I spent a few days in Houston recently, and took advantage of some free time to visit the Rothko Chapel.
Located in a pleasant park, with a couple large-scale sculptures nearby (including Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk), the gallery is a windowless stone building that presents a little more like a fort than a chapel from the outside, but the interior is extremely churchlike, with diminished natural lighting and wooden benches. I was alone except for a curator who accompanied me inside and read her book off to one side.
The interior is octagonal, with fourteen large black paintings on the whitewalls: three triptychs on the front and wing walls, and one each on the rear and angled walls. The paintings are all black but some contain a tint of reddish or magenta color; some have borders of a slightly different quality of black. The benches are arranged in a square, with a few yoga mats with zafus scattered about.
I had come directly from my flight, so I removed my shoes and jacket, sat cross-legged on a zafu, and let it all sink in, noticing how the colors slowly changed as my eyes became accustomed and began to discern detail. I sat near the main wall looking out at the room for a time, then turned around and faced the main triptych from up close. Twenty minutes or so later I left.
The thought that stays with me is not so much about the experience of visiting, which was well worth the effort, but the vision of Mark Rothko (and the trust of his backers, the de Menils) who enabled such an unusual and powerful space to be built.
(These photos were taken from their website, as photography is not allowed.)
