Sitting before the Seagram Murals

grief gently sobbed from me
while I clambered through
a deep red abyss.

I asked the murals to keep my pain
but they refused

(you cannot give us what was never yours

take it back)
they said

Drowning in bruised colour, I stood


but grief held my hand as we left,
staring back into the sea,
wondering why it could not leave me.

Stay, 
I said-
You are all I have left
of what was never mine

How can I give you up?

The Seagram Murals. Part 2

Today I visited the Tate Modern for the first time since last summer.

Last summer was hard. I remember feeling so bad that I would look forward to each evening when I would finally be able to unleash the tears that I had been with holding from myself. One day, I remembered the murals and from that point it was not just a casual desire to see them sometime- it was a must.

I just had to see the murals. I wrote about it here on my blog (if I was a good blogger I'd link it here now but alas).

Never in my life have I experienced a sudden need to do something like that -- visit a place for no apparent reason (well, I realised the reason later).

When I entered that room with all the murals facing me I remember being overwhelmed with emotion and I lost the battle to my tears. They escaped as desperately as I had been fighting them back. Quickly.

Today I went to see them again but it was a different scenario. I had planned to go alone but my brother ended up tagging along. And I wasn't in as much pain when I walked into the room. The room was busy (more so than last year) and there were people taking pictures. I still felt that sense of being swept up in an abyss of colour and emotion but there was a distance that I felt from my previous summer's experience of the murals. I felt like I could look at my past self objectively from a place where things were different. I wasn't looking into the murals searching for a way out of my pain; I was looking at them having accepted the pain. My thoughts were less foggy.

That isn't to say that I don't feel similar pain and anxiety to last year. I suppose the difference is that a lot of what I was dreading last summer, I faced. Now, although I am facing more challenges ahead, I think subconsciously I know that I have sort of 'been there, done that'- written the blog post, if you will.

It's strange. I'm not sure that I will ever in my life experience that intensity so acutely when seeing the murals. I cannot tell if that is a good or bad thing but it's amazing how timing works. For the moments in which I experienced the murals, they were everything. They were the visual manifestation of everything that I had locked up inside. Everything that I wasn't saying verbally to anyone, confronted me in this abstract art form. It was liberating, poignant and for the first time in a long time it felt like I was being honest with myself (which of course is a lie; if looking at a beautiful piece of art work is how you justify not sharing your issues with someone, then you are most certainly in denial and lying to yourself. But that's another blog post).

The Seagram Murals.

Whenever I'm watching something, I'm doodling at the same time. I'm not quite sure how and when I developed this habit. I always keep a notebook nearby and I just doodle.

A week or so ago I began drawing random squares and colouring them in.  After the first time, I ended up with a page covered in small blue squares. Looking at them all immediately after, I recalled Rothko's paintings- "The Seagram Murals". Although- I didn't know them by name at the time. 

Let's go back in time. 

About four years ago, a few friends and I visited the Tate Modern in London. We went on a few guided tours and browsed for a bit, and then we came to the Rothko paintings. The "Seagram Murals" are in a smaller gallery that is lighted dimly. The room immediately has a sombre and almost heavy atmosphere. I remember walking in there for the first time and being hit by this wave of feeling. 

Art is difficult. I am no expert on art and what makes it good or bad. Walking around the Tate that day, following a lady who provided insight into all these wonderful paintings and their history, I felt the importance of art, but I definitely needed some basic knowledge to access the paintings she described. For example, she gave such a good background of some of Picasso's paintings which helped when I looked at his works. My point here is that getting to an initial response was hard for me. I had to look and think deeply at the paintings and installations I came across. 

Walking into Room 3 and being confronted by those deep reds was a completely different experience. I remember that room as being empty, although I'm sure it can't have been. According to my memory, I entered that room alone. My friends probably came in after me. I stared at the murals for a long time. The first ones I looked at were"Section 74" and "Section 5". Hanging together, these two murals evoked the strongest feeling I have ever had towards art. The colour, the ambience of the room, the scale and the beauty of the murals made me feel overwhelmed.With sadness, heaviness, memory. Everything. I remember that moment because the feeling surprised me. I didn't realise I could react to art so immediately. I didn't realise how much it could make me feel. 

Staring at my doodles of random squares, that experience is what I recalled. Now, I am not saying I am a budding Rothko-esque artist (is that even a thing?), but being hit by blocks colour reminded me of being at the Tate. 

I have been thinking about those murals ever since. 

So today, I visited the Tate again. 

Oh man, walking into that room. 

I cried. 

Not in a passionate, dramatic way. It was quiet, subtle. I brushed the tears away quickly before anyone could see. But seeing those murals again just filled me with so many feelings. According to Rothko, the best way to experience the murals is to sit and look at them, almost meditatively. I did that, and it was beautiful. 

Staring at these large mural, I was confronted by everything not in front of me. There is no drawing, no landscape, no figure. The murals give you a shape, almost like a frame, almost like windows. That's the way I see it anyway. The simplest (and probably extremely reductive) way of viewing the murals for me was to see them as windows or entrances into yourself- myself. The soul, if you will. Sitting there, staring at those murals, I would see certain strokes bleed into others. I would feel calm and scared all at once. 

For this one above- "Section 4"- I remember all the colours blurring in and changing almost. The longer I gazed at them, the more I grew to love and see the murals.

They have given me the most profound experience of art that I have ever had.

Murals in order:

Mark Rothko

Red on Maroon Mural, Section 74 1959

Tate. Presented by the artist through the American Federation of Arts 1969 

© Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko/DACS 1998

Red on Maroon Mural, Section 5 1959

Red on Maroon Mural, Section 4 1959