Houston is home to the Rothko Chapel, but the first time I saw a Rothko painting was actually at the Tate Modern in London last year. This year the Seagram Murals, originally commissioned for a hotel restaurant in NY, are shown in an expanded exhibition at the Tate along with other works from the series. I have no plans to be in London this year, but according to the artist’s son the ultimate Rothko experience is in actually in Houston.

The exhibition has set off a wave of stories about Mark Rothko in the British press, including an article by the Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones who sheds some light on what the artist may have thought about displaying his work in a posh restaurant. The night Rothko had dinner at the restaurant (food transforming art?) for the first time he changed his mind about the commission and decided to return the money, telling his assistant that “anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine”. He donated the paintings to the Tate Modern in his final act of defiance against the NY social elite a decade later.

Fischer quotes Rothko describing the room in that very expensive restaurant in the Seagram Building as “a place where the richest bastards in New York will come to feed and show off”.

Rothko didn’t seem to Fischer in the least unworldly, let alone spiritual about his intentions. “I hope to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room,” he gloated, with paintings that will make those rich bastards “feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up”.

Jonathan Jones writes well, but he’s also hard to read. Like many writers at the Guardian and the Independent he paints all Americans (and Houstonians for that matter) with broad brush strokes and his articles are dripping with pseudo intellectual innuendo, but he is also a capable art reviewer, so it’s worth slogging through his condescending prose. 

In his previous articles he draws on the similarities between the Seagram Murals and the Rothko Chapel, both influenced by the vault-like space created by Michelangelo. He digs up details casual art fans may not be aware of - before the building was even built, Rothko constructed a life size model of the chapel space in his studio in Manhattan to get appropriate sense of dimension. Rothko did finish the paintings, but killed himself roughly a year before the chapel was completed - the same day the Seagram Murals arrived at the Tate Modern -  never making it to Houston to place the paintings himself.

If you are in Houston and plan to see the Rothko Chapel, you’ll find that navigating the city can be somewhat disorienting. Even the locals are frequently surprised by what they find in the patchwork of neighborhoods that make up this giant un-zoned city, so I put together a suggested itinerary loosely based on a day I pretended to be a tourist in my hometown. Have fun and hydrate.

7am: no reason to wake up at 7 unless you have to. Collect $200, go right back to sleep.

10am: head down to Midtown and share a plate of chicken and waffles at the Breakfast Klub (it’s really more of a lunch dish). No one eats healthy breakfasts in the Republic of Texas. Neither should you.

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