Review of the Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern

In 1958 Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant. He started this work in a studio that he had just rented that would allow him to simulate the proportions of the dining room. Eventually, Rothko withdrew from the commission. In 1960, the director of the Tate Gallery discussed with Rothko the possibility of displaying a group of the murals. He provided Rothko with a small paper maquette of the space so that he could decide where he would like his paintings to be hanged. This maquette can be seen in the first room of the exhibition. Rothko had never decided on a final order of the paintings, but he did want the Seagram Murals to be hung high, slightly apart, and with a warm background colour.

The Seagram Murals are at the centre of the exhibition, and displayed in the largest room. This includes eight paintings from the Tate’s own collection and a selection from Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Sakura and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The five paintings that Rothko identified as ‘Mural’ are displayed in consecutive order here. These paintings are hung quite high, as Rothko requested, and are shown in a dim, yet warm light. This light adds to the vibrant and sombre colour. Standing in this room you feel almost overwhelmed and amazed by the surrounding paintings. As you stand in front of one of them, you get the sense that you could be inside the painting. As you move further away from a painting, the ‘floating frame’ would get either more or less visible due to the light in the room.

The next room shows Rothko’s technique through photos of a painting that have been place under UV light. These show the individual layers that Rothko applied, and where he reworked his paintings. This sheds more light onto the process of his painting as Rothko never liked to be watched while working, and photographs of him in his studio show him looking at a painting rather than actively taking part in it. Saying this, Rothko did leave clues in his work, such as the drips around the paintings, showing that they had been rotated and worked on from different angles.

The next significant room is the sixth room, where the black form paintings are displayed. Rothko had named the black form paintings numbers one to eight, and number five curiously appeared twice. At a first glance, the paintings look solid black, but as you look closer you can see that there has been a build up of colour and there is a frame around a black middle. These paintings invite the viewer to take a closer look at these paintings. This room, like many of the others, is laid out so that the paintings surround the viewer, which is something that was important to Rothko.

In another room is Rothko’s Brown on Gray works, which show two fields of colour. To make these, Rothko had taped large pieces of paper onto wooden boards. When he was done, he would remove the tape, which would reveal the unpainted areas. Nearby there are also some of his works on paper to compare to. The last room of the exhibition is home to Rothko’s Black on Gray works, his last series. These consist of a dark upper and a light lower section. There is a painted white edge around these paintings, which is different from his other works in which he would stretch the colour all the way round the wooden frame. This white edge makes a flatter picture plane. Another difference to this series is that the paintings vary in size and orientation, which gives them each a unique scale and weight

As each room contains a different series of Rothko’s works, they give out and invoke a different kind of atmosphere. Each room is packed with viewers trying to view his work and somewhere in this bustle, we as reviewers have to nestle ourselves and cancel the rush of people in order to get a deeper feel of the work in the gallery space. You do get a certain gratification once the lighting and gallery space fuses with the Rothko works.

Overall after getting over the sheer amazement of Rothko’s canvases, boards and not to forget the large amount of visitors that Rothko still gets everyday, you leave gallery with a greater understating and appreciation.