Main entry:

Nodelman, Sheldon, 1935-

Title & Author:

The Rothko Chapel paintings : origins, structure, meaning / Sheldon Nodelman.

Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, ©1997.

Description:

359 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm

Notes:
"The Menil Collection."
Includes bibliographical references (pages 345-356).
Plates -- The Rothko Chapel Paintings -- pt. I. The Origins of the Chapel Installation. 1. The Commission. 2. The Architectural Program. 3. The Pictorial Program. Plates -- Related Works by Mark Rothko -- pt. II. The Structure of the Chapel Installation. 4. General Conditions of the Installation. The Paintings and Their Setting. The Perspectival System. Light and the Chromatic Organization of the Installation. The Pictorial/Architectural Dynamic. 5. The Elements of the Installation. The Polar Units of the Main Axis: Entrance-Wall Panel and Apse Triptych. The Polar Units of the Cross-Axis: Black-Figure Triptychs. The Polar Units of the Diagonal Axes: Angle-Wall Panels. 6. The Organization of the Installation. Composition and Configuration.
At foot of title: The Menil Collection.

Summary:

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.

Resources:
Table of contents
Publisher description

ISBN:

0939594366 (cloth)
9780939594368 (cloth)
0939594374 (paper)
9780939594375 (paper)

Subject:

Rothko, Mark, 1903-1970 Criticism and interpretation.
Rothko, Mark, 1903-1970.
Rothko, Mark, 1903-1970 Critique et interprétation.
Rothko, Mark.
Rothko Chapel (Houston, Tex.)
Art Exhibition techniques.
Art Techniques d'exposition.
Buildings
Malerei
Schilderijen.
Houston (Tex.) Buildings, structures, etc.
Texas Houston
Houston (Tex.) Rothko Chapel.
Rothko, Mark Criticism and interpretation

Form/genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Added entries:

Menil Collection (Houston, Tex.)

Holdings:

Location: Library main 128190
Call No.: ID ND237.R725.N63; ID:97-B1550
Status: Available