London, Tate Modern, Rothko
“A painting is not a picture of an experience but is the experience.”
— Mark Rothko
Click to View Larger
Granddaughter Mayim, age 10, and I were having a snack and a chat in the art museum when she interrupted me, “Hush Grandpa, use your museum voice” she whispered. Later, when I checked my cell phone, she reprimanded me. “Not here, in the museum” she said. She’d been in enough museums to know that there were rules. Smart kid, she’d mastered the appropriate boundaries. Museums have strict rules regarding touching exhibits. She knew them too.
Another year, another museum. Two children ran up to a carpet-like wall hanging in Tate Modern, London and immediately began to draw on it with their fingers. I was about to intervene when I noticed a multitude of faded finger scribblings on it. Apparently, it was intended to be finger graffitied, a beautiful break from museum tradition.
The color combination of the orange wall hanging, and the brown floor reminds me of a Mark Rothko painting except this one includes children. Christopher Rothko, Mark’s only son has said that as a child, his father would unroll a 30-foot roll of paper for him to paint on. He never gave instruction because he believed in “unbridled expression.”
Exactly what these children were doing.
