Rothko Chapel Research Articles

The Spiritual Landscapes of Dominique de Menil

Dominique de Menil (1908–1998) with her husband, Jean, amassed one of the finest collections of ancient and modern art in the United States. Rivaling the Frick Collection in New York City, their acquisitions are housed in a museum in midtown Houston; through their largesse, the Rothko Chapel for interfaith dialogue and a Byzantine Chapel stand nearby. Philanthropists, they supported the civil rights movement at home and peace initiatives abroad. They were committed to enrich Catholicism through theological inquiry and the arts. After Jean died, Dominique's willingness to listen to her inner voice prompted many contributions. The spiritual biography of Mrs. de Menil requires a theoretical lens not provided by existing constructs of spiritual development over the life course. Here, I deploy the metaphor of “landscapes” to illuminate critical moments in her spiritual growth, especially during her later years.

The Rothko Chapel Paintings and the ‘urgency of the transcendent experience’

Since the Romantic period, painters have no longer made use of traditional Christian iconography to express religious transcendence. Taking their cue from Schleiermacher’s Reden Über die Religion, painters have sought for new, personal ways to express religious transcendence. One example is Caspar David Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea. Rosenblum argues, in his Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition, that there is a parallel between Friedrich and the abstract expressionist Rothko with respect to the expression to religious transcendence. In this article I investigate how the experience of transcendence that Rothko’s paintings want to evoke is to be described. Is it an experience of the sublime in the Romantic tradition? Is it the evocation of the ultimate in accordance with Tillich’s broad concept of religion? Does it display affinity between Rothko and the first generation of abstract painters such as Kandinsky and Malevich? Or is it a transcendent experience that cannot be situated so easily within the options supplied? After determining Rothko’s understanding of transcendence, some issues will be brought up that could be fruitful for Christian theology.

The Difficulty of Rothko

Books reviewed in this article:David Anfam, Mark Rothko: The Works on CanvasJeffrey Weiss, (ed.) Mark RothkoSheldon Nodelman, The Rothko Chapel Paintings: Origins, Structure, Meaning

The Mark Rothko Chapel in Houston: the Structure of Meaning or the Meaning of Structure?

The Mark Rothko Chapel in Houston: the Structure of Meaning or the Meaning of Structure?

The Rothko Chapel paintings: origins, structure, meaning

The paintings executed in 1964-1967 by American artist Mark Rothko for the Rothko Chapel in Houston represent the fulfillment of the artist's lifelong ambition and a breakthrough in twentieth-century art. Unlike previous sets of paintings commissioned for the Seagram Building and Harvard University, the Chapel commission allowed Rothko to determine the architectural setting and lighting in which the paintings would appear. This proved to be the catalyst for a new mode of pictorial dynamics based on a kind of interaction of paintings, architecture, and light previously unknown. No painting in the set could be understood in isolation from the rest or apart from its place in the architectural setting. The Rothko Chapel Paintings explores this interdependence of paintings and place. As viewers move about the Chapel's octagonal enclosure, over whose walls the fourteen panels are continuously distributed, they discover systems of pictorial interactions which become the terms or characters of a cosmological drama in which the viewer is a necessary participant. In the act of vision, the embodied viewer is prompted not merely to witness but also to reenact that questioning of human destiny which has preoccupied the Western spiritual tradition.

Rothko Chapel and Rothko's Chapel

Rothko Chapel and Rothko's Chapel

THE ROTHKO CHAPEL: TREATMENT OF THE BLACK-FORM TRIPTYCHS

AbstractThis paper describes the conservation treatment of two black-form triptychs painted for the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. An account is given of the commission and the history of the whitening that has plagued the surface of the murals. The problem was identified through a study of the artist’s material and techniques as demonstrated in simulations of the originals, comparison of preparatory drawings with patterns of disfigurement, and scientific analysis of the white exudate. The conservation process is described and suggestions are offered for the future preservation of the triptychs.

Ethnicities and nations: processes of interethnic relations in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific

Journal Article Ethnicities and nations: processes of interethnic relations in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Get access Ethnicities and nations: processes of interethnic relations in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Edited by Remo Guidieri et al.et al. Houston, Texas: Rothko Chapel. 1988. 407pp. (Distrib. by University of Texas.) $22.50. ISBN 0 945472 01 3. James G. Kellas James G. Kellas 1University of Glasgow Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 66, Issue 2, April 1990, Page 372, https://doi.org/10.2307/2621373 Published: 01 April 1990

Toward a New Strategy for Development.Rothko Chapel Colloquium

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsToward a New Strategy for Development. Rothko Chapel Colloquium Elbaki HermassiElbaki Hermassi Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 89, Number 1Jul., 1983 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/227854 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1983 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Book reviews

Financing Mining Projects in Developing Countries. Marian Radetzki and Stephen Zorn, London: Mining Journal Books. 1979. 184pp. £7.50 pb New Patterns of World Mineral Development. Raymond F Mikesell, British‐North American Committee. 1979.97 pp. £2.25 Mining Ventures in Developing Countries, Part I: interests, bargaining processes, Legal concepts. Vol I. Christian Kirchner et al, Frankfurt: Alfred Metzner Verlag. 1979. 193 pp. £23.60 Governments and Mining Companies in Developing Countries. James H Cobbe, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press (distributed in the UK by Ernest Benn). 1979. 324 pp. $20 The Domestication of Women: discrimination in developing. societies Barbara Rogers, London: Kogan Page. 1980.200pp. £8.95 Dialectics of Third World Development. Edited by Ingolf Vogeler and Anthony De Souza, New Jersey: Allanheld, Osman. 1980.349 pp. np Third World Coalition in International Politics. Robert A Mortimer, London: Praeger. 1980. 148 pp. £12.25 Poor People's Movements: why they succeed, how they fail. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A Cloward, Oxford: Blackwell. 1978. 381 pp. £10.00 The Political and Social Economy of Commodity Control. Christopher P Brown, London: Macmillan. 1980. 375pp. £20.00 Tides Among Nations. Karl W Deutsch, London: Collier Macmillan. 1979. 342pp. £11.25 The Dangers of Nuclear War. Edited by F Griffiths and J C Polanyi, University of Toronto Press, 1979. 197pp. $5.95 Restraints on Wan studies in the limitation of armed conflict. Edited by Michael Howard, Oxford University Press. 1980.173pp. £6.50 Merchants of Grain. Dan Morgan, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1979. 387pp. £10.00 Macro Models for Developing Countries. Lance Taylor Maidenhead, England: 1979. 271pp. £12.00 Towards a New Strategy for Development. A Rothko Chapel Colloquium, Oxford: Pergamon. 1979. 365pp. £11.25. £4.50pb Eritrea: the unfinished revolution. Richard Sherman, New York: Praeger (distributed in the UK by Holt‐Saunders). 1980. 197pp. £13.00 Fantastic Invasion: dispatches from contemporary Africa. Patrick Marnham, London: Jonathan Cape. 1980. 271pp. £6.50 Economic Development and Urban Migration: Tanzania 1900–1971. R H Sabot, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979. 279pp. £12.50 Christianity and Traditional Religion in Western Zimbabwe, 1859–1923. Ngwabi Bhebe, London: Longman. 1979. 190pp. £7.95 The Changing Middle Eastern City. Edited by G H Blake and R I Lawless, London: Croom Helm. 1980. 273pp. £14.85 Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society: three essays in cultural analysis. Clifford Geertz, Hildred Geertz and Lawrence Rosen, Cambridge University Press. 1979. 510pp. £19.50 Zaire: the political economy of underdevelopment. Edited by Guy Gran, New York: Praeger (distributed in the UK by Holt‐Saunders). 1979. 334pp. £14.75 Zimbabwe: a country study. Howard Simson Uppsála: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. 1979. 91pp. SKr 10 Multinationals and Development in Black Africa: a case study in the Ivory Coast. J Masini, M Ikonicoff, C Jedlicki, L Lanzasotti Farnborough, England: Saxon House. 1979. 181pp. £9.00 The International Division of Labour and Multinational Companies. ECSIM, Farnborough, England: Saxon House. 1979. 152pp. £8.50 Politics in Sri Lanka, 1947–1979. A Jayaratnam Wilson, London: Macmillan. 1979 (second edition). 320pp. £15.00. £5.95 pb Caste and Family in the Politics of the Sinhalese, 1947–1976. Janice Jiggins, Cambridge University Press. 1979. 189pp. £12.50 Decision of Palestine: how the US came to recognise Israel Evan M Wilson, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. 1979. 244p. $14.95 Congress and Israel: foreign aid decisionmaking in the House of Representatives, 1969–1976. Marvin C Feuerwerger Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 1979. 235pp. £15.50 A Turning Wheel: thirty years of the Asian revolution. Robert Shaplen, New York: Random House. 1979. 398pp. $15.00 The Centralist Tradition of Latin America. Claudio Véliz, Princeton University Press. 1980. 355pp. £12.50. £5.40 pb Development, Reform, and Malnutrition in Chile. Peter Hakim and Giorgio Solimano, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 1978. 91pp. £7.00 The New Authoritarianism in Latin America. Edited by David Collier, Princeton University Press. 1979. 456pp. £15.10. £3.65 pb Tropical Enterprise: Standard Fruit and. Steamship Company in Latin. America Thomas L Karnes, London: American University Publishers Group. 1979.332pp. £12.00

REVIEWS

Recherches dans la foi. By Henri dc Lubac Theological Investigations, Vol. XVI. By Karl Rahner Explorations in Theology, 4. By Maurice Wiles Explorations in Theology, 5. By Donald MacKinnon The Phenomenon of Christianity. By Ninian Smart Incarnation and Myth: the Debate Continued. Edited by Michael Goulder The Debate About Christ. By Don Cupitt Christian Priesthood Examined. By Richard Hanson The Eucharist and Human Liberation. By Tissa Balasuriya The Open Secret: Sketches for a Missionary Theology. By Lesslie Newbigin The Church and Unity. By Basil Christopher Butler Contemplation and Action in World Religions: Selected Papers from the Rothko Chapel Colloquium ‘Traditional Modes of Contemplation and Action’. Edited by Yusuf Ibish and Ileana Marculescu Alternative Altars: Unconventional and Eastern Spirituality in America. By Robert S. Ellwood, Jr Samson: A Secret Betrayed, A Vow Ignored. By James L. Crenshaw When Prophecy Failed: Reactions and Response to Failure in the Old Testament Prophetic Traditions. By Robert P. Carroll The Triumph of Impotence. By Dermot Cox Holy Bible. New International Version. Sponsored by New York International Bible Society A Greek‐English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. By Walter Bauer, translated and adapted by W.F. Arndt and F.W. Gingrich. Second Edition, revised and augmented by F.W. Gingrich and F.W. Danker A Complete Categorized Greek‐English New Testament Vocabulary. By David Holly A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament. By Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor. Vol II, Epistles‐Apocalypse Paul: Crisis in Galatia: A Study in Early Christian Theology. By George Howard The Making of Late Antiquity. By Peter Brown St Nicholas of Myra, Bari and Manhattan. By C.W. Jones Sir Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Protestantism: A Study of Contexts. By Andrew D. Weiner Classical Influences on Western Thought A.D. 1650–1870. Edited by R.R. Bolgar The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman. Volumes II and III. Edited by Ian Ker and Thomas Gomall Church and State in Yugoslavia since 1945. By Stella Alexander A History of African Christianity 1950–1975. By Adrian Hastings The Tory Islanders. A People of the Celtic Fringe. By Robin Fox Ulysses and the Sirens. By Jon Elster Reliable Knowledge: An Exploration of the Grounds for Belief in Science. By John Ziman Being qua Being. By Panayot Butchvarov Aquinas: God and Action. By David B. Burrell Obscenity and Community Standards

Toward a New Strategy for Development: A Rothko Chapel Colloquium.

Toward a New Strategy for Development: A Rothko Chapel Colloquium.

The Rothko Chapel

“The colors in the Rothko paintings are those of blood and wine. As you stand in the chapel they are close, very close, even warm and comforting. Yet they do not oppress. …”—D. de M.

The Rothko Chapel

The Rothko Chapel