Black on maroon is one of a series of paintings named the ‘Seagram Murals’ by Mark Rothko, all created to fill the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, New York. The most noticeable thing about the series is there sheer size; Black on Maroon is an impressive 2667mm high and 3812mm wide.
On completion of the Paintings in 1958, Rothko told the publisher of Harpers magazine that he had planned to paint a series that would “ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room”. when the restaurant failed to complain he removed the paintings claiming that they needed to be in a place where people could pay attention to them without the distractions of a busy restaurant
The painting is typical of Rothko’s style. It features two seemingly luminous, soft-edged rectangles, Like the rest of the Seagram murals the canvas is extremely saturated with paint. They all now sit in the Tate’s “Rothko room” a room specifically built to house the paintings in the conditions that Rothko wished. In the exhibition his paintings are said to have a ‘meditative feel’ the dark room amplifies the already dark shades of deep dark reds, oranges, maroons, browns, blacks, and greys.
Black on maroon is exactly what it says, ‘Black paint on top of maroon paint ’ it has no artistic style and could have been painted by anyone. The most impressive thing about the painting and indeed the whole series is that it took so long for him to do so very little. The only artworks that this can be compared to is the modern artists of today, that like Rothko try to put some sort of deep meaning into whatever random object they come across.
As for the medative qualities of the peaces, after spending some time in the ‘Rothko room ’ I deduced that it was the room ambience rather then the paintings that had this calming effect and blank canvases would have been far more effective.
