Editing Mark Rothko (section)

==Late period==
The discovery of his definitive form came at a period of great distress to the artist, as his mother Kate had died in October 1948. As the "multiforms" developed into what was to become his signature style, by early 1949 Rothko exhibited these new works at the [[Betty Parsons]] Gallery. For critic [[Harold Rosenberg]], the paintings were nothing short of a revelation. After painting his first "multiform", Rothko had secluded himself in his home in [[East Hampton (town), New York|East Hampton]] on Long Island. He invited only a select few, including Rosenberg, to view the new paintings.

Rothko happened upon the use of symmetrical rectangular blocks of two to three opposing or contrasting, yet complementary, colors, in which, for example, "the rectangles sometimes seem barely to coalesce out of the ground, concentrations of its substance. The green bar in ''Magenta, Black, Green on Orange'', on the other hand, appears to vibrate against the orange around it, creating an optical flicker."<ref>{{Cite web |year=2004 |title=The Collection &#124; Mark Rothko. No. 3/No. 13. 1949 |url=http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79687 |access-date=July 13, 2011 |publisher=MoMA}}</ref>

For the next seven years, Rothko painted in oil only for large canvases with vertical formats. Very large-scale designs were used in order to overwhelm the viewer, or, in Rothko's words, to make the viewer feel "enveloped within" the painting. For some critics, the large size was an attempt to make up for a lack of substance. In retaliation, Rothko stated:

{{blockquote|I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however ... is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command!<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Chave |first1=Anna |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LID__q0w1ksC&q=%2522I+realize+that+historically+the+function+of+painting+large+pictures+is+painting+something+very+grandiose+and+pompous.+The+reason+I+pa |title=Mark Rothko: Subjects in Abstraction |last2=Rothko |first2=Mark |date=1989-01-01 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-04961-9 |language=en}}</ref>}} Rothko even went so far as to recommend that viewers position themselves as little as eighteen inches away from the canvas<ref>{{Cite book |last=Weiss |first=Jeffrey |url=https://archive.org/details/markrothko00weis |title=Mark Rothko |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-300-08193-0 |page=[https://archive.org/details/markrothko00weis/page/262 262] |url-access=registration}}</ref> so that they might experience a sense of intimacy, as well as awe, a transcendence of the individual, and a sense of the unknown.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}} As Rothko achieved success, he became increasingly protective of his works, turning down several potentially important sales and exhibition opportunities:

{{blockquote|A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world. How often it must be permanently impaired by the eyes of the vulgar and the cruelty of the impotent who would extend the affliction universally!<ref>Barbara Hess, ''Abstract Expressionism'' (New York: Taschen, 2005), p. 42.</ref>}}

To some critics and viewers, Rothko's aims exceeded his methods.<ref>[[Robert Hughes (critic)|Robert Hughes]] in ''[[American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America]]'' (New York: Knopf, 1997) writes admiringly of Rothko's emotional range, "from foreboding and sadness to an exquisite and joyful luminosity", but takes issue with the artist's religious aspirations: "Rothko's work could not, in the end, support the weight of meaning he wanted it to have" (pp. 490–491). Others, like [[Dore Ashton]], would profoundly disagree.</ref> Many of the [[abstract expressionist]]s discussed their art as aiming toward a spiritual experience, or at least an experience that exceeded the boundaries of the purely aesthetic. In later years, Rothko emphasized more emphatically the spiritual aspect of his artwork, a sentiment that would culminate in the construction of the [[Rothko Chapel]].<ref>For Hughes, the chapel in Texas offers the final proof that the artist has overreached himself: "the eye ... seeks its nuances. But the expected epiphany does not come" (p. 491).</ref>

Many of his early signature paintings are composed of bright, vibrant colors, particularly reds and yellows, expressing energy and ecstasy. By the mid-1950s, however, Rothko began to employ dark blues and greens, which many critics suggested was representative of growing darkness within Rothko's personal life.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Mark Rothko : Into The Darkness {{!}} Blog {{!}} Rippingham Art |url=https://theartonlinegallery.com/art-appreciation/mark-rothko-into-the-darkness-2/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190722144656/https://theartonlinegallery.com/art-appreciation/mark-rothko-into-the-darkness-2/ |url-status=usurped |archive-date=July 22, 2019 |access-date=June 6, 2019 |language=en-US}}</ref>

===Technique===
With an absence of figurative representation, what drama there is to be found in a late Rothko is in the contrast of colors, radiating against one another. His paintings can then be likened to a sort of fugue-like arrangement, with each variation counterpoised against one another, yet all existing within one architectonic structure.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

To achieve this effect, Rothko applied a thin layer of a binder mixed with pigment directly onto uncoated and untreated canvas and  painted significantly thinned oils directly onto this layer, creating a dense mixture of overlapping colors and shapes. One of his objectives was to make the various layers of the painting dry quickly, without mixing of colors, so that he could soon create new layers on top of the earlier ones. His brushstrokes were fast and light, a method he would continue to use until his death.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=316–42}} His increasing adeptness at this method is apparent in the paintings completed for the chapel.

Rothko used several original techniques that he tried to keep secret even from his assistants. [[Electron microscopy]] and [[ultraviolet]] analysis conducted by the MOLAB showed that he employed natural substances such as egg and glue, as well as artificial materials including [[acrylic resin]]s, [[phenol formaldehyde]], modified [[alkyd]], and others.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Qiu |first=Jane |author-link=Jane Qiu |date=November 27, 2008 |title=Rothko's methods revealed |journal=Nature |volume=456 |issue=7221 |page=447 |bibcode=2008Natur.456..447Q |doi=10.1038/456447a |doi-access=free}}</ref>

In 1968 Rothko, in declining health, began painting most of his large works in acrylic paint instead of oils.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2017 |first=Karen |last=Kedmey |title=Mark Rothko |url=https://www.moma.org/artists/5047 |access-date=June 4, 2023 |website=The Museum of Modern Art}}</ref>

===European travels and increasing fame===
Rothko and his wife visited Europe for five months in early 1950.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=283}} The last time he had been in Europe was during his childhood in Latvia, at that time part of Russia. Yet he did not return to his homeland, preferring to visit the important painting collections in the major museums of England, France, and Italy. The [[fresco]]es of [[Fra Angelico]] in the monastery of [[San Marco, Florence]], most impressed him. Fra Angelico's spirituality and concentration on light appealed to Rothko's sensibilities, as did the economic adversities the artist faced, which Rothko saw as similar to his own.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=285}}

Rothko had one-man shows at the [[Betty Parsons]] Gallery in 1950 and 1951 and at other galleries across the world, including in Japan, São Paulo, and Amsterdam. The 1952 "Fifteen Americans" show curated by [[Dorothy Canning Miller]] at the Museum of Modern Art formally heralded the abstract artists and included works by [[Jackson Pollock]] and [[William Baziotes]].{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=299}}{{sfn|Ashton|1983|p=130}} It also created a dispute between Rothko and Barnett Newman, after Newman accused Rothko of having attempted to exclude him from the show. Growing success as a group was leading to infighting and claims of supremacy and leadership.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=345}} When ''[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]'' magazine named a Rothko painting in 1955 as a good investment,<ref>Anna Chave, Mark Rothko, ''Mark Rothko: Subjects in Abstraction,'' p. 17</ref> Newman and Clyfford Still branded him a sell-out with bourgeois aspirations. Still wrote to Rothko to ask that the paintings he had given him over the years be returned. Rothko was deeply depressed by his former friends' jealousy.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

During the 1950 Europe trip, Rothko's wife, Mell, became pregnant. On December 30, when they were back in New York, she gave birth to a daughter, Kathy Lynn, called "Kate" in honor of Rothko's mother, Kate Goldin.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=286}}

===Reactions to his own success===
Shortly thereafter, due to the ''Fortune'' magazine plug and further purchases by clients, Rothko's financial situation began to improve. In addition to sales of paintings, he also had money from his teaching position at [[Brooklyn College]]. In 1954, he exhibited in a solo show at the [[Art Institute of Chicago]], where he met art dealer [[Sidney Janis]], who represented Pollock and [[Franz Kline]]. Their relationship proved mutually beneficial.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=297–42}}

Despite his fame, Rothko felt a growing personal seclusion and a sense of being misunderstood as an artist. He feared that people purchased his paintings simply out of fashion and that collectors, critics, and audiences were not grasping his work's true purpose. He wanted his paintings to move beyond abstraction, as well as beyond classical art. For Rothko, the paintings were objects that possessed their own form and potential and must be encountered as such. Sensing the futility of words in describing this decidedly nonverbal aspect of his work, Rothko abandoned all attempts at responding to those who inquired after its meaning and purpose, saying finally that silence is "so accurate": <blockquote>My paintings' surfaces are expansive and push outward in all directions, or their surfaces contract and rush inward in all directions. Between these two poles, you can find everything I want to say.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}</blockquote>

Rothko began to insist that he was not an [[abstractionist]] and that such a description was as inaccurate as labeling him a great colorist. His interest was:

{{blockquote|only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point.<ref>Baal-Teshuva, p. 50.</ref>}}

For Rothko, color was "merely an instrument",<ref>Baal-Teshuva, p. 57.</ref> and the signature paintings were just a simpler, purer form of expressing the same basic human emotions as his surrealistic mythological paintings. Rothko's comment on viewers breaking down in tears before his paintings may have convinced the [[Dominique de Menil|de Menils]] to construct the Rothko Chapel. As he grew older, hingeing around the late 1950s, the spiritual expression he meant to portray on canvas grew increasingly dark, and his bright reds, yellows, and oranges were subtly transformed into dark blues, greens, grays, and blacks.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=333–42}}

Rothko's friend, the art critic [[Dore Ashton]], points to the artist's acquaintance with poet Stanley Kunitz as a significant bond in this period ("conversations between painter and poet fed into Rothko's enterprise"). Kunitz saw Rothko as "a primitive, a shaman who finds the magic formula and leads people to it". Great poetry and painting, Kunitz believed, both had "roots in magic, incantation, and spell-casting" and were, at their core, ethical and spiritual. Kunitz instinctively understood the purpose of Rothko's quest.{{sfn|Ashton|1983|p=150–151}}

In November 1958, Rothko gave an address to the [[Pratt Institute]]. In a tenor unusual for him, he discussed art as a trade and offered the <blockquote>recipe of a work of art—its ingredients—how to make it—the formula

# There must be a clear preoccupation with death—intimations of mortality ... Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death.
# Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationship with things that exist.
# Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire.
# Irony, This is a modern ingredient—the self-effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else.
# Wit and play ... for the human element.
# The ephemeral and chance ... for the human element.
# Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.

I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of these elements.<ref>Achim Borchardt-Hume (ed.). ''Rothko'' (London: Tate Gallery, 2008), p. 91</ref></blockquote>

===Seagram Murals–Four Seasons restaurant commission===
{{main|Seagram murals}}
{{anchor|Seagram}}In 1958, Rothko was awarded the first of two major mural commissions, which proved both rewarding and frustrating.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=371–383,404–409}} The beverage company [[Seagram|Joseph Seagram and Sons]] had recently completed the new [[Seagram Building]] skyscraper on [[Park Avenue]], designed by architects [[Ludwig Mies van der Rohe|Mies van der Rohe]] and [[Philip Johnson]]. Rothko agreed to provide paintings for the building's new luxury restaurant, [[The Four Seasons Restaurant|the Four Seasons]]. This was, as art historian [[Simon Schama]] put it, "bring[ing] his monumental dramas right into the belly of the beast".<ref>Schama, p. 398.</ref>

For Rothko, this [[Seagram murals]] commission presented a new challenge, since it was the first time he was required not only to design a coordinated series of paintings but to produce an artwork space concept for a large, specific interior. Over the following three months, Rothko completed forty paintings, comprising three full series in dark red and brown. He altered his horizontal format to vertical, to complement the restaurant's vertical features: columns, walls, doors, and windows.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

The following June, Rothko and his family again traveled to Europe. While on the [[SS Independence|SS ''Independence'']] he disclosed to journalist John Fischer, who was publisher of ''[[Harper's Magazine]]'', that his true intention for the Seagram murals was to paint "something that will ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room". He hoped, he told Fischer, that his painting would make the restaurant's patrons "feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall".{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=376}}

{{stack|
[[File:Biblioteca medicea laurenziana, vestibolo e scala di michelangelo, 07.jpg|thumb|Vestibule of the Laurentian Library.]]
[[File:Villa dei Misteri (Pompei) WLM 025.JPG|thumb|Frescoes in the Villa of the Mysteries.]]
}}
While in Europe, the Rothkos traveled to Rome, Florence, Venice, and Pompeii. In Florence, he visited [[Michelangelo]]'s [[Laurentian Library]], to see first-hand the library's vestibule, from which he drew further inspiration for the murals.{{sfn|Ashton|1983|p=147}} He remarked that "the room had exactly the feeling that I wanted ... it gives the visitor the feeling of being caught in a room with the doors and windows walled-in shut." He was further influenced by the somber colors of the murals in the Pompeiian [[Villa of the Mysteries]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Jonathan Jones |date=December 6, 2002 |title=Feeding fury |work=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/dec/07/artsfeatures}}</ref> Following the trip to Italy, the Rothkos voyaged to Paris, Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam, before going to London, where Rothko spent time in the British Museum studying the Turner watercolors. They then traveled to Somerset and stayed with the artist [[William Scott (artist)|William Scott]], who was just starting a large mural project, and they discussed the respective issues of public and private sponsorship.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Malvern |first=Jack |date=October 26, 2013 |title=Letter Unravels Mystery of Tate's Rothko Murals |work=The Times of London}}</ref> After the visit the Rothkos continued to St. Ives in the West of England and met up with Patrick Heron and other Cornish painters before returning to London and then the United States.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

Back in New York, Rothko and his wife Mell visited the nearly completed Four Seasons restaurant. Upset with the restaurant's dining atmosphere, which he considered pretentious and inappropriate for the display of his works, Rothko refused to continue the project and returned his cash advance to the Seagram and Sons Company. Seagram had intended to honor Rothko's emergence to prominence through his selection, and his breach of contract and public expression of outrage was unexpected.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

Rothko kept the commissioned paintings in storage until 1968. Given that Rothko had known in advance about the luxury decor of the restaurant, and the social class of its future patrons, the motives for his abrupt repudiation remain mysterious, although he did write to his friend William Scott in England, "Since we had discussed our respective murals I thought you might be interested to know that mine are still with me. When I returned, I looked again at my paintings and then visited the premises for which they were destined, it seemed clear to me at once that the two were not for each other."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Whitfield |first=Sarah |title=William Scott Catalogue Raisonné |publisher=Thames & Hudson |year=2013 |isbn=978-0500970416 |location=London |pages=Vol 2 p.15}}</ref> A temperamental personality, Rothko never fully explained his conflicted emotions over the incident.<ref>Schama, pp. 428–434.</ref> One reading is offered by his biographer, James E.B. Breslin: the Seagram project could be seen as an acting-out of a familiar, in this case self-created "drama of trust and betrayal, of advancing into the world, then withdrawing, angrily, from it ... He was an Isaac who at the last moment refused to yield to Abraham."{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=408}} The final series of ''Seagram Murals'' was dispersed, and now hangs in three locations: London's [[Tate Britain]], Japan's [[Kawamura Memorial Museum]], and the [[National Gallery of Art]] in Washington, D.C.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Tate Modern, Rothko Murals |url=http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/mark-rothko |access-date=July 13, 2011 |website=Tate Etc.}}</ref> This episode was the main basis for [[John Logan (writer)|John Logan]]'s 2009 play ''[[Red (play)|Red]]''.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

In October 2012, ''[[Black on Maroon]]'', one of the paintings in the Seagram series, was defaced with writing in black ink, while on display at Tate Modern. Restoration of the painting took 18 months. The [[BBC]]'s Arts Editor [[Will Gompertz]] explained that the ink from the vandal's marker pen had bled all the way through the canvas, causing "a deep wound, not a superficial graze", and that the vandal had caused "significant damage".<ref>{{Cite news |date=May 13, 2014 |title=Tate Modern unveils painstakingly restored Rothko |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/13/tate-modern-unveils-restored-mark-rothko-black-on-maroon |access-date=October 27, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=21 November 2012 |title=Rothko damage 'could take up to 18 months to repair'|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-20424251|access-date=9 February 2024}}</ref>

===Rising American prominence===
Rothko's first completed space was created in the [[Phillips Collection]] in Washington, D.C., following the purchase of four paintings by collector [[Duncan Phillips (art collector)|Duncan Phillips]]. Rothko's fame and wealth had substantially increased; his paintings began to sell to notable collectors, including the [[Rockefeller family]]. In January 1961, Rothko sat next to [[Joseph Kennedy]] at [[John F. Kennedy]]'s inaugural ball. Later that year, a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art, to considerable commercial and critical success. In spite of this newfound fame, the art world had already turned its attention from the now passé abstract expressionists to the "next big thing", [[pop art]], particularly the work of [[Andy Warhol|Warhol]], [[Roy Lichtenstein|Lichtenstein]], and [[James Rosenquist|Rosenquist]].{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}

Rothko called pop artists "charlatans and young opportunists", and wondered aloud during a 1962 exhibition of pop art, "Are the young artists plotting to kill us all?" On viewing [[Jasper Johns]]'s flags, Rothko said, "We worked for years to get rid of all that."{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=427}}

On August 31, 1963, Mell gave birth to a second child, Christopher.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=431}} That autumn, Rothko signed with the [[Marlborough Gallery]] for sales of his work outside the United States. In New York, he continued to sell the artwork directly from his studio.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=443}}

===Harvard Murals===
Rothko received a second mural commission project, this time for a room of paintings for the penthouse of Harvard University's [[Holyoke Center]]. He made 22 sketches, from which ten wall-sized paintings on canvas were painted, six were brought to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and only five were hung: a triptych on one wall and opposite two individual panels. His aim was to create an environment for a public place. Harvard President [[Nathan Pusey]], following an explanation of the religious symbology of the [[Triptych]], had the paintings hung in January 1963, and later shown at the [[Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum|Guggenheim]]. During installation, Rothko found the paintings to be compromised by the room's lighting. Despite the installation of fiberglass shades, the paintings were all removed by 1979 and, due to the fugitive nature of some of the red pigments, in particular [[History of red|lithol red]], were placed in dark storage and displayed only periodically.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=445–42}} The murals were on display from November 16, 2014, to July 26, 2015, in the newly renovated Harvard Art Museums, for which the fading of the pigments has been compensated by using an innovative color projection system to illuminate the paintings.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Shea |first=Andrea |date=May 20, 2014 |title=Harvard's Famously Damaged Rothko Paintings 'Restored' With Light |url=http://artery.wbur.org/2014/05/20/harvard-rothkos |access-date=July 24, 2014 |publisher=The ARTery}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Edgers |first=Geoff |date=May 20, 2014 |title=Harvard's Rothko murals to be seen in new light with revolutionary new projection system |work=[[The Boston Globe]] |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2014/05/20/harvard-rothko-murals-seen-new-light-with-revolutionary-new-projection-system/UspSbL0csFjeM2cwSflKON/story.html |access-date=July 24, 2014}}</ref><ref>Stenger, J., Khandekar, N., Raskar, R., Cuellar, S., Mohan, A. and Gschwind, R., ‘Conservation of a room: a treatment proposal for Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals,’ Studies in Conservation, 61(6), 2016, 348–361</ref><ref>Stenger, J., Khandekar, N., Wilker, A., Kallsen, K., Kirby, D.P. and Eremin, K., ‘The making of Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals,’ Studies in Conservation, 61(6), 2016, 331–347.</ref>

===Rothko Chapel===
{{stack|[[File:Rothko Chapel 2007-03-13.jpg|thumb|Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, North America.]]}}
{{main|Rothko Chapel}}
The Rothko Chapel is adjacent to the [[Menil Collection]] and [[University of St. Thomas (Texas)|the University of St. Thomas]] in [[Houston]], Texas. The building is small and windowless except for a skylight and features a geometric, postmodern structure. The chapel, the Menil Collection, and the nearby [[Cy Twombly]] gallery were funded by Texas oil millionaires [[Dominique de Menil|John and Dominique de Menil]].
[[File:153 East 69th Street.jpg|thumb|Rothko's studio on 153 East 69th Street in New York's Upper East Side]]
In 1964, Rothko moved into his last New York studio at 157 East 69th Street. To simulate the lighting he wanted for the chapel, he equipped the studio with pulleys carrying large walls of canvas material to regulate light from a central cupola. Rothko reportedly intended the chapel to be his most important artistic statement. He became extremely involved in the building's layout and insisted that it feature a central cupola like his studio's. Architect [[Philip Johnson]], unable to compromise with Rothko's vision about the kind of light he wanted in the space, left the project in 1967 and was replaced by [[Howard Barnstone]] and Eugene Aubry.{{sfn|Ashton|1983|p=183}} The architects frequently flew to New York to consult. On one occasion they brought a miniature of the building for Rothko's approval.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

For Rothko, the chapel was a place of pilgrimage far from the center of art (in this case, New York) where seekers of his newly "religious" artwork could journey. The chapel is now nondenominational, but it was originally intended to be [[Roman Catholic]]. During the first three years of the project (1964–67), Rothko believed it would remain so. The building's design and the paintings' religious implications were inspired by Roman Catholic art and architecture. Its octagonal shape is based on a [[Byzantine]] church of St. Maria Assunta, and the format of the triptychs is based on paintings of the [[Crucifixion]]. The de Menils believed the universal "spiritual" aspect of Rothko's work would complement the elements of Roman Catholicism.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

Rothko's painting technique necessitated physical strength and stamina that the ailing artist could no longer muster. He hired two assistants to apply the multiple layers of paint. On half of the works, Rothko applied none of the paint himself and was content to supervise the slow, arduous process. He felt the completion of the paintings to be "torment", and the inevitable result was to create "something you don't want to look at".{{cn|date=July 2024}}

The chapel represents six years of Rothko's life and his growing concern for the [[Transcendence (philosophy)|transcendent]]. For some, viewing the chapel's these paintings is akin submitting to a spiritual experience. The paintings have been likened to self-awareness, hermeticism, and contemplativeness.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

The chapel paintings consist of a monochrome triptych in soft brown, on the central wall, comprising three 5-by-15-foot panels and a pair of triptychs on the left and right made of opaque black rectangles. Between the triptychs are four individual paintings, measuring 11-by-15 feet each. One additional individual painting faces the central triptych, from the opposite wall. The effect is to surround the viewer with massive, imposing visions of darkness. Despite its basis in religious symbolism and imagery, the paintings may be considered distinct from traditional Christian motifs and may act on the viewers subliminally. Rothko's erasure of symbols both removes and creates barriers to the work.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

The paintings were unveiled at the chapel's opening in 1971. Rothko never saw the completed chapel and never installed the paintings. On February 28, 1971, at the dedication, Dominique de Menil said, "We are cluttered with images and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine", noting Rothko's courage in painting "impenetrable fortresses" of color.{{cn|date=July 2024}}