Columns and Pillars

Of all the paintings by Mark Rothko which one might be inspired by, the very early scenes in the New York City subway, would not likely be the first to come to mind.

I had never heard anyone discuss these paintings until I listened to Harry Cooper’s comments in the PBS American Masters Series film called Paintings Are Miraculous, about Mark Rothko.

Mr. Cooper, Curator and Head of Modern Art at the National Gallery, was one of several people interviewed for the film.  He termed Rothko’s early pictures “…not very promising right out of the gate...” and further said “…but for some reason, Rothko stuck with it…”.

I was completely caught by the subway paintings.  Not in the way that the Seagram paintings which Rothko gifted to the Tate caught me and held me to the point of nearly crying and feeling sick to my stomach, as if a whale had swallowed me whole. Also, not as if I was stuck in a continuous loop watching an eclipse through a home made cardboard box viewer; two odd and unseemly images to be sure, but so fantastic and beyond one’s own choosing, and so different from the feeling of being frozen in front of – in the face of – the subway paintings, with their awkward and honest columns and pillars and people and the uncertain spaces between them, in limbo, waiting and defining the space among and around them in a miasmatic slurry of dank air and maybe misery too.

Surprisingly enough, the subway paintings were what inspired my first awkward and tentative images in the Cells Series, three examples of which you see here.   Rothko allowed that.  I would never have found the way there on my own.  I would never have wanted to; but I am glad that I did.