dailyrothko: Mark Rothko, Panel One (Alternate scan), Seagrams Murals, 1958 In June 1958, Mark Rothk
dailyrothko: Mark Rothko, Panel One (Alternate scan), Seagrams Murals, 1958 In June 1958, Mark Rothko accepted a commission to decorate a room in the Four Seasons restaurant of the Seagram Building on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a new modernist skyscraper by Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe. Departing from his wonted format of floating rectangles in glowing colors, Rothko produced wine-dark paintings with ambiguous portal shapes evoking what he called a “closed space.” From the fall of 1958 into 1959 he was completely absorbed, making more than thirty even though the room only offered places for seven. At the same time, Some say he was offered the lobby and became angry when he thought of his paintings going in a restaurant, others still claim his misgivings came for other reasons, he became increasingly doubtful that a luxury restaurant with its wealthy patrons was the appropriate venue for his art.In any event, He withdrew, canceling what would have been his first painted environment—a “place,” as he ambitiously said, rather than just a group of paintings. -- source link