ART: The Rothko Chapel, Houston

On the way to Belize through Houston, I stopped over two days, drawn by the legendary Rothko Chapel and the museums there.   Art created as a means of transcendence has been vitally engaging for me, and the symbols that are made from this practice fascinate me - marks have the possibility of making images which will offer a transcendent experience.  Wrought from the materials of the earth, yet they have the power to reveal a deep and connected belief to timeless and godly existence, 

the themes of spiritual experience manifest in art throughout centuries and cultures.   For me,  even the process of attempting to make a transcendent object reveals a deep and connected belief to timeless and godly existence.  

The day I visited was overcast and thick with atmosphere and chill.  So, the oculus of the Chapel admitted only dim light which held the secrets of subtle color and form that Rothko placed in the 14 paintings.   

I moved around the chapel viewing the paintings obliquely, at a distance, from the floor, but could perceive only the deepest purple black tones, and perhaps a black green. Several had deep maroon borders which enclosed deeper shades, and the sides of the support were painted a brighter deep red.  On only one painting could I perceive the hovering rectangular mass, low on the canvas, of deep maroon-purple, on a deeper dark background.

For me, these paintings had become Black Paintings.  They were opaque; they manifested the nature of the Tao, unknowable.  They were solemn, even funereal in their gloomy aloof dignity.  I heard low cellos’ attenuated tones, not the high keening of fresh grief.  

I grieved again for the sufferings of the world, struggling for equipoise, to hold a personal space for repose while remaining engaged with action to push back against all removes goodness from our hearts and lives.