Love Spreads

Another post about doing my work while grandmothering the new twins.

I only had one piece with me for nearly three weeks and it's gone through several nick names.

For a while I called it Holy Rothko, because of the dark reddish field of colour floating between the warm grey linen borders and because of the holes that marked it in a grid.

Then as I continued working on it, I called it Holy Holy, because it had taken on a spiritual quality.

For a while it was as if this piece helped me confront my own mortality.  

Grace with Juni

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Judy with Daisy

I'm working it from the back side, stitching with running stitch around and around the backsides of the reverse applique dots, and then cutting away the sheer fabric that covers them.

So that the velvet circles bloom.   

While in the rented house, I'm taking care of Grace's cat for a while as her household gets used to the twins.    In the above photo, you can spy the quilt I mended last year on the bed.  Ned didn't come this time, but our other two daughters took turns helping their sister.

Mostly I've been cooking for the new parents.  I've been using recipes from the pandemic cookbook I compiled in 2020 of family favourites.  

I've been able to get in an hour of stitching by the window in our rented house each morning.

The piece is still not finished, but getting closer.

Love Spreads pinned to studio wall, nearly finished.

Newest title?  Love Spreads 

Inspired by a quote Maria Popova  sent me in her newsletter:  

Love is essentially self-communicative:  those that do not have it catch it from those who have it.  True love is unconquerable and irresistible; and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.  Meher Baba   

what does Rothko mean?

Then Rothko would sit and look for long periods.

Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, considering the next colour, considering expanding an area.  He worked on more than one painting at a time.  The veils of colour were  actually applied quickly and spontaneously.

Most of the time in his studio was spent sitting silently on his bench and looking.

Dan Rice, Rothko's assistant  (quoted in James Breslin's biography of  Mark Rothko)

I don't know if he knew what he was doing.  I don't think artists always need to know what they are doing.  Artists often do more than they know they are doing.

David Antin art critic  (also quoted in Mark Rothko: a biography)

This post is a copy of the one I wrote when I studied Rothko for my UK degree.  Click here to see another 2007 post about Rothko that contains a self portrait of moi.

Click here for my post about Rohko on the modernist aesthetic blog.  

representation

When children begin to paint representationaly, they draw a line near the bottom of their paper to represent the ground, and another near the top, to represent the sky.

migrating geese / writing essay

My thesis: Mark Rothko was a passionate intellectual who made paintings about the profound nature of being alive in the twentieth century and became embittered and saddened with the shallow consumer society that surrounded him.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

When in Kansas City for the SDA conference, I was able to attend one of the pre-opening receptions for the new addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of art in Kansas City. Architect Steven Holl's completed Bloch building is absolutely beautiful, and has been positively reviewed in the New York Times, Time magazine and the New Yorker. Most of the exhibition space in this addition (nine glass pavilions) is underground, but the viewer is not aware of this. The ceilings are curved and the walls are soaring. The glass walls have been treated some how to protect the art from the UV rays from the sun, and so a wonderful natural light is available for viewing the art.
The art. I was blown away by the collection. Personal favourites were a painting by Matisse of a woman seated in front of a black background, a Louise Nevelson painted wood sculpture, a wonderful Kiki Smith installation, and the first Mark Rothko painting that I've seen in real life. (Untitled, No. 11, 1963)
The architect, Steven Holl, has also designed an art gallery in Helsinki Finland and my architect son is in Helsinki right now! In a recent email he told me that for me he would go see the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art by Steven Holl, but that he was more interested in seeing all the Alvor Aalto buildings around the city as they are classics and Aalto is a very inspiring humanitarian.

what does Rothko mean?

Then Rothko would sit and look for long periods. Sometimes forhours, sometimes for days, considering the next colour, considering expanding an area. He worked on more than one painting at a time. The veils of colour were applied quickly and spontaneously. Most of the time in his studio was spent sitting silently on his bench and looking. Dan Rice, Rothko's assistant

i don't know if he knew what he was doing. i don't think artists always have to know what they're doing artists often do more than they know they are doing.

David Antin art critic 2003

silk over linen

I have begun a new piece. My study of Rothko and the limestone buildings of Kingston are just two of the influences.

"the tragic irreconcilability of a violence that lies at the bottom of human existence and the daily life that must deal with it." Mark Rothko

Katharine and Dore

While researching my essay I was pleased to learn that women were important in the art scene in New York during the 50's and 60's. So much has been written about those 'genius' male artists that it is easy to overlook the women who were involved. I researched Katharine Kuh because she was the person that Mark Rothko called first when he decided to withdraw his paintings from the Seagram building. Kuh had curated Rothko's first solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1956 and remained friends with the artist for the rest of his life. Another close friend of Rothko was Dore Ashton, also an art critic. When Dore visited Rothko in his studio and they were surrounded by the dark red and purple Seagram Murals he told her "I have created a place". Dore Ashton's book About Rothko (1973) remains in print to this day. (Because I have not read it I won't give an opinion on its merit but I will say that I am reading James B Breslin's biography of Mark Rothko and would give it four stars.)

My (family) connection to Mark Rothko

Here is the story of how I am connected through my family to Mark Rothko and the Seagram Murals. Samual Bronfman (a Canadian) had purchased the Seagram beverage company in 1928. By that time he was well on his way to having made $800 million between 1919 and 1934 bootlegging to the U.S. during prohibition. In 1957 The Seagram company would be soon be 100 years old and Mr. Bronfman chose to celebrate by building a skyscraper in the "international style" in down town New York.

He commissioned a design and sent the drawings to his more knowledgable daughter (Phyllis Bronfman Lambert) who was studying art in Paris at the time. She made 16 or so suggestions, and so he asked her to take on the project. Phyllis accepted proposals from five architects, (Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, William Gropius, I.M. Pei and Mies Van der Rohe. Mies won the competition. The building would be 39 stories tall, sheathed in bronze and tinted glass.

There was to be a Four Seasons restaurant on the ground floor and Philip Johnson was recruited by Phylis Lambert to design that. Philip and Phylis commissioned Mark Rothko to provide 500 to 600 square feet of oil paint on canvas for $35,000. He would be given $7000 up front, and the remainder would be divided over the next four years.
OK, here is how my family is (sorta kinda) connected to the project (and hence to Rothko):

Phyllis Lambert founded the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. Last summer my son (Jay) EJ Martin was one of three graduate students who won a research grant from the CCA. Jay actually participated in a luncheon meeting with the regal Phyllis. His photographic research from that summer can be viewed here.
By the way, Rothko changed his mind about hanging his paintings in a restaurant and withdrew from the project. The paintings that he created for the Four Seasons instead now hang in three major art galleries around the world: the Tate Modern in London England, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, USA and the Kawamura Museum of Modern Art in Japan.

Memo: from Opus

Julia Caprara, the course director for OPUS BA (Hons) Embroidered Textiles sent an email out to all students today. In it she reminded the UK students about several details concerning the spring assessment date of May 19. I am really relieved that overseas students (like moi) have an extra month to finish. I have only been able to get back to my Rothko research this week. (loving it)

"Beauty is a certain type of emotional exaltation which is the result of stimulation by certain qualities common to all great works of art. Psychologists say that beauty evokes a feeling of pleasure. This pleasure is closely conneted with our infantile desire for security." Mark Rothko The Artists Reality

Rothko

One of the things I have to do while at home is to gather up is my research on Mark Rothko and his Seagram murals for my OPUS degree work. The essay is due in May.

"I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as with a reducing glass. However, when you paint the larger picture, you are in it." Mark Rothko

Why am I interested in Mark Rothko?

1. Why is his work said to be spiritual?

2. He repeats the same subject over and over and over. Is he fooling us or is he searching for truth?

3. What was his personal life like? Was he happily married? Did he have kids? He commmitted suicide – was he mentally ill his whole life or just severely depressed at the end of it? In order to be a great artist is it necessary to be a little crazy?

4. Why are the Seagram murals  considered to be key works in 20th century art history? Does it have more to do with the controversy surrounding their acquisition than the paintings themselves?

5. Is it even possible to find the “spiritual” in art?