The Rothko Chapel is located in Houston, Texas and was funded by Texas oil millionaires. The building is small and windowless. It is a geometric, "postmodern" structure, located in a turn-of-the-century middle-class neighborhood.
For Mark Rothko, the Chapel was to be a destination, a place of pilgrimage far from the center of art (in this case, New York) where seekers of Rothko’s newly "religious" artwork could journey.
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.
The chapel works were Rothko’s final artistic statement to the world. He never saw the completed Chapel and didn’t install the paintings. In 2011 the Chapel will celebrate its fortieth anniversary, having achieved, in those years, recognition as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the second half of the twentieth century.
Painting of the Rothko Chapel (above) by Douglas Stichbury, 2010.
