Legacy Matters

"He was in my hands in some strange way"

I've found the paintings of artist Mark Rothko spiritual and very moving which is why he is one of my favorite modern artists. He committed suicide when he was 66 leaving behind two children and a wife who died 6 months later of a heart attack. Orphans, the children were involved for the next 12 years in legal battles involving the executors of the estate and the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan that resulted in the removal of the executors and millions of dollars in fines against the Galley. Then came the battles with the IRS over the value of the paintings which had greatly appreciated since the artist's death. In 1988 in a file marked miscellaneous papers, a manuscript by the artist was found. Christopher Rothko, the artist's son, spent more than a year editing the manuscript which has just been published by the Yale University Press as "The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art."

Christopher Rothko describes, the effect working on the manuscript had on him in today's New York Times:

Still, the son was unprepared for how intimate the process became. "I found myself having this strangely personal, sort of collegial relationship with my father that I hadn't anticipated," Mr. Rothko said. "It's like having a conversation with him." He added, "I think that underneath, I must have known that here was a way to have a relationship with my father that was unique."

For Christopher Rothko, the work also functions as a metaphorical family album. "I think the most concrete thing about my father in my life is his absence," he said. "You know, I've got a few Polaroids that are fading and that's kind of it.

"There are these paintings that speak so much - and yet so abstractly," Mr. Rothko said. "This is still a philosophical text, this ain't no kiss and tell, but I hear his voice, I see the manuscript page, and his handwriting, and the cross-outs and the rethinking and the sketching in. It was a fascinating process. In rediscovering the book, I rediscovered my father."

Indeed, for the first time since he was a young child, Christopher suddenly found himself calling his father dad.

"I'd be trying to sort through something," he said, "and he'd just have written the most convoluted sentence known to mankind, and it's like, 'Oh Dad, come on.' Believe me, it shocked me - I'd never had a second-person utterance in his direction since I was 6 years old, but here I was addressing a ghost. But it wasn't a ghost, because he was in my hands in some strange way."