‘Rothko stated to Stone that he would be willing to create murals for a room in which memorabilia of Kennedy would be displayed. This offer was not accepted.
Mark Rothko
Artist Mark Rothko 1903–1970
Medium Oil paint, acrylic paint, glue tempera and pigment on canvas
Dimensions Support: 2667 × 3812 mm
Collection Tate
Acquisition Presented by the artist through the American Federation of Arts 1968
Reference T01031
- Summary
- Display caption
- Technique and condition
- Catalogue entry
Black on Maroon is a large unframed oil painting on a horizontally orientated rectangular canvas. The base colour of the painting is a deep maroon. As is suggested by the work’s title, this is overlaid with a large black rectangle, which in turn encloses two slimmer, vertical maroon rectangles, suggesting a window-like structure. The black paint forms a solid block of colour but the edges are feathered, blurring into the areas of maroon. Different pigments have been used within the maroon, blending the colour from a deep wine to a muted mauve with accents of red. This changing tone gives a sense of depth in an otherwise abstract composition.
Black on Maroon was painted by the abstract expressionist artist Mark Rothko. He is best known, alongside fellow Americans Barnett Newman and Robert Motherwell, as a pioneer of colour field painting. The movement was characterised by simplified compositions of unbroken colour, which produced a flat picture plane. Black on Maroon was painted on a single sheet of tightly stretched cotton duck canvas. The canvas was primed with a base coat of maroon paint made from powder pigments mixed into rabbit skin glue. The glue within the paint shrank as it dried, giving the painting’s surface its matt finish. Onto the base Rothko added a second coat that he subsequently scraped away to leave a thin coating of colour. The black paint was then added in fast, broken brushstrokes, using a large commercial decorator’s brush. With broad sweeping gestures Rothko spread the paint onto the canvas surface, muddying the edges between the blocks of colour, creating a sense of movement and depth. Accents of red acrylic paint were dabbed onto the lower left corner. With time these have become more apparent as the pigments within the maroon portion of the canvas have faded at different rates.
In early 1958 Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the exclusive Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York, designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Rothko was interested in the possibility of having a lasting setting for his paintings to be seen as a group. He wanted to create an encompassing environment of the sort he had encountered when visiting Michelangelo’s vestibule in the Laurentian Library in Florence in 1950 and again in 1959:
I was much influenced subconsciously by Michelangelo’s walls in the staircase room of the Medicean 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 against the wall.
(Quoted in Breslin 2012, p.400.)
Rothko started work on the Seagram commission in a large new studio, which allowed him to simulate the restaurant’s private dining room. Between 1958 and 1959 Rothko created three series of paintings, but was unsatisfied with the first and sold these paintings as individual panels. In the second and third series Rothko experimented with varying permutations of the floating window frame and moved towards a more sombre colour palette, to counter the perception that his work was decorative. Black on Maroon belongs to the second series. By the time Rothko had completed these works he had developed doubts about the appropriateness of the restaurant setting, which led to his withdrawal from the commission. However, this group of works is still referred to as the ‘Seagram Murals’.
The works were shown at Rothko’s 1961 retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and in 1965 Norman Reid, then Director of Tate, approached Rothko about extending his representation in the gallery’s collection. Rothko suggested a group of paintings from the ‘Seagram Murals’, to be displayed in a dedicated room. Black on Maroon was the first painting to be donated in 1968, although it was known as Sketch for ‘Mural No. 6’ or Two Openings in Black Over Wine. The following year Reid provided Rothko with a small cardboard maquette of the designated gallery space to finalise his selection and propose a hang. (This maquette is now in Tate’s Archive, TGA 872, and is reproduced in Borchardt-Hume 2008, pp.143–5.) Rothko then donated eight further paintings and the title of Black on Maroon was brought in line with the rest of the group (Tate T01163 – T01170 ), four of which are also titled Black on Maroon and four Red on Maroon (Tate T01163 – T01170 ). The ‘Seagram Murals’ have since been displayed almost continuously at Tate, albeit in different arrangements, in what is commonly termed the ‘Rothko Room’ (for installation views see Borchardt-Hume 2008, pp.98, 142).
Further reading
Simon Wilson, Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion, London 1991.
Achim Borchardt-Hume (ed.), Rothko: The Late Series, exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London 2008, reproduced pp.114–15.
James Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography, Chicago 2012.
Phoebe Roberts
May 2016
Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
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Display caption
This is one of a series of large paintings Rothko made for a fashionable New York restaurant. By layering the paint, he created subtle relationships between the muted colours. They are much darker in mood than his previous works. He was influenced by the atmosphere of a library designed by the Italian artist Michelangelo (1475–1564). Rothko recalled the feeling of being ‘trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up’. A restaurant, he decided, was the wrong setting for these paintings. Instead, he presented the series to Tate gallery.
Gallery label, June 2020
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Technique and condition
Black on Maroon is painted on a single sheet of US cotton duck stretched tightly over a strainer. Constant tension over the large surface is maintained by a simple but effective internally sprung system of cross bars bowed and jammed between the outer bars. The only fixing that prevents the bars from springing out of position is a single screw driven through the sides of the outer frame.
The canvas was prepared for painting with a base coat of maroon paint made from powder pigments stirred into rabbit skin glue. Mark Rothko then enriched the colour with a coat of maroon oil paint applied with a brush and scraped away to leave a thin skin of colour. The surface dried to a soft sheen. Further depth of maroon was painted to the far left and far right in a subtly-different pigment mixture.
Using a large decorator’s brush, Rothko applied the black paint vigorously in broken strokes followed by broad sweeping gestures, scuffing the paint, spreading it and feathering the edges. Any splashes that fell across the red ground were left. This glue based paint, initially fat and bulky, shrank on drying to from a brittle, mainly matt, layer.
Accents of thick red acrylic paint were stippled on to the lower left corner to catch the light. These are now more apparent as the various red pigments used throughout the painting, have faded differentially, the greatest change being in the inorganic powder red in the base coat. Fading, which is inevitable, has been slow due to the low light levels preferred by the artist. In the forty years since the mural was painted, this unstoppable process has transformed maroon paint from a rich wine shade to a subtle violet, veiled appearance. Patches of intense red indicate where the most stable red pigments were used, principally to the far left and right and in a soft maroon haze at the top right.
The painting is not varnished. Despite the colour change, the painting is in good condition. A few finger prints and scratches from intimate contact in the past have caused permanent alterations to the paint surface. Surface dirt was removed in 2000.
Mary Bustin
July 2000
Editor’s Picks: Art
Highlights below. For the full collection click here.
Art
#acrylic painting #Calida Rawles #painting #water
November 3, 2023
Grace Ebert
“With Wings of Infinity” (2023), acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London, shared with permission
Tufts of a pink skirt, a soaked evening gown clinging to a knee, and a few fingers and toes gently breach the water’s surface in Calida Rawles’ A Certain Oblivion. On view this month at Lehmann Maupin, the new body of work is transcendent and monumental, with canvases scaling nine feet of rippling blues and blacks. The paintings return to the artist’s interest in water memory theory and the idea that the life-giving liquid preserves moments of time.
In A Certain Oblivion, Rawles renders two of her daughters who gracefully float together and apart, their heads just above the surface. Placing the next generation in such vulnerable, precarious positions alludes to the resilience and determination needed to rise above “the riptides of contemporary American life,” a statement says. Despite facing the threat of being consumed by the current, the figures remain calm and graceful, carrying on and resting at the surface.
While exploring similar themes to earlier series, A Certain Oblivion is darker. Palettes of navy, gray, and black obscure the figures, who are already distorted by the undulating nature of water. These deep, saturated tones reflect the current political and cultural moment that seems to consistently plunge the world into darkness and despair. For Rawles, though, the paintings are hopeful. She explains:
There is always darkness before the light. I thought of that often when making the work and hope this may inspire others during these very trying times. Much of the work in this show is dark, for sure, but I do have a few pieces that are in the light. A cool blue water. I thought of those pieces as my day and the dark ones as part of my night waters. Our light cycle was definitely on the top of my mind when thinking of this show. I want to believe this is a moment in a larger path.
There’s an uncertainty and illegibility that the artist gravitates toward as she reminds us that predicting outcomes isn’t always possible. She even likens the process of painting in acrylics to that of floating, two physical acts that both require a release of control. “All of the dark colors look alike when they are wet,” she says. “You have to trust yourself and (your) ability. The experience was really fun, to put it simply. I was excited to wait for the outcome when it dried.”
A Certain Oblivion is on view from November 9 to December 16 in New York.
“Untethered, Twice Bold” (2023), acrylic on canvas, 84 x 72 inches
“Beyond the Certain Oblivion” (2023), acrylic on canvas, 108 x 84 x 3 inches
“Above Yesterday, Beyond Tomorrow” (2023), acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 3 inches
Calida Rawles in her studio (2023). Photo by Marten Elder
#acrylic painting #Calida Rawles #painting #water
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