According to organizers, the Paris Fondation Louis Vuitton is showing the largest Mark Rothko show in the world with 115 works. The exhibits include items on loan that are rarely borrowed. It begins with the only self-portrait by the American painter (1903-1970) from 1936, which comes from the collection of Christopher Rothko. The artist’s son is co-curator of the exhibition, which runs until April 2nd.
The show spans the painter’s early work, which is little known, through to his abstract paintings that made him world famous. It illustrates his artistic development towards abstraction. The painter, who was called Marcus Rotkovitch until around 1940 – he was born in Dvinsk, Latvia, which was then part of Russia – painted figuratively at the beginning of his career.
Platforms and stairwells of Manhattan subway stations as well as passengers – Rothko predominantly used motifs from everyday life, which he highly stylized. From 1940 onwards he turned away from human depictions because, as he said, they seemed inadequate and even mutilating. Mythological subjects followed, which Rothko gradually broke down into color fields and light.
The loans include numerous XXL formats made of monochrome color areas in brown, orange and blue that combine with each other. These include three of the four paintings from the Phillips Collection in Washington as well as the nine works from the Seagram Murals series, which can otherwise be seen in a dedicated room at Tate Modern. The Rothko Room is one of the most famous exhibition rooms in the Museum of Contemporary Art in London.
Rothko has become internationally known for his almost hypnotic color field paintings. His son Christopher gave a reason in Paris: His father wanted an exchange between the painting and the viewer – an emotional exchange that went beyond language. (dpa)