“ROTH-taK-tOe”

It was Fall of 2021 amidst an ongoing resurgence of COVID-19. We were on one of our many trips to DC from Baltimore and wanted to hit the East Wing of the National Gallery. Hoping to avoid crowds, we masked-up and went just after the opening (highly recommended). The place was nearly empty, aside from the odd patron and a few scattered guards (this sounds like the set-up to a great art heist – if only!). After meandering the various spaces and seeing a dizzying variety of art, we climbed a staircase and happened into the Rothko Gallery. It’s a room filled with about ten of his famous window/door color field paintings. You are surrounded with these enchanted portals that seem to levitate, each beckoning in a slightly different voice or register. Like the same singer interpreting different songs (Sinatra doing “Summertime” and “Summer Wind”) or else different singers putting their own spin on the same tune (Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday doing takes on “Summertime”). Which door do you choose?? Choices are hard…

[Aside: I had an idea once based on the TV game show ” Let’s Make A Deal” starring Monty Hall (he’s both dead AND Canadian! See below). I imagined a contestant choosing curtain #3 and one of the lovely and talented gals unveils a donkey tethered to a rope, blinking dumbly, oblivious to all the hubbub. But oddly, the statuesque assistant has donned a long white rubber glove which extends to her elbow, at which point Monty challenges the guest saying, “Now, Rick, I will give you another choice. You can have what’s behind curtain #1….. OR…. you can have what’s in the envelope that’s been inserted into the donkey’s rectum, which will be retrieved by Anna upon your request.” Now that’s television! And choices are hard…]

[Second Aside: I once interviewed a neuroradiology fellowship candidate who came down to Chicago from Canada. In these interviews, I generally eschewed the standard fare questions about the candidate’s research or idiotic pabulum like “what’s your biggest flaw?”. I liked to get them talking about things they enjoy; to try to connect with them on a more personal level; to see if they were somebody I wouldn’t mind sitting beside and working closely with. And sometimes, okay often, I’d indulge my own impulse to lighten the mood. On this occasion, having learned of his Northern roots, I proffered a game of “DEAD or CANADIAN?” but, to my surprise, he hadn’t heard of it. So with a few mouse clicks, he and I were immersed in an epic variation in which we combined our knowledge bases — his of Canada and mine of pop culture arcana (yes, sadly, Ernest Borgnine is dead). We fucking killed! But as I look back on it, I think he chose to finish his training in Canada. Well, I had fun anyway. And choices are hard…]

…but choices have to be made. Pick a portal any portal! And take “a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination” (Rod Serling). But I wasn’t always a Rothko fan. My first reaction, like for many, was in the vein of “anyone could do that!” or “what’s he even saying?” (my most basic notion of modern art might distill to a perpetual one-upmanship: “Oh, yeah. Well, what about THIS?!”). At first glance, they seem inert swatches of color, as one makes when selecting a wall paint. But upon longer (and by his recommendation closer — 18 inches is what I recall from an internet tutorial) inspection, they pulse with a strange and magical energy. Time is a key variable. You have to remain in their presence before you feel anything. And to learn more about the artist is also to become intimate with his philosophy. Add it to the sauce, if you like (he famously backed out of a major commission when he saw the intended placement for his works in the Four Seasons Restaurant, on the ground floor of the Seagram Building in NYC, in part due to his distaste for greed and capitalist wealth). But the tragic arc of his life — he died of suicide in 1970 at age 66 — no doubt embeds a certain melancholy into his works, although it is not essential to the experience. And in this way I consider myself a BOTH-ist. That is that any artwork can stand alone from the artist and their politics/personal foibles but also can, and perhaps should, be viewed in the context of its era and the creator, warts and all. But whatever the case, to be all alone with these works for a stretch of time was both thrilling and a bit chilling (I am happy to report that my first thought was not the combined auction value, which I’m guessing might fetch half a billion). There is a presence, maybe of the artist or my own ghosts, that attends these paintings if you are patient enough (crowds don’t help!). I wasn’t always. But I also love that over time, our tastes and attitudes evolve. That art, like life, is not static.