ROTHKO AND ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

The overall goal of this dissertation is to identify and examine the neglected aspects of the literature on Mark Rothko's 1958-1959 project to make murals for the Four Seasons restaurant (see Figs. 1-12) in the then-newly opened Seagram Building in Manhattan. These include Rothko's attempts to merge the mediums of painting and architecture in order to create an antagonistic environment in the restaurant; how his visits to Italy before and during the project reinforced this goal; how a good deal of the figurative paintings from Rothko's earliest career anticipated his blend of aggression and architecturally-related themes; the connection between Rothko and Mies van der Rohe, the architect of the building, in regard to the theme of transcendence; and how his experiments with architectural subjects and motifs aligned Rothko with some of the most influential vanguard artists in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Discussions of these topics will suggest that his career-long references to architecture functioned, for him, as something intended to produce discomfort in the viewer. I will show that his acceptance of a lucrative commission to make paintings for a lavish restaurant that might seem at first to suggest pandering to an élite audience had the paradoxical effect of condemning that audience. I intend also to demonstrate that Rothko understood that the project was not merely about making paintings. Instead, for him, it dealt more with the challenge of uniting architecture and painting.