Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Mark Rothko's Seagram Murals: Great Art Explained" video.

  1. Thank you for creating this and posting it. I saw the Tate collection in Los Angeles in the 1980s when it was on tour. It was on display at the “Temporary Contemporary” annex of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LACMA), a warehouse sized space converted into a gallery. The display space was a series of rooms that were created within this larger warehouse space, much like film set is constructed in a movie studio, according to (we were told) the artist’s specifications. This included the low levels of illumination—a very knowledgeable security guard told us is this when a member of our student group asked if the lights could be turned up in one particularly dimly lit room. It was the security guard that invited us to view the paintings up close, as close as 18”, so that we might fully experience them, and it was the security guard that told us the whole set up was meant to evoke the sense that we were in a temple. The paintings really are best experienced in person. The effects I felt were like nothing before or since. Although I’ve never experienced Rothko’s work again in person, the feelings the paintings evoked have stayed with me and I can recall the memory of the sensory experience quite clearly. The only other artist that has had a similar effect (creating an emotional reaction that stayed with me) is Motherwell, although the effect was not and has not been as strong. I think Rothko would have been pleased that the security guard, a working man, had taken such an interest in his work. I had a brief chat with him and ascertained that he was indeed a security guard hired locally to watch over the work, “just some guy” as he put it, and not a museum docent. Discussing Rothko and the Tate Collection was not an official part of his job duties, but he had done his art history research on his own time, something he had never done with other artists. Rothko would have felt vindicated that his work had escaped the rarified world of fine art and had engaged a member of the working class.
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