New Baptist Kidd on the Blog

No, I have not become so ‘apophatic’ that I have finally disappeared into virtual silence – but I have struggled to give voice to this next blog. Sabbatical days continue to be highly creative, but I seem to have run against a writer’s block, and I am wrestling to start the flow again.

I have been exploring all manner of fascinating things, but a major focus has been the work of the painter, Mark Rothko, whose paintings first impacted my thinking many years ago. Rothko has frequently been adopted by those who feel the lure of the apophatic way, and my own judgment is that his paintings have immense potential as inspirations for contemplative prayer – though this is quite a change from my initial estimate of his spiritual significance.

When I wrote about Rothko’s work in a paper I prepared earlier this year, I introduced him like this:

“My first conscious, and extremely memorable, encounter with the paintings of Mark Rothko happened in the Liverpool Tate soon after my arrival in Manchester in late 1980s. Several things come to mind as I recall that occasion: I was bemused; I was also a little angry. Why would the Tate dedicate a whole room, a substantial portion of its special exhibition area to nine immense, seemingly empty canvases? Entitled the ‘Seagram’ murals, each one is nearly nine feet high and the largest is fifteen feet wide. They form nine vast areas of colour, typically in blacks and dark maroons? Originally painted in the 1950’s they were acquired by the Tate in 1970 and hung in a specially designed room, now relocated in the Tate Modern, closely following the painter’s precise instructions concerning both shape and light. Why was I angry? I suppose I thought they were a ‘waste of space’!

A ‘waste of space’ – now there’s an interesting concept, one that, since those dismissive days, I have come to think about in very different ways. I increasingly feel that this little phrase symbolises something really quite destructive, right at the heart of our western culture? Space – be it the area between buildings, the interludes between entertainments, the thorough-going silence when we hear nothing and we say nothing – has become, almost by definition, wasteful. And the Rothkos buy into such ‘wastefulness’ big-time. Not only the scale of the room they occupy, but the very idea of exhibiting huge areas of seemingly undifferentiated colour. Surely anyone could have wasted space like this? And to make it all the worse - the Tate actually paid for them, large sums of money!

There is, however, just the possibility that ‘space’ is the hidden treasure we most badly need, in return for which selling up almost everything else would be a small price to pay. And there is just the possibility that Rothko was making a profound and prophetic gesture, offering us a gift, something to which we do well to attend.

I have never forgotten that first immersion into the dark colours of the Rothko Room at the Liverpool Tate. The memory still has a haunting quality suggesting that something important was happening within me, even if I did not understand just what it was at the time. I have stood in that room several times since, now back in its London home. Each time it is a significant, if still bemusing, experience. So that, now, I have a strong urge to return and stand there again – and again – and again – each time, perhaps, with a little more understanding. And the anger is no more!”

I wrote those words – or some words very much like them - back in February and I have read and thought a good deal more about Rothko in the intervening months. Not only that, I have twice re-visited the Rothko Room in the Tate Modern and taken more time (or do I mean space?) than ever before to try and take it all in. Actually, on the first re-visit, I gave myself 100 minutes, during which I kept a running diary of how my experience unfolded – and, in retrospect, the account is really quite fascinating, if not a little scary.

Perhaps I should provide some more background before I offer my diary (and some accompanying pictures). The room in the Tate Modern is large and is entirely dedicated to Rothko’s murals. It has no windows and the lighting has been carefully regulated following the artist’s instructions. The pictures are so large that if you stand a short distance from them and allow your gaze to melt into them, you soon find yourself, as it were, passing through into the picture space – a space where all manner of unpredictable things can happen.

I am not alone in writing about experiences of Rothko in this way – though it soon becomes clear that not everyone experiences these pictures in the same way. The pictures capture people quite differently, and sometimes not at all – I was merely interested to see how and where they might take me. It had long seemed reasonable to me that they should have the possibility of becoming building blocks for a non-conceptual spiritual exploration precisely because they do not demand a pre-defined response from the viewer. What they offer is an open space, a visual silence, within which all manner of communication can happen in potentially surprising ways. I suspect that I can be numbered amongst more receptive viewers, but I am quietly confident that for many an open-minded viewer they could easily become an interesting and significant point of entry into the experience of contemplation – setting us free from the constraints of all those conceptual formulations which pretend to provide us with a shortcut to spiritual insight.

I reproduce here thumbnails of the nine pictures which fill the walls. I am only putting them up as thumbnails: partly because of copyright, and partly because anything less than full size does not do the capturing thing anyway – so, if this begins to grab you, there is no alternative but to take a trip to London.

Below is a small Word file with a map of the room, showing the layout of the murals. The numbering is my own and just a way to cross reference to the notes in my diary.

ROTHKO_ROOM_-_layout.doc

No1

No2


No3


No4


No5


No6


No7


No8


No9


One last pre-amble. I had heard others refer to the stirring sexual energy of these pictures, but had not at all anticipated quite how energetic they might be. I have actually felt quite inhibited about putting this little diary up on the blog – one reason for my writer’s block - because, no doubt, it says things about me as well as about the pictures. A month later, I think I just need to go for it; it was such a good experience I really would like to share it.

***************

My diary of the 100 minutes reads like this:

“I arrive at the Tate Modern around 3.30pm on Friday 12th May 2006, and head directly for the Rothko Room. My plan from the start has been to spend a significant amount of time there – though at the start I remain unsure just how long will be appropriate. In practice it becomes quite hard to make the decision to leave, which is why part way through I set myself a 100 minute limit. Although nearly two hours, my time there slips by almost unnoticed. I estimate, however, that during the same span, something like a thousand other people pass through the room, most staying for no more than a minute, and only a few hovering to take in anything of deeper significance. I keep continuous notes, identifying changes in my perception and any new discoveries I make over the period of time – very much like the dialogue which becomes possible when we offer our attentive gaze to an icon.

3.38
I arrive in the room. A young, very attractive, couple are hovering near the centre, wound together like Hindu statues, evidently engrossed both in the gazing and in each other – a very innocent and really rather beautiful example of love-making one with the other as they gaze, repeatedly whispering observations and insights, often stroking each other gently and caringly. The sexual motif is up and running quicker than I had expected, and it is hard not to feel left out in the presence of their evident bliss. What a superbly appropriate activity for this context!

3.46
As I do my own gazing, No4 begins to change, losing its brighter redness and becoming very dark. I begin to see some vibrating movement in the central space. The inner edges of the darker surround become very sharp in focus. I now begin to experience for myself that this whole environment is very pleasing indeed and, gently, sexually arousing.

3.53
No8 loses all its colour differentiations, the verticals at the sides are becoming like monumental pillars marking the portal into a broad landscape.

3.56
The red centre of No9 becomes highlighted and emphatic, with vertical lines/bands moving side to side.

No2 is the least defined of any of the canvases, variously resembling ferns, foliage, vertebrae, etc.

4.00
No3 becomes disturbingly vaginal – which inevitably reminds me of the couple who are still very much enjoying their togetherness around the centre of the room.

Nos5/6 - No5 is hung immediately over No6 at the end of the room farthest from the door - and remains for me the least interpretable. As I watch, the upper canvas gains a kind of heavier weightiness, and the tentative line from the upper left, pointing down, feels to be very significant for the overall effect.

People with not unattractive bodies keep coming and sitting by me or near me, radiating their body heat. Only when they open their mouths does the spell get broken. Typically, one of them is discussing getting out of here as soon as possible - to buy some chicken burgers!

4.10
I begin to experience generally much more movement in many of the backgrounds.

4.13
From near the door No4 now begins to stand out very bright in its centre panel. It is interesting to run the eye Nos2-3-4 and move towards the brightness.

4.25
At this point a complete prat of a guide strides in with forty people in tow, and they litter the place, showing various of levels of disinterest. She brashly talks facts, tedious and uninspiring facts - where, when, who, the decision to give them to the Tate, historical categorisation (modern, contemporary with Pollock), suicide – as if all this says something usefully definitive about the canvases.

She never once shows any inclination to hint how or what it might be possible to see with commitment to a suitable kind of looking. How very sad! Not a hint of the holiness of it all – no cross-reference to the Rothko Chapel in Houston. All she can manage is to compare the canvases to prison windows. How depressing – and never once a mention of anything sexual, despite the continuing activities of the couple, who seem totally oblivious to this mass invasion.

And before you know it, whiz-bang, off they go to another gallery! Thank God for that!

Someone sitting with their partner, a little longer than the average visitor, does manage to vocalise in my hearing the slightly more hopeful line, “I like this.”

Nos5/6 remain unimportant to me. I can see a contrast between the hazy, vague edges to the colours in the upper panel, with the sharpness in the lower, but I cannot seem to do anything with it.

4.36
With an appropriate gaze, I can now lose the colour differentiations in No9 altogether, and it all becomes very mobile.

4.42
Nos1 and 9 are now presenting much brighter pillars of colour at the centre – but it is No4 which increasing becomes the richest window of all, as if out onto another world.

Another party comes in – much more sensitive to the whole context, but again the guide never hints at anything spiritual or sexual that might be going on. Is she repressed or just embarrassed? Again she introduces ideas of windows, prisons, feelings of enclosure; but not even a hint of transcendence – now beaming at me through No4.

4.49
Perhaps Nos5/6 are, after all, actually the anchor points of the whole room.

What about: Nos1/9, set either side of the door, as striking portals onto the whole scene, a kind of Sylla and Charybdis; then Nos2/3/4 on one side a path to brightness and affirmation; Nos7/8 inviting two deeply contrasting ways of seeing the whole extravaganza.

Or what about Nos1/2/3/4 essentially female; Nos 9/8/7 essentially male and 5/6 as some kind of unitative resolution.

Or how about this as a way of describing the whole sequence:
No1 startles the viewer into attention;
No2 has that furry, pubic sort of feel, vaguely arousing (embryonic, sinewy);
No3 has something decidedly oral about it;
No4 the climax, orgasmic - the possibility of a window into another world;
(So 1/2/3/4 all very female)
No9 a very different phallic announcement;
Nos8/7 the two ways of seeing the world (No8 with its sense of light, an open vista, full of hopefulness; No7 with its more sinister vision of death and despair.)

4.57
I do believe I am seeing a lurking breast in the lower left of the centre panel of No4.

I am beginning to see Nos5/6 differently now – a kind of horizontal lying together, female over male, post-coital tranquility.

5.05
I am beginning to feel very much at home in this space, deeply comfortable. The intensity of the charged sexual atmosphere now gives way to a more profound peaceful and sense of security.

No4 has now an even brighter red, definitely vaginal. And No3 becomes ever more sharply focused in its pubic allusion.

So how about this as a possible process for seeing:
No9 is the entry point, providing a sharp encounter and an initial shock of arousal;
Nos8/7 offers two radically different alternatives; which window shall I choose? Hope (No8) or despair (No7)? I will choose hope! Which takes me to:
No1 which offers a strong sense of female presence, him/her together;
No2 suggests the pubic region and provides distinct visual stimulation;
No3 is all very oral;
No4 is orgasmic;
And No5/6 suggests post-coital bliss – together, her over him.

5.18 (100 minutes later)
Time to leave – and as I leave a woman takes a seat and begins to breast feed her baby in this holy place – all of which, I have to say, feels rather wonderful.”

***************

Well, I did post a warning before I began! Though it should not be at all surprising, of course, to find such a close conjunction of spirituality and sexuality. Something like it has been in the writings of Christian mystics throughout the whole span of Christian history. From time to time it has been suppressed more strongly that at others, most notably in the Victorian era – but suppression is pretty unlikely to close it down.

One way into this powerful meeting of spirituality and sexuality can be focused around the concept of ‘desire’. The mystics repeatedly tell us, with vigour, that God is only taken seriously when we make God the supreme object of our desire. But an object of desire is unlikely to sustain its attraction without some reward of pleasure – to hold absolute centre stage, being found at prayer, taking shelter in the house of God, will have to be a pretty stunning experience. But in the modern world, there is so much to suggest that the experience will be almost the opposite. Religion looks so tedious, and not a little boring, certainly in its institutional manifestations. Where modern western people experience the arousal of desire is not in an invitation to pray, but in an invitation to sexual union. But what if the two are so intimately related that, without in any way denigrating the enormity of sexual pleasure, it becomes possible to show that union with God can also be a source of immense pleasure - on an orgasmic scale. They would be queuing at the church box-office!

But this is precisely what many of the mystics seem to be saying and, in so doing, merely reflect the glorious ambiguity of so much scriptural writing. Surely the rich sexual language of 'The Song of Songs', and many of the 'The Psalms' is no accident of semantics – it is testimony to the intense and comparable satisfactions experienced through both prayer and sex. How sad that so many commentators have felt the need to defuse it all with measured allegorical and symbolic interpretations!

A really significant message for our time is that, whilst sex alone can lead to an immense anti-climax, dissatisfaction and disappointment, giving priority to prayer and union with God not only has the potential to deliver its own intensity of pleasure, but in turn can transform embodied sexual experience as well - overcoming the frustration caused by sex’s ultimate failure to deliver lasting satisfaction alone.

The truth of this was demonstrated for me quite shockingly when I came upon some of the very late drawings of Pablo Picasso. I have long thought of Picasso as one of the most extraordinary artistic giants of the 20th century, and had marvelled at his capacity to sustain creative energy (notoriously sexual) decade after decade, through times of immense personal and social change. What I had never seen before was the immense despair drawn deep into his very late works, as he experienced the onset of sexual impotence and, as he saw it, with impotence the end of meaningful life. At the very pits, he draws himself as a monkey, brush in hand, painting a beautiful model, who he is convinced will no longer see anything in him to be desired or loved! God forbid! My admiration of Picasso’s achievements remains undiminished, but my determination not to depend for meaningful life on a less-than-ultimate desire is greatly increased.

All of which makes evident sense. How could it be other? Surely the creator deserves ultimate priority over everything else in creation? Not, however, obliterating the creature and creaturely pleasures, but enriching and enhancing all that has already been built deep into the fabric of this extraordinary creation.

And I am daring to suggest that the culturally strange experience of ‘space’ provided by the paintings of Mark Rothko is one way to begin to discover some of the truth of all this. Rothko’s murals can provide a remarkable focus for spiritual reflection, an invitation to taste the joy of life within a divine horizon – an opportunity for pleasure which is simultaneously spiritual and sexual, a full celebration of being human (of which we need in no way be ashamed!), out in the light, in clear and open space, delighting in the presence of God.