Red

"There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend... 
One day the black will swallow the red"
                                                                              Mark Rothko, "Red"

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Here is my beginning disclaimer...
I have never fully appreciated nor understood abstract painting.

Last evening we attended the production of "Red",  a ninety minute, without  intermission, two actor play about the artist Mark Rothko.  I knew the name, was somewhat familiar with his work, but wasn't "tuned in".

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Set in Rothko's studio in New York City, 1958-1959,  we watch a reclusive, abusive, and narcissistic Rothko mentor, challenge and at times terrorize his young assistant, while creating a series of commissioned murals to be hung at the newly designed The Four Seasons restaurant.

As Ken, a young artist, enters the studio for the first time applying for an assistant's position,  Rothko announces in a tirade "I am not your teacher, your mentor, your Rabbi, your father, your friend....
I am your employer".  Yet by the end of this emotionally layered play you come to the understand the artist took on so many of these roles, as he developed, molded, bullied  and pushed his assistant to see beyond the obvious and find his own place in the art world.  And as so often happens in the classroom the teacher often is taught by the student.

I was moved by this play without seeing one finished canvas.
I walked out of the theater maybe not with a better understanding, but most definitely a new appreciation for the artists who gave us these pieces labeled abstract expressionism.

Rothko believed art should be about emotionally layering and allowing oneself to be stripped naked by the energy and emotion of the work, facing what we as human beings so often find hard to meet, the reality of past and present.  Color and texture were insignificant elements.  I believe it is as much about the artist as the art.  Rothko said, a landscape stays a landscape.  No matter how or where you look at it, a landscape doesn't change, the abstract breathes, moves and changes.  He saw his pieces as a community that communicated, moved and cared for each other.

My favorite artists will remain the Impressionists.  Like the books I enjoy, when I study a painting I want a story, an adventure.   I want to travel to places and times I will never go.  I want to see good lines and technique.  I want to view something amazing and beautiful.  I want to be educated.  I want to say I stood in front of a Degas, a Matisse, a Renoir and say it was more beautiful than I could have imagined.  I don't want to face the glare of reality at every turn, but desire escape.  I want to be healed, and leave the experience feeling well.

While I may continue to browse the Abstract Expressionism exhibits with a question mark floating over my head, I will certainly slow down, stop and appreciate the artist's being, emotion and energy stirred and mixed with pigment and applied to the canvas.

The black did finally swallow the red.
 On February 25, 1970,  Mark Rothko committed suicide.