Ten percent.

Just enough to make the tragic concept

"more endurable."

I think this is, uh, an example of my father's

great love of irony.

I think if we take him too seriously,

we are in trouble.

(cityscape sounds)

Painting, for him, was a way

to address the people.

It was a social statement.

It was a way of finding

his identity

in the American society.

It was a way of stating that the artist

has a role in society.

It was not the case in the United States.

The United States was a country

where the artist was very much marginalized.

So, Rothko decided to step in

and to...

to assert what he had to say is true:

his art.

♪ Drone music ♪

"After I had been at work for some time,

I realized that I was much influenced subconsciously

by Michelangelo's walls in the staircase

of the Medici Library in Florence.

He achieved just the kind of feeling I'm after.

He makes the viewers feel

that they are trapped in a room

where all the doors and windows are bricked up,

so that all they can do

"is butt their heads forever to the wall."

♪ drone music ♪

(pebbles clanking)

(pebbles rolling)

You could say that Rothko is after a one-to-one confrontation.

He more or less excluded the space around it.

It was all about the physical dialogue with the canvas.

But well, a body is always in space and you can't entirely ignore it.

When he was commissioned to do a series of paintings for a Manhattan restaurant...

...a luxury restaurant...

...he was confronted with a novel situation.

On the one hand he found it very fascinating...

...to be allowed to use the whole room, to involve the whole space...

...but he doubted whether a luxury restaurant was the right space.

It kept nagging at him and he didn't solve the dilemma.

He needed a break and went with his wife and daughter to Italy...

...where he visited many places that featured 'art on location'.

Also purpose-built locations.

Especially the monastery cells in the St Mark in Florence.

He went there...

...and the situation there is as follows.

In a small cell for a monk...

...there's a fresco by Fra Angelico on the short wall, made for the monk.

He can develop a relationship with it.

♪ drone music ♪

It's the perfect participation that Rothko envisaged for his paintings.

And when he came back...

...he was pained by the difference with the luxury restaurant.

I think that's why he returned the commission.

It's the famous failed Seagram commission.

But it was the first step in a whole development...

...of making works for specific locations.

♪ drone music ♪

"Since my pictures are large,

colorful and unframed,

and since museum walls are usually immense

and formidable,

there is the danger that the pictures

relate themselves as decorative areas

to the wall.

This would be a distortion of their meaning.

Since the pictures are intimate and intense,

and have been painted in a scale of normal living

"rather than an institutional scale."

♪

The Association of Friends of Harvard University got a new building.

He made five paintings for it.

He wanted to show that it was possible:

To create a space with paintings, to create a sanctified location...

...without the paintings being degraded to decorations.

So he worked on those, and created paintings for this specific space.

There was also a reception room.

But in that case the problem was...

...that the canvases were enormous...

...wall-covering and therefore called 'murals'.

The other walls had gigantic windows.

The pigment he had used was highly light-sensitive...

...and the sun was shining all day.

And some years after his death the paintings had to be removed,

In that sense it also failed. The installation doesn't exist anymore.

♪ violin music ♪

"When I went to Europe and saw the old masters,

I was involved with the credibility of the drama.

Would Christ on the cross, if he opened his eyes,

believe the spectators?"

♪

"I think that small pictures,

since the Renaissance,

are like novels.

Large pictures are like dramas

in which one participates

"in a direct way."

♪

Painting is, in fact, the subject.

Here, he... he's almost a sculpture.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

And what Rembrandt did, and especially

this whole part, but... but this...

This is blurred.

This is abstract painting.

And also this.

I mean, this... this color red,

it's (inaudible word).

It's... it's, I mean, of course,

paint... yeah, the face is very nice,

but he did many paintings.

But this... this has never been done.

So, basically, it's not so much

the faces, which he's interested in,

but the figures and the experimentation of light.

Here we look at invention in art.

And then Rothko comes close.

Rothko wrote in 1940 that Rembrandt

was interested in the plasticity of light.

-Here. -Yeah.

And Rothko reinvented himself in 1940

when he wrote a book called The Artist's Reality

where he's looking at all the figures.

He stops painting for one whole year

and he write a book.

And in this book he goes through

all the big figures of the past;

philosophers, writers,

musicians, and artists.

And he talks about Rembrandt a lot,

especially about this painting

and the plasticity of light.

(echoed chatter)

"Rembrandt discovered that his patrons

were not interested in his plastic

preoccupations with light,

and that they preferred the obvious illustrative gifts

"of his contemporaries and followers."

"Rembrandt and Rothko."

Rothko would say to a friend,

then pause, smile, and say,

"Rothko and Rembrandt."

I'm gonna add...

I'm gonna add one from the family.

This is not written anywhere,

but this... this is what he said in the house.

"Mozart, Matisse, and Mark."

That's the follow-up to "Rothko and Rembrandt."

No, he didn't turn it around as far as I know.

I don't think anyone could go before Mozart.

(pebbles clanking)

"When you looked at Matisse's Red Studio,

you became that color.

You became totally saturated with it."

♪ drone music ♪

(cityscape sounds)

"Art necessarily reflects the artist's

understanding of his times.

We have wiped the slate clean.

We started new.

A new land.

We have got to forget

"what the old master's did."

(emergency sirens in distance)

His third installation was a commission by a married couple of collectors in Houston.

The De Menil couple.

People had long agreed that Rothko's work would look best in a chapel.

They asked him to paint for a chapel specifically built for this purpose.

He was totally in control there.

That is the famous Rothko chapel in Houston.

He had rented a studio that was large enough...

...to make a mock-up of the chapel and paint in the circumstances the work was meant for.

♪ somber music ♪

"I've wanted to paint my own size.

I wanted to recognize myself in my work.

Then I realized it's completed."

His project was not painting paintings,

his project was to create environments.

His project was to reinvent

a relationship between the public

and his art.

And how would it be?

It would be like theater.

He wanted the viewer to step into the painting.

He wanted the paintings to be...

Not positioned low, but... high, but low.

He wanted them not to be on a white wall,

but on an off-white wall.

He wanted them not to be lighted,

but very in the shadow.

And he didn't want one painting,

but a whole room.

He wanted the audience to be surrounded by the art.

Why?

Because what he aimed at

was not consumption of art,

he wanted a dialogue, an interaction,

a spiritual dimension,

something much more complex

than, you know, than watching a painting.

He wanted, uh,

basically, he thought that art could

transform, um, the public.

♪ Drone music ♪

♪ piano music ♪

"If I must place my trust somewhere,

I would invest it in the psyche

of sensitive observers

who are free of the conventions

of understanding.

I would have no apprehensions

about the use they would make of these pictures

for the needs of their own spirits,

for if there is both need and spirit,

"there is bound to be a real transaction."

How is it to restore a Rothko?

Well...

it's complicated.

I think to restore any work of art

is complicated.

Um, for a non, uh, representational work of art,

an abstract work of art,

it's even more difficult because we don't have

any representational clues to go by.

So, we are very much in need of understanding

the artist's manipulation of material

for visual effect.

And that takes time,

that's not something that you immediately see

when you look at a work of art.

So, in the case of Rothko,

because it's so sophisticated,

it's so many layers,

it's so much building up of paint over time,

um, it takes that amount of time as well

to understand what the artist

is trying to achieve.

♪ Somber music ♪

Do you think that the paintings

we see in Houston,

that we see them now with the light

Rothko wishes?

Um, I think that's a hard question to answer.

I would say that the question of the light

is the overriding question that haunts

those of us concerned with the Rothko Chapel.

It never seemed to be right.

And so, um, it's something

that will always be on our minds

of how to improve it, resolve it, make...

Make peace with it in someway.

Um, I don't... so I can't say

that you're seeing the paintings

exactly the way Rothko would've intended,

but what I can say is that you will have

a very, um, personal and meditative,

I think, experience in the chapel

from the light.

Um, the light changes in Houston.

Well, everywhere it changes,

but because it's all natural light,

if you sit there you'll see clouds go by,

you'll feel the change of light,

and the paintings respond in that way.

♪ Somber music ♪

"I would like to say to those

who think of my pictures as serene

that I have imprisoned the most utter violence

in every inch of their surface."

♪ somber music ♪

Bryan Robertson describes a moment

in the Whitechapel Gallery with Rothko,

together with Rothko when he left the place.

He said, "My strongest personal memory"

is of leaving the Whitechapel Gallery

with Rothko late one winter afternoon

when the daylight had practically gone.

He asked me to switch all the lights off

everywhere.

And suddenly Rothko's color

made its own light.

The effect once the retina had adjusted itself

was unforgettable.

Smoldering, and blazing,

and glowing softly from the walls.

Color in the darkness.

We stood there a long time

and I wished everyone could have seen the world

Rothko had made in those perfect conditions,

radiating its own energy

and uncorrected by artifice

"or the marketplace."

I think it's wonderful.

♪ Drone music ♪

It was a custom to equate the blackness

and the sharpness of the Rothko Chapel paintings

with the artist's despair.

I never felt that.

I never did, and I still don't.

I truly believe that the paintings...

Well, there are two things.

But I truly believe that the paintings

were a... a major step forward for him, technically.

In eliminating color, the one feature

for which he was best known,

and he had... his classic paintings

he was a master of,

he kind of upped the bar

and went into creating paintings

without a lot of color.

He also was so well-known, as you know,

in his classic work for these wonderful

diaphanous edges around his forms.

In the Chapel paintings he does these very tight,

straight, taped even,

forms, edges.

He's just going into something very different,

and I think that's a very hard,

hard thing to do.

I think it was a natural progression

of where he was going,

but I do not think...

And I wish it would be dispelled forever...

This association with that

with his final death.

I do not think that that...

That makes sense at all.

♪ Drone music ♪

"There is more power in telling little

than in telling all.

Silence is so accurate."

♪

The color of my voice?

What color?

Um, I don't know,

I think dark brown.

His voice was a little softer, I think.

A little, a little rounder

around the edges.

He has a little bit more red in it.

♪