Mark Rothko
Undersea Cabaret
1944
Watercolor, ink on linen-finish wove paper
26 x 20 1/8 in. (66 x 51.1 cm)
Lower right in light gray paint: MARK ROTHKO
Private Collection, New York. © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

The Rothko Chapel in Houston

" The Rothko Chapel in Houston is a meditative space blending art and architecture, designed by Philip Johnson, Howard Barnstone, and Eugene Aubry. Commissioned by the de Menil family, it houses 14 immersive Mark Rothko paintings ..."

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1969

Oil on paper laid down on canvas

Collection of Christopher Rothko. © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Photo by me at the NGA, DC

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1969

Acrylic on paper, 74-1/8 x 48-1/8 in. (188.3 x 122.3 cm)

© Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko_ARS

I took this yesterday at the works on paper show at the NGA. This is a popular painting in the usual form on this blog and here we see it look much darker than we are used to. Some of these bright scans we have had forever I am finding are a bit different than reality, but then you have to take into account preferences of the format these are being displayed in. Catalog scans often go for punchy bright looks that dazzle immediately.

More and more, galleries are now using lower light (such as this) to display Rothko works in the manner he might have intended, which would be the kind of lighting he used when painting them. Lighter scans are not exactly fiction as Rothkos (as i have been over on this blog many times) are extremely sensitive to light, both bright and dark and warm and cool. This means that when you bring the lighting up to a lot of museum's standards, you'd get a lighter look to the photo.

This kind of lighting is good for a lot of types of painting but, for me, when you start seeing these works in lower light, Rothko's original intentions make sense.

Rothko, Mark