Peter Selz Read Online Free PDF Page B

friends, Mark Rothko occupied a special position. Along with the nonobjective paintings of Sam Francis, Rothko’s lyrical color-resonant (not, in Peter’s view, color-field) paintings represented for Selz a high point in modernist abstraction. It should be kept in mind that Selz was particularly devoted to expressionist figuration, as opposed to exclusively formalist approaches. Nonetheless, Rothko is a reminder that Peter understood and appreciated abstraction as
important
, perhaps even central, in how we view both the physical aspect of nature and the spiritual longing of human beings. In any event, for Peter modernism was never a matter simply of styles or surface manipulation of form and color.
    Mark Rothko
was Selz’s first one-person show at MoMA, opening in January 1961. The Tinguely installation had preceded it by several months, but that show was really inserted into the schedule and did not involve the preparation that
Rothko
required. Peter talks about the exhibition in glowing terms:
    Â 
    It was the most beautiful show I’ve ever done. Even today, when I think back, it was absolutely magnificent. Just as with
Art Nouveau
, all the departments worked together—I broke the rules there. The museum had the idea that if you show an artist’s work, the curator makes all the decisions and the artist should not take part. I broke with that also by inviting Rothko to take part . . . by deciding what should go in the show, and how the show was to be hung and lit. Now this is done a lot. But that was the first time [at MoMA], and my colleagues protested, [but] I said, “I’m going to do it this way.” . . . The two best Rothko collectionsat that point were at the Phillips in Washington and at Count Panza’s in Italy [part of that collection went to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles]. We borrowed heavily from those two. We divided the space into small rooms, so that the viewer would be very close to the pictures. And the lighting was fairly low. Mark wanted to hang them right down to the floor—but they would have been ruined when the floors were cleaned. But we hung them as low as possible. 33
    The slim catalogue (only thirty-six printed pages) belies the significance of this exhibition, which amounted to public recognition by the leading museum of modern art of one of the most important contemporary American painters of the time. In choosing Rothko as the subject of his first solo show, Peter made a statement that his view of modernism extended beyond the figurative focus of
New Images of Man
. However, it bears noting that what he was looking for in that first show, a humanistic—even a spiritual—strain that continued to inform modernism despite the formalist character of much contemporary art, he also found in Rothko. There was no inconsistency in these choices.
    The reviews of
Rothko
were numerous and frequently appreciative, if not exactly enthusiastic. In truth, what praise there was seems to have been grudgingly offered. This lukewarm reception must have been disappointing for both Selz and the artist. What is striking is the
retardataire
critical vision (or lack of vision) that many New York art writers revealed. Two examples should make the point. The first is Emily Genauer’s determinedly dismissive review, “Art: They’re All Busy Drawing Blanks”: “Light that failed: About two years ago, Rothko changed his palette. The sunny yellows and misty blues gave way to blood-browns, with sometimes a bar of white for contrast. The bands went vertical instead of horizontal. The paintings are still primarily decorations—but for a funeral parlor. I’d as soon wrap myself in a shroud as in one of them.” 34
    Genauer sets out to skewer Rothko’s paintings by lifting Selz’s words out of the context required for them to make sense. “The open rectangles,” he writes in the catalogue, “suggest the rims of