| Description |
359 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm |
| Contents |
Machine derived contents note: Sponsor's Statement -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- List of Illustrations -- Plates--The Rothko Chapel Paintings -- Part I. The Origins of the Chapel Installation -- 1. The Commission -- 2. The Architectural Program -- 3. The Pictorial Program -- Plates--Related Works by Mark Rothko -- Part II. The Structure of the Chapel Installation -- 4. General Conditions of the Installation -- The Paintings and Their Setting -- The Perspectival System -- Light and the Chromatic Organization of the Installation -- The Pictorial/Architectural Dynamic -- 5. The Elements of the Installation -- The Polar Units of the Main Axis: Entrance-Wall Panel and Apse Triptych -- The Polar Units of the Cross-Axis: Black-Figure Triptychs -- The Polar Units of the Diagonal Axes: Angle-Wall Panels -- 6. The Organization of the Installation -- Composition and Configuration -- Pictorial System and Wall System -- Principles of Spatial Distribution -- 7. The Inner Structure of the Installation -- Part III. The Meaning of the Chapel Installation -- Notes -- Appendix -- Photographic Credits |
| Summary |
The paintings executed in 1964-1967 by American artist Mark Rothko for the Rothko Chapel in Houston represent the fulfillment of the artist's lifelong ambition and a breakthrough in twentieth-century art. Unlike previous sets of paintings commissioned for the Seagram Building and Harvard University, the Chapel commission allowed Rothko to determine the architectural setting and lighting in which the paintings would appear. This proved to be the catalyst for a new mode of pictorial dynamics based on a kind of interaction of paintings, architecture, and light previously unknown. No painting in the set could be understood in isolation from the rest or apart from its place in the architectural setting. The Rothko Chapel Paintings explores this interdependence of paintings and place. As viewers move about the Chapel's octagonal enclosure, over whose walls the fourteen panels are continuously distributed, they discover systems of pictorial interactions which become the terms or characters of a cosmological drama in which the viewer is a necessary participant. In the act of vision, the embodied viewer is prompted not merely to witness but also to reenact that questioning of human destiny which has preoccupied the Western spiritual tradition |
| Notes |
"The Menil Collection." |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 345-356) |
| Subject |
Rothko, Mark, 1903-1970 -- Criticism and interpretation.
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Rothko Chapel (Houston, Tex.)
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Art, Modern -- 20th century.
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Painting, American -- 20th century.
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Paintitng, American -- 20th century
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| SUBJECT |
Houston (Tex.) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79049234 -- Buildings, structures, etc.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99004820
|
| Author |
Menil Collection (Houston, Tex.)
|
| LC no. |
96048538 |
| ISBN |
0939594366 (cloth) |
|
0939594374 (paper) |
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