Reflecting Pool with Barnett Newman’s Sculpture, “Broken Obelisk”
Photo: Savannah Holly
Landscape Architect Thomas Woltz’s Cerebral Design at Rothko Chapel By Virginia Billeaud Anderson
R
othko could be high minded. He dumped his gallerist Sidney Janis because Janis represented that twerp Warhol. And he butted heads with architect Philip Johnson over the Rothko Chapel’s design. Rothko’s need to control his paintings’ presentation caused Johnson to depart the project. Why uptight? As a philosopher priest of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Rothko believed art’s dead serious purpose was to transform the viewer, and evoke transcendence and the sublime. For John and Dominique de Menil’s chapel commission, he painted encompassing abstractions with large expanses of color which direct the viewer inward. Fifty years after it opened, the Rothko Chapel is undergoing a $30 million renovation and expansion to continue its mission as a meditative space which is also a venue for cultural and philosophical exchanges on themes such as social justice, in which the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela participated. Landscape architect Thomas Woltz is fanciful shellac on the chapel’s expansion. Described as visionary, Woltz’s green spaces straddle an ambitious master plan. It prioritized repairing the building, to keep the art safe, one clue to the art’s val14 | Mv | September + October 2020
