Shock and grief has kept me pretty close to home the last seven days. And, Friday, when I was reading about PhD programs I will never attend, I found a link to the Rothko Chapel in Houston. In that moment a flood of associations came to mind. I thought of watching either Sister Wendy or Robert Hughes, that I cannot differentiate in my mind who it was that stood in front of Rothko Chapel talking about the spirituality of Mark Rothko’s work is a bit disturbing. But, as I watched either the art savvy nun with a crowded mouth of teeth tell me about the luminosity of the Rothko Chapel or the hard drinking, hard living and suffer no fools gladly Aussy art expert talking about the significance of Rothko’s repetition of rectangles, I remember saying to myself that I really wanted to see that chapel one day. There was a resoluteness to the intention. And, yet I never did anything to make it happen. I never for a moment said to myself that someday I would take a trip to Houston to visit the Mark Rothko Chapel and yet just because I hadn’t did not make the intention of my longing any less real.
So, when I saw that it was in Houston and I was in Austin, I knew I had to go. I knew that in my time of grief there could be no better sanctuary for me to sit in front of 14 Rothko canvas chapel. I remember every Rothko canvas I have ever sat in front of and the impact they have had on me. There were the beauties at the MOCA in L.A. that made me cry. And the unnamed canvases at the L.A. County Museum of Art that I sat on a bench to watch—unmoved by the people who filled the gallery—until tears once again overtook me as I sat in wonder at what and how Rothko did what he did to me. There was the trip to the National Gallery in Washington D.C. with a dear friend who has a passion for Buddhist art who I tried to explain the transcendent power of the formless divinity that Rothko captures—and whether or not she could see what I saw in Rothko she could see that I saw it. Rothko said, “The fact that 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 painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.”
I woke Saturday knowing that this was the day. I was strangely nervous. I wondered if this spiritual sojourn could live up to my fantasy. Before we left I printed out the Wikipedia entry for Rothko so I could read it to He-weasel on our way to Houston and amp up his knowledge of Rothko, as we had a three hour drive and I figured after the first hour the novelty of seeing cows, horses and antique shops might ware off. When I got to the bit about the Rothko Chapel I saw that not far from it, and founded by the same Texas oil-billionaires, was the Cy Twombly Gallery. I lost it. See, in my list of artists whose works I would own if I had huge and vast sums of cash are Jean Paul Basquit, Jackson Pollack, Cy Twombly, and Rothko. So, not was I only going to see Rothko’s chapel I was going to see a gallery filled with the work of Cy Twombly. And for those of you who are not familiar with Cy, you may remember a story about a woman in a museum in France who so loved Twombly’s painting that she kissed it with red lacquered lips and she damaged the canvas that had an estimated value of over two million dollars. Loving Cy, as I do, I understand how it could have happened and I have to say that I empathize with her act of passion and yet feel for the museum whose piece is damaged. I do feel certain that piece’s value will go up in value with their newly installed graffiti of eros.
Ooh, I am sorry, this post may be long. I have a lot to say. Well, on our way to Houston we stopped at a store called “Buc-ee’s”and for those of you have never seen this place before all I can say is that you must see this for yourself. This place is the largest convenience store I have ever seen in my life–I would dare to say that it is the largest convenience store in the world. It is the Costco of convenience. I have never in my life seen so much junk food in one place. I was too overwhelmed by all the choices and so instead of getting anything I just marveled and helped He-weasel pick a tee-shirt. As his college team is the Beaver’s and there was all this Beaver merchandise he couldn’t leave with just his coffee and cinnamon roll. Even as I took in the shock and awe that is Buc-ee’s I thought of all y’all and I decided to take a photo. And after a few shots I saw that they did nothing to represent the enormous overwhelm I felt by the vastness of this place. I said to He-weasel, this place is kind of like Alaska–pictures just don’t do it justice.
Three hours later we drove up to the Rothko chapel and I was slightly uncomfortable about the surroundings—it all seemed so mundane. People lived across the street from the chapel. There were kids playing in the street and a guy out walking his dog. In my imagination the church existed somewhere outside of town and be surrounded by a large expanse of land that segregated from the ordinariness of everyday life. I was wrong. The windowless octagon shaped brick chapel was just feet from were we parked. We left the bright open light of Houston and entered the nave/reception area that was dark, small and peopled. Along with other intellectual and artsy tourists I signed the guest book and made small talk with the docent as I internally prepared myself for a powerful experience.
He-weasel and I walked into the chapel and I was overwhelmed by the darkness. The 14 canvases were the darkest Rothko’s I have ev
er seen. I sat in front of a triptic of canvases that was intended to symbolically represent Christ on the cross and I sat and stared into the darkness and looked for light and salvation. I intended to sit in front of this canvas until I was changed by it or until something happened. I sat there for a very long time and thought about the state that Rothko was in as he painted these massive canvases and how he never was able to see the chapel he had poured himself into and how he had slit his wrists and overdosed on anti-depressive medications shortly after completing the work. Death is in the paintings and in the chapel. In fact, the chapel feels like a tomb. And, I don’t think Rothko intended for it to feel that way.
Rothko designed the structure of the building with the help of Houston architects, Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry, and insisted on a central cupola, for the Rothko Chapel. Overtime it was determined that the harsh Houston sun was damaging the canvases and so a scrim was placed over the cupola and in so doing destroyed Rothko’s vision of light in the midst of darkness. Only darkness remains and so you need to bring your own light with you, and I mean that symbolically, and as my light was low I didn’t have a lot to pull from. Leaving the chapel and looking at the reflection pool and the “Broken Obelisk” statue by Barnett Newman my spirits were buoyed. The first thing I said to He-weasel once outside the church was that this is not a chapel I would want to get married in. He-weasel agreed. Later in the day we say a wedding party arrive for a ceremony to be held in the Rothko and I wanted to tell them to find another home for their ritual. I resisted my impulse.
We walked over to the Cy Twombly Gallery. I so looked forward to the light and airy canvases strategically littered with layers of the psyche: memory, thoughts, reflections, and unconscious content all create a canvas that is instantly recognizable and always uplifting. What I was not expecting was how quietly dazzling the architecture is. The gallery was designed by Renzo Piano. My description of it is all feeling and no substance. I would describe it as light, airy and illuminated. The Menil Collection web page describes it as: “a sophisticated roofing system that allows for an even diffusion of natural light. An external canopy of fixed louvers first breaks the sunlight over a sloping, hipped glass roof. Passing through ultraviolet filtering glass, the light is controlled by mechanical louvers and finally dispersed within the galleries by the stretched cotton fabric ceiling.” The gallery is the perfect container for the extraordinary collection of Twombly’s work. As I walked through the collection and I thought about the billions of dollars that the Menil’s have spent on creating these collections I briefly thought of the movie we had watched the night before “There Will be Blood” and I wondered for a moment about the real story behind this collection. I quickly pushed away images of Daniel Day Lewis portrayal of oil hungry Daniel Plainview and returned to peacefully enjoying the Twombly canvases.
After seeing Rothko and Twombly I was famished. I had not eaten my Captain Crunch for breakfast and I had not indulged at a snack at Buc-ee’s. It was 4:00 p.m. and I needed food. Our plan was to get a quick lunch and come back and view the rest of the Menil museums. We ended up at a BBQ place, not because it was what we wanted but because it was close. We both had BBQ beef sandwiches and as this is the third time I have had BBQ in Texas I feel like I can say definitively that I don’t enjoy Texas BBQ. We sat and silently ate our dry sandwiches with dumbstruck looks on our faces. Just few blocks from this BBQ was a series of museums and chapels that have some of the most amazing art in North America and there are no entrance fees or crowds or shops that sell you tee shirts, books, and catalogs—just art that is easily accessible and, to those who are patient, transformative; I was flabbergasted by the treasures that existed in the midst of this city and I contemplated all of this. This quiet cultural enclave was the dream and the home of only 5% of John and Dominique de Menil’s collection of museums and the Rothko chapel were originally from France and they fled from Nazi-occupied France in 1941 and settled in Houston where John managed Schlumberger, Ltd., founded by Dominique’s father and uncle. Their collection consists of contemporary art, sacred art and new world artifacts. I silently toasted Menil’s vision as I sucked down a root beer and wiped BBQ sauce from my sticky hands.
We hurried back to the Menil collection, having been strengthened by the BBQ. We walked to the Byzantine Fresco Chapel. I wasn’t expecting much and I was so very wrong. This chapel succeeded in creating an experience of the light of the Twombly Gallery and the darkness of the Rothko chapel. As we walked in we read a sign that said, “Pause to allow your eyes to acclimate to the light level.” I know I am in an oohy-gooey vulnerable psychic place but something about the word “pause” struck me in a soft spot of my soul. It is a word I don’t hear often. Not go or stop but pause. Take a moment, consider, reflect, and wait. This sign seemed an instructive for my life and for the moment. So we did. And, because we took the time to pause we were rewarded with a moment of transcendent design.
Truly, this place is I would come back to regularly for inspiration. But, it is 300 miles from Austin. And, maybe if I spent more time there and could visit regularly I could somehow develop the language, insight, or divine inspiration to do this structure justice. It is too transcendent for words. This extraordinary chapel was designed by architect, Francois de Menilson, son of Dominique de Menil, in the Renzo Piano workshop and it was designed to house several frescoes that were taken from a Turkish occupied section of Cyprus in the 1980′s. This intimate postmodern chapel made of rock, glass, light and darkness that holds the only intact Byzantine frescoes in the entire western hemisphere. Entering the Byzantine Fresco Chapel is like entering a jewel box or one of those candied Easter eggs that you peer into and discover a scene so amazing that the exterior is almost lost on you. The message this church gave to me is do not judge by the outside, and be patient, pause, and out of darkness will come light. I am not sure if that is the message the architect meant to give—but it is the one I got and it is a mess
age I am grateful to take home with me. I tried to take pictures of the Byzantine chapel—–but much like Buc-ee’s or Alaska, the pictures do not live up to the experience.
As we drove home, and kept our eyes out for another Buc-ee’s—as the bite of He-weasel’s cinnamon roll had wet my appetite for a cinnamon roll of my own, I was aware of a desire for this day to have changed me or in some way make all of the suffering of the last week more understandable. I did have the memory of the light of the Twombly works, the recollection of the darkness and grief in the Rothko and, the total surprise and wonder of the Byzantine chapel. Beyond that, there was the cup at Buc-ee’s that He-weasel bought that would always remind me of this day. And, then there is the message on the back of He-weasel’s new tee-shirt, the perky and optimistic red-hatted rodent, who instructs its wearer and all that take time to read it, “Don’t worry.” No, there was no worrying while at the Menil and that was enough to make it a memorable day.
Pictures: #1, Mark Rothko’s painting, “Untitled, No. 14.”
Picture #2, He-weasel’s Buc-ee cup photographed by me.
Picture #3, Exterior of Rothko Chapel photographed by me.
Picture #4, Interior of Rothko Chapel
Picture #5, Cy Twombly Gallery
Picture #6, Cy Twombly Photo
Picture# 7, Buc-ee’s teeshirt as photographed by me and modeled by He-weasel.
