We may be forgiven for evoking a personal memory here: around thirty years ago, we discovered the Rothko Chapel in Houston (Texas). The interior was dark and a mass was taking place there, the end of which we patiently waited for. We couldn’t see anything from the paintings: at the time, the central dome which diffuses overhead light was obscured. When the faithful dispersed, we asked the caretaker if it was possible to have more lighting. She smiled big and replied, “Sure, but you’ll see even less! » And it was true.
When she then turned off the weak lights, we got used to the darkness from which, little by little, the paintings emerged, in pulsations at first slow, then progressively more intense. Apparitions… But they are only given to those who are willing to give their time. Since the Renaissance, paintings have been windows open to the world. With Mark Rothko (1903-1970), they become doors: for those who are willing to cross the threshold, they give access to other universes.
In the book he dedicated to his father, his son, Christopher, thinks, for his part, of mirrors: “One morning in 1996, I spent two hours alone in the chapel, before church time. opening to the public. Instead of the deep meditative experience I expected, I had to fight a very strong urge to flee. (…) As I walked along the walls of this octagonal space, surrounded by huge murals on all sides, I began to realize that my discomfort did not come from the paintings or the space, but from myself. I found myself in a room full of mirrors – dark, unrelenting mirrors – and I stood at the point where their reflections converged, so that everyone reflected my image. (…) It was a very enriching experience, but also very disturbing. »
evil cook
It is these strong impressions that Pascale Bouhénic’s film attempts, clumsily it must be admitted, to recreate. Clumsily, because, if the biography of the artist is succinctly but correctly told, we have known better in terms of commentary on a work. The historical context is rather well rendered, but lacks depth and analysis.
What is most interesting, apart from a series of paintings which are not in the exhibition of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, partner of the film, are, on the one hand, the sequencing into antinomic chapters (“Figure/not figure” , “American/not American”, “Abstract/not abstract”…), which pose the numerous contradictions of the man and the work, and, on the other hand, the testimonies of restorers, scientists, and even the color merchants who analyze the very particular technique of Rothko, a diabolical cook capable of recreating in Manhattan techniques used in 15th century Italy to put them at the service of an even older idea, dating back to the Greek Neoplatonists , then to Russian icon painters.
With their inverted perspective (the vanishing point is you) and, in his case, with the frontality and the pulsation that this very particular material gives to its abstractions, it is not you who contemplates the image, it is she looking at you.
