Mark Rothko's unusual chapel, Houston Tx.

Mark Rothko

Mark Rothkowitz Rothko (1903–70) was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family in Dvinsk Latvia, rejecting Jew­ish obser­v­ance as a teenager only once they were in the US. Yet his life in New York was inflect­ed by Jewish culture at nearly every turn, especially in the art­is­t­ic company he kept, including Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman and Louise Nevelson. Plus the curat­ors and critics he dealt and argued with eg Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. Examine his early works in this blog.

Rothko began with the idea of a painted environment in the 1950s, when he created his Seagram murals for a posh NY rest­aur­ant which was still under construction at the time. After complet­ing 40 great paintings in dark reds and browns, he loathed his work be­ing seen as fancy wall­paper. Rothko had a fit of rage, reneged on the deal and withdrew his works in 1958. Alas Roth­ko’s depression & paranoia were over­whelming him, so the art­ist stored the paintings until they were given to London’s Tate Gallery

Plaza in front of windowless chapel

Barnett Newman steel monument, Broken Ob­elisk

While Rothko had succeeded by the 1960s, he felt many view­ers failed to grasp the true signif­icance of his works. So he acc­epted a chapel commission from Franco-American oil philan­thropists John and Domin­ique de Menil in 1964. The chapel was to be the cul­min­ating monument in the Catholic Uni­versity of St Thomas in Houston Texas. Rothko’s wanted to evoke relig­ious responses from viewers. But why was it so crucial to an appreciation of his work?

The project’s first architect, Philip Joh­nson, had a Greek cross in mind. The chapel was orig­in­ally intended to be Roman Catholic, mod­elled on the Byz­antine Cath­edral of St Maria Assunta in Torcello Venice. But without a gold dome or mosaic of the Madonna and Child or bell tower, the chapel was no northern Italian basilica. Roth­ko acc­ept­ed the doct­rin­al context of the ch­apel and allowed the 14 Stat­ions of the Cross on the ex­ter­ior wall.

                                  

When the dedication of the chapel occurred in 1971, an interfaith service signified the official opening.

 

Buddhists

In his early 60s, Mark worked on the Rothko Chapel for 3 years so that he could feel the immersive experience he was seek­ing. His dark paintings con­t­ained dark texture effects. The hues varied, de­p­ending on the light in­t­ens­ity, so the paint­ings were different for every visitor. The human emot­ion expres­sed in the different colour values were devel­op­ed from lay­ered pig­ments, a charged quality that forced aud­iences to ex­am­ine their own emotions.. and made them cry.

Rothko privately sensed a chance to probe feelings that he admitted had been shaped by Jewish experiences of trauma and transcendence. He said that working within the norms of a Christian space was not a rejection of his heritage as much as the freedom to engage religion on his own terms.

The triptych was a medieval form invented to provide al­t­ar­­pieces illustrating generic crucifix­ions. So the chapel’s most patently Ch­ristian gesture was found in Rothko’s 3 nearly identical trip­tychs which encouraged the viewer’s dev­ot­ion­, as they would a tradit­ional Christ­ian al­tarpiece.

Dominique de Menil said the chapel was oriented toward the sacred, but it imposed no traditional environment. It offered a place where common orient­at­ion could be found, an orientation towards God and to man’s highest aspirations.

At a time when religious observance in the U.S was dec­lining, Rothko was betting on the rel­­evance of relig­ious art! He deliberately tried to harness the conventions of rel­ig­ious viewing, wanting the chapel paintings to be  approached with the fervour that a Last Judg­ment could induce. So Rothko invited viewers to approach his works with visual and spiritual expectations raised by Christian trad­ition; a resource not seen in Jewish art. In a middle-class part of Houston, on a quiet oak-lined street, the windowless Rothko Chapel was surrounded by a big lawn, a wall of ov­ergrown bamboo, and a reflecting pool with Barnett Newman’s imposing steel monument, Broken Ob­elisk. But the suite of Rothko paintings that lined the room was transformative.

Rothko hoped his works would create spiritual encount­ers, like the great old religious master pieces. Despite his enor­mous success by the mid-1960s, the chapel was giving Rothko his first opp­ort­unity to real­ise his late career goal. He wanted a circuit of per­manent paintings that would have a great visc­er­al impact on viewers.

In 1968 Rothko’s health deteriorated, and he became incr­easingly isolated. Rothko suicided in 1970, before the fin­al instal­lation of his 14 chap­el paint­ings. A year lat­er the Seagram murals were delivered to the chapel, lowered via the cupola and ins­tal­led for the opening. At the 1971 dedication, Domin­ique de Menil praised Rothko’s work for bringing viewers to the threshold of the divine. Since Rothko’s death, the Chapel has become a pilgrimage site, won by the artist’s willingness to probe human exper­ien­ce. Note the creation of the Rothko Chapel Óscar Rom­ero Award in recognition of courageous human rights advoc­acy and religious pluralism.

For 49 years, the light was never quite right

until the new skylight was created. 

After long consultation in 1999, the Rothko Chapel had a year of renovat­ions. For those drawn primarily by the chapel’s inter­faith and intercultural mission, the renovation was timely, gaining renewed art-historical im­p­or­tance. But I still ask: what would have led Mark Rothko, a non-practicing Jew, to work with the de Menils, who were motivated by their int­erest in ecumenical Christianity? They all wanted the chapel to become a place of peace, meditation and prayer! Today its board of directors is led by Roth­ko’s very clever son Dr Christopher Rothko, and the chapel is in con­stant use.

In his book Mark Rothko: From the Inside Out, Dr Rothko asked about the influence of Judaism on his fath­er’s art. Dad was the classic depressive Jew who was still open and honest about his Jewish soul-searching, whenever he was among his closest Jewish comrades. Rothko biographer Annie Cohen-Solal also examined Rothko’s re­lationship to Judaism in her book Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel. She argued that throughout life, Mark remained connected to his father’s Orthodox Jewish ways and his own Talmudic education. Mark’s close friend poet Stanley Kunitz felt strongly that Rothko belonged to a great Judaic tradition, which was cen­t­ral to his art and life. It had to do with the sense of being! The best reference is by Aaron Rosen.

The Rothko Chapel, featuring the famous murals by painter Mark Rothko, closed after sustaining damage during Hurricane Beryl in 2024, now awaiting $30 million restoration.