DeLillo and Baudrillard On Rothko

Rothko

Rothko

Baudrillard:

"Rothko says that his pictures have two characteristics: either they dilate and then open up in all directions, or they contract and then close up precipitately on all sides. Between these two poles lies everything he has to say.

Rothko's change, his passage almost without transition, to an immediate, definitive form. It is there all at once, perfectly mastered, end of story. And it is light-years away from what he was doing up to that point.

This is something entirely different from an evolution - even a creative evolution. It is an almost genetic impulse by which he separates himself miraculously from the artist he still was, with his place in the history of art, to be nothing but the sovereign medium of an extremely simple form, which no longer has anything to do with expressionism or abstraction." (Cool Memories IV 84-85)

The emergent form stuns you with its simplicity. And perhaps the most surprising thing is that, during our earthly existence, in which our brains are bound with bands of steel - the tightly-fitting dream of our own personality - we did not by chance give that little shake which would have freed the imprisoned thought and procured for it the ultimate understanding.(Nabokov)

"Does not everyone have within them this potential mutation, this potential development? This absolute singularity which asks only to be effortlessly produced" (CM IV 85) - an transpired form that has sloughed off our individual yoke?

Didi Fancher: I think you want this Rothko. Pricey. But yes. You totally need to have it.

Eric: Why?

Didi: It will remind you that you're alive. You have  something in you that's receptive to the mysteries.

Eric: The mysteries?

Didi: Don't you see yourself in every picture you love? You feel a radiance wash through you. It's something you can't analyze or speak about clearly. ... But it makes you feel alive in the world. It tells you you're here. And yes, you have a range of being that's deeper and sweeter than you knew.(C 30)
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If you look awhile at a Rothko and then look at a white wall, you will see a negative after-image. An inversion of color, so I have left white beside these images so you can do it.  Then when you see a real one, try it.

Other Rothko blog of mine

The Rothko Chapel That Eric Packer Wants to Buy

  

The Rothko Chapel was the last and one of the most important endeavors that Dominique and John de Menil, its founders, worked on together. This modern work of religious art commissioned for Houston is comparable in importance to the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence by Henri Matisse or le Corbusier's Chapel in Ronchamp, France.

Eric Packer wants the entire chapel and Didi Fancher tells him he cannot have it.

The Chapel is the culmination of six years of Rothko’s life and represents his gradually growing concern for the transcendent. For some, to witness these paintings is to submit one’s self to a spiritual experience, which, through its transcendence of subject matter, approximates that of consciousness itself. It forces one to approach the limits of experience and awakens one to the awareness of one’s own existence. For others, the Chapel houses 14 large paintings whose dark, nearly impenetrable surfaces represent hermeticism and contemplation. http://tinyurl.com/6jy4es2


Marc Schuster in his book DON DeLILLO, JEAN BAUDRILLARD AND THE CONSUMER CONUNDRUM
discusses this kind of excessive consumption as signs that indicate the power and wealth of an individual. The de Menils' established a foundation to enable others to view and experience these paintings within a spiritual setting. Eric Packer wants the entire chapel for himself only. The crassness of this is what irritates Didi Fancher.


Philadelphia.  The New Barnes Collection Opens.  The controversial and infamous Barnes Foundation enters its next incarnation in life in center city Philadelphia.  If you don’t know what the Barnes Foundation is, it’s an extraordinary world renowned art collection put together by the now deceased Albert Barnes.  Up until now, due to strict provision in his will, visitors had to travel to Barnes’ former home outside of the city in order to see the collection, but a series of highly controversial court decisions changed all that, and the collection has been moved to a brand new museum in center city Philadelphia, that was designed to precisely replicating his home.  It’s a fascinating story and a world-class collection of great paintings, sculpture and other works of art.  The new facility officially opens on Saturday, so you can be among the first to check it out.


This is a tragedy of corruption and greed by the City of Philadelphia. To see the Barnes Collection in its beautiful home in Merion Pennsylvania where Albert Barnes lived with his collection, is to see it as it was meant to be seen. This is the kind of thing Eric Packer wanted to do to the Rothko Chapel collection.