Mark Rothko, la peinture vous regarde

As the first retrospective dedicated to American painter Mark Rothko in France in 24 years is currently on display at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, this film traces the elusive trajectory of a 20^th-century art legend. Full of colors, sensuality, dramas, and emotions, Rothko’s painting shines forth in a subtle portrait of the American master of abstract expressionism.

Word of direction

In December 2017, I had the very exceptional opportunity to go film in the United States at the Houston chapel, designed with the black panels of Mark Rothko. The American painter (born in Russia in 1903, and died in the United States in 1970) signed there, in 1964, one of his last works, terribly impressive. The challenge of filming black, and of accounting for a painting that constantly evolves in perception, was an experience as a spectator, as much as a reflection on how to film these paintings. In this film, dedicated to Monet’s Water Lilies, the aim was to take a leap towards the Americans to highlight Monet’s legacy in America. These Rothko panels, which, like the Water Lilies, create a space, have deeply impressed my retina. Now that I am delving more directly into Rothko’s work, I understand that in this chapel are established the conditions of vision that the painter wished exactly for his paintings. And that the chapel is the culmination of Mark Rothko’s art.

From Rothko’s life, we can see with great clarity the dialogue between the grand and the small history. American politics, the consequences of the Second World War, the extermination of the Jews, which had such a crucial impact on Rothko, are there; the abstract expressionists, the surrealists of Europe, the American ​“provincialists” also play a role. In this intertwining, the origins of the Russian Rothko (Rothkowitz) are impossible to unravel.

According to the testimonies of his close friends, the memory of his country of birth, and his link to Judaism, never faded from his memory. Rothko’s history is made of this constant dialogue between personal data, and the artistic and political history of the adopted country, America. Tradition and modernity are inseparable.

Moreover, Rothko joined a group of artists who made American modernity, but at the same time, on several occasions, he detached himself from it. Rothko’s position is unique: he is a philosopher painter, who believes that painting conveys ideas, but these ideas are not expressed only with figures or symbols (which he could represent in his youth), they emanate in abstract painting through the material dimension of his painting. So we can see Rothko as a kind of chemist, or pharmacist like his father was: the colored paste must produce an effect. Therefore, one must always return to the material because it is what allows the invention of the world of ideas. Paintings are a place to stand, a place to think. And Rothko makes this incredible proposition in history: once the painting is finished, it must enter a world that must be able to accommodate it. That is the responsibility of the artist. And the life of the artist Rothko is played out there.

- Pascale Bouhénic