I'm in a large gallery space. The lights are dimmed. On the walls are large canvases exuding waves of colour as if they had their own internal light source. Many have benches in front of them, inviting contemplation. This is how Mark Rothko wanted his work to be seen. The Fondation Louis Vuitton and Rothko’s son Christopher have brought together one of the most comprehensive retrospectives of the inventor of slow painting and master of abstraction. If you’re looking for the profound, start here.
Rothko was born Marcus Rotkovitch in what is now Latvia in 1903. His Jewish family emigrated to Portland when he was 10, escaping the violent pogroms in Russia. He excelled in school, studied at Yale and settled in New York City. Here he became an artist. The Louis Vuitton show brings together his early figurative works from the 1930s. Moody smaller paintings of melancholic New York subways and urban crowds, alongside a rare self-portrait of the artist in glasses. Rothko himself was always frustrated by his “mutilation” of figures and moved towards the surreal and mythology during the war.
