The actor portraying Mark Rothko
in the local production of a play about the artist
is being given a private tour of the gallery
by the head curator of the museum.
Both men are pale, portly, and bald.
The curator pontificates
about brush strokes and layering;
in one scene, the actor and his assistant
(a convenient prop fabricated by the playwright)
paint a canvas solid red, but not before
discussing at great length the various permutations
and implications, and variations, both physical and metaphoric,
of that grisly color. The actor peers closely
at the paintings, backs up, strokes his chin.
The curator stands with his arms crossed,
his voice deep and authoritative.
The master instructing his pupil,
unlocking the artist's secrets:
There's a little bit of white in there.
He preferred dime-store brushes to expensive ones.
Notice the scumbling around the edges.
...as the apprentice murmurs I see and interesting.
Once onstage, he will bellow and bark lines
from a script that reads like an undergrad dissertation,
salted with every imaginable cliche
of the volatile, egotistic stereotype of the Artist.
Nietzsche's name will be spat across the stage,
the words Dionysian and Apollonian will be hurled about
to reassure the audience that they are witnessing a work
of great seriousness, that they have come to this theater
not to be entertained but to be inspired,
lifted into the heights of intellectual nirvana.
When the two substantial gentlemen have strutted off,
each going his separate way, I secure the gallery doors
and flip the breakers to shut off the lights.
And there they hang, those luminous creatures,
those butchered slabs of beef,
their crimson hides turned to bruises in the dark,
longing perhaps to share their sublime grace,
but nevertheless treasuring the silence.
in the local production of a play about the artist
is being given a private tour of the gallery
by the head curator of the museum.
Both men are pale, portly, and bald.
The curator pontificates
about brush strokes and layering;
in one scene, the actor and his assistant
(a convenient prop fabricated by the playwright)
paint a canvas solid red, but not before
discussing at great length the various permutations
and implications, and variations, both physical and metaphoric,
of that grisly color. The actor peers closely
at the paintings, backs up, strokes his chin.
The curator stands with his arms crossed,
his voice deep and authoritative.
The master instructing his pupil,
unlocking the artist's secrets:
There's a little bit of white in there.
He preferred dime-store brushes to expensive ones.
Notice the scumbling around the edges.
...as the apprentice murmurs I see and interesting.
Once onstage, he will bellow and bark lines
from a script that reads like an undergrad dissertation,
salted with every imaginable cliche
of the volatile, egotistic stereotype of the Artist.
Nietzsche's name will be spat across the stage,
the words Dionysian and Apollonian will be hurled about
to reassure the audience that they are witnessing a work
of great seriousness, that they have come to this theater
not to be entertained but to be inspired,
lifted into the heights of intellectual nirvana.
When the two substantial gentlemen have strutted off,
each going his separate way, I secure the gallery doors
and flip the breakers to shut off the lights.
And there they hang, those luminous creatures,
those butchered slabs of beef,
their crimson hides turned to bruises in the dark,
longing perhaps to share their sublime grace,
but nevertheless treasuring the silence.
Last time I was in NY I went to MOMA with a painter friend. He took a picture of me scowling, arms crossed in front of a de Kooning. To get him back I took one of him in front of a Rothko. He smiled widely, placing his hands in a display gesture, as if introducing a new brand of house paint. We looked at a tall Ad Reinhardt, about the same size and proportions as a door, deep blue-violet-black. The gallery was crowded, not with people but with paintings, poorly lit and there was glare on the Reinhardt. But it was sublime, absolutely sublime. I felt so bad for that painting, thrown in there like a piece of trash or worse, like a cliche.
ReplyDeleteHow many times a day do I have that feeling when I'm walking through the museum where I work: these poor paintings, carelessly hung with no thought to maximizing their potential beauty... a bad curator is like a careless gardener. Or, worse, a drunken zookeeper.
ReplyDeleteWonderful piece! Years ago I moved art in NYC... for all the usual suspects. The only thing sadder than good work hung in the stairwells of MOMA etc., where visitors stream by w/o a glance, were the amazing objects I had the good fortune of communing w/ in the storage areas of our culture-bunkers. I have to wonder if its better to be hung carelessly than never to be hung at all? Or to be hung in bad company... waiting patiently for that one particular person...
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