Pod Insights Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin Psychologist, writer, and curator Christopher Rothko on preserving his father’s legacy About this episode Christopher Rothko never thought he would have a career in the art world but he has become the driving force behind preserving his father, painter Mark Rothko’s, legacy. Christopher along with his sister Kate are the copyright holders to their father’s work and oversee exhibitions of Mark Rothko paintings around the world. With a background in clinical psychology, Christopher is also known for his writing about his father's art, life, and legacy, as well as his own reflections on the emotional and philosophical aspects of Mark Rothko’s paintings. Through his books and public work, Christopher has enabled the art of Mark Rothko to continue to resonate with audiences worldwide.
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Transcript 10,280 words · 14 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:36 Alec Baldwin? This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today has a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan, but hasn't practiced in over 20 years. As is often the case, life had other plans for Christopher Rothko. Today, he is the driving force behind preserving the work and legacy of his father, painter Mark Rothko. Christopher Rothko, along with his sister Kate, are the copyright holders to their father's work and oversee exhibitions of Mark Rothko's paintings all over the world. It's a job tailor-made for the Rothko family, but it was not the path that Christopher Rothko saw for himself until later in life.
2:22 Speaker 05 My intention was to live my own life and independent of the artwork, not by any means arms length, but I had some administrative duties, but it was my intention to have my own career and that was something that would be very much apart from the artwork.
2:34 Alec Baldwin? In clinical psychology?
2:36 Speaker 05 In clinical psychology. Before that, I was going to be a musicologist. I kept trying on different hats and then in the end, the Rothko hat is the one that fit and it kind of snuck up on me. I don't think I would have done this if I didn't have my own practice, hadn't gotten my degree. I'd gone out there, I'd done what I intended to do and then I found that the artwork appealed more and that's okay.
2:54 Alec Baldwin? Was there a moment, was there a clarifying moment for you where all of a sudden you said, "I'm going to go do this now"?
3:01 Speaker 05 No, I think it was cumulative, but there were a series of exhibitions happening mostly in Europe in the late 90s and early 2000s and typically done by younger curators who hadn't worked with my father's work before. And my phone just kept ringing and they had questions for me and to my surprise, I actually knew the answers to the questions or an answer to the question. And they invited me to help lighten hang the works, which again, I found that I had more to contribute than I realized and I really enjoyed it and I felt like I had a kind of a knack for it. And I really just voted with my feet. I kept taking on more and more of those projects and I stopped taking on new patients and eventually, especially involved with a move back to New York City where I was going to have to get relicensed and there was going to be a real process to rebuilding my practice. It just made a lot of sense to do Rothko.
3:44 Speaker 05 But if there hadn't been the passion there, I wouldn't have done it. I would have proceeded with the psychology.
3:49 Alec Baldwin? Now, talk about your psychology career. When your father was gone and then your mother was gone months later, correct?
3:56 Speaker 05 That's right.
3:57 Alec Baldwin? You were raised in Ann Arbor, correct?
4:00 Speaker 05 No, in actually Columbus, Ohio, the enemy territory for people from Ann Arbor. My mother's sister lived in Columbus and I lived with her and her husband during elementary school and into junior high.
4:11 Alec Baldwin? And what was it in your background that invited you to study clinical psychology?
4:17 Speaker 05 You know, it's, I just found it's always the way that I looked at the world. I was a literature major in college. I always was fascinated with deeply psychological literature. I wrote a huge paper on Moby Dick and another one on a couple of different Dostoevsky novels. And I've always been fascinated by how people tick and what our motivations are, the ones that we maybe aren't so conscious of until they sort of creep up on us and bite us in the ass.
4:39 Alec Baldwin? Where did you go undergrad?
4:41 Speaker 05 I was at Yale undergraduate and then Michigan, that's the Ann Arbor piece. I was at Michigan.
4:45 Alec Baldwin? Oh, you went there for school, for graduate school, in clinical psychology?
4:47 Speaker 05 That's right.
4:48 Alec Baldwin? Right. I only asked people where they went to college, not with an eye toward prestige, but more toward climate. You know, when I learned the number of people that went to Bennington College, I'm like, oh my God, they all went up there and froze to death. So you studied clinical psychology and to the best of your ability without, you know, violating anything, what kind of work did you do? Like you saw patients, your patients, you interacted with them on a whole breadth of topics and problems and so forth? Or you, did you focus on something?
5:18 Speaker 05 Well, yes, and especially when you're first starting out, you can't be so selective about what you do if you want to have patients. So the distinction you're making between psychiatrists who can prescribe and psychologists who don't, of course, the insurance companies like the psychiatrists a lot more because it's, you know, as expensive those medications are, they're still cheaper than paying for an hour of psychotherapy. Psychologists have actually gotten a little bit of the squeeze over the last few decades because of that. But yes, I did a full range, always adult and adolescent. I'd done a training with adolescents in what's called a day hospital, a partial hospitalization program. And I found if you work with adolescents, you get a lot of referrals because adolescents are tough. It's really rewarding because they're still so capable of making change and everything is so raw. But, you know, most of them don't
6:01 Speaker 05 want to talk to you. You know, I was, I think, 28 years old when I saw my first adolescent and the first thing they said was, could I see somebody younger? So, you know, you're the other and they're not there because they want to be. They're there because somebody made them go.
6:12 Alec Baldwin? So you eventually wound up working with a lot of kids?
6:15 Speaker 05 I did. I ended up working with a lot of adolescents. Never young kids, except for a very brief moment in my training.
6:20 Alec Baldwin? During what period of time? What years?
6:22 Speaker 05 Would have been like 96 to 99.
6:26 Alec Baldwin? Right. Because I was wondering how much children in the analytical field are changing and how different they are because of devices and pads and my kids are in a private school because they were in a full language immersion program. I didn't have any problem with them going to public school. In fact, down the street from where we live in the city is a great public school, but we wanted to go to this particular school. And I'm steeped in parents, not just in our school, but elsewhere, where they give the kids the meds, even if it's reluctant, they give it to them early. I mean, these kids are on ADHD medication when they're, you know, seven, eight years old. And I'm like, I'm like, I mean, that was just not a part of the landscape when I was a kid at all, never.
7:09 Speaker 05 Yeah. No, it's absolutely psychiatric medications have changed things. And of course, as you alluded to, having phones in their hands from a really young age really changes things. And maybe some, maybe those two things go together, right? They need the psychiatric meds because they have so much overstimulation from those phones from day one. We're starting to see some studies now about how damaging that can be, especially for younger kids.
7:27 Alec Baldwin? Well, I find also that, I mean, yes, I would blame devices and maybe, and there's obviously a linkage between devices and this, but I would also think to myself that I'm just horrified about how their face is ground into the news and events and the darkness of the world. The world is an unsafe place and they know that. There's no, we don't really prioritize making them believe that they're in a safe world. They walk out into the world as a young kid unshielded, you know?
7:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, my version of that is we moved back to New York in the year 2000.
8:00 Alec Baldwin? From where?
8:01 Speaker 05 From Michigan.
8:02 Alec Baldwin? Right.
8:02 Speaker 05 And nine 11 happened 13 months after we got here. And we knew lots of parents who were like, sitting there watching the news with their kids, you know, their, their four year olds, their two year olds watching with them. And we, we really just kept it off. We thought like, they, they don't need to see these pictures. They're going to learn about it. They're going to hear about it. Eventually they'll see the pictures, but they don't need to see that now.
8:20 Alec Baldwin? Is your wife, you're married?
8:22 Speaker 05 I think so.
8:23 Alec Baldwin? Right, right, right.
8:24 Speaker 05 I was this morning.
8:25 Alec Baldwin? Right, right, exactly. That's I'm gonna use that answer. Your wife, where's she from originally?
8:29 Speaker 05 She's originally from Long Island.
8:31 Alec Baldwin? What town?
8:31 Speaker 05 Comac.
8:32 Alec Baldwin? Of Comac, I know Comac. Rosie O'Donnell's from Comac.
8:34 Speaker 05 Yes, yes, no, actually, she she knew Rosie O'Donnell growing up.
8:37 Alec Baldwin? That's funny.
8:37 Speaker 05 Yeah, she's she's an attorney.
8:39 Alec Baldwin? Aha. Now, I guess what I come back to, and if and if you don't want to answer this question, I'm I'm completely fine. So your father passed when he was, you were six?
8:48 Speaker 05 Mm hmm, that's right.
8:49 Alec Baldwin? So your so your father dies and kills himself, as everybody knows, and then your mother, who was not as healthy as one might hope, she was an alcoholic. So you're left with the mother at home. And I'm even assuming when you were a child, even younger, if you can recall, that was your father gone all day in a studio?
9:07 Speaker 05 Yeah, but he kept kind of banker's hours. I mean, he was gone all day, but he was home in the evenings for dinner. I mean, he really was not like down at the the Cedar Dar bar with Pollock and Decuning and all those guys like tanking away all night.
9:17 Alec Baldwin? Cedar Tavern, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he was around on a reliable basis. But was your childhood something that might have propelled you into the first stage of your work?
9:28 Speaker 05 Yeah, I do. I do get asked that. The answer is yes. I don't have any direct experience of that. You know, I was always a pretty happy kid and definitely those, you know, years five and six were were pretty bad. They were really difficult to my parents. Both both of my parents were not in good shape. But my sister looked out for me a lot. And my mother, you know, she was not in good shape, but she was still very much a functional mother.
9:48 Alec Baldwin? She functioned, yeah.
9:48 Speaker 05 Yeah, so I don't know how that launched me on my current trajectory, but my sense is, because I think my father also looked at the world quite psychologically. My my sense is that I I got that from him and it wasn't my trying to find answers desperately, having had this terrible period in my in my childhood.
10:05 Alec Baldwin? Where'd your dad grow up?
10:06 Speaker 05 He, well, he was born in what's today Latvia. I mean, I think he thought of his Russian empire had been for a couple hundred years. And they moved to Portland, Oregon, when he was 10 years old.
10:14 Alec Baldwin? That's where my daughter lives.
10:15 Speaker 05 Ah, different place in those days.
10:17 Alec Baldwin? When did he come to New York?
10:18 Speaker 05 So he um he got a scholarship to to Yale when he was eighteen and he lasted there a couple of years, lost his scholarship. They had a very Yale would go back and forth between welcoming Jews and saying, we have too many.
10:30 Alec Baldwin? Yale.
10:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, so the his so his scholarship got taken away after his freshman year. He toughed it out for another year and then he just left and he went to New York. And just as he put it, bummed around and starved a bit.
10:39 Alec Baldwin? So he went to Yale and studied painting. Was he somebody's, is that what he studied there?
10:44 Speaker 05 No, not at all. He really had no contact with the, I mean, some, some exposure to the arts, but no, he hadn't taken art classes. Didn't take, he was studying economics and history and math at Yale. And he came to New York and he actually got involved in theater. He actually got involved in theater, but not on a professional level, although he did do some, I think, paid summer stock. We, he told this story for years and we thought it was just him BSing, but he said that he had been in a play and that Clark Gable had been his understudy. And, and yeah, isn't that, isn't that, isn't that funny? But in fact.
11:16 Alec Baldwin? That's the funniest thing I've ever heard.
11:17 Speaker 05 But in fact, we found the program and there he is listed in, in the lead role and Clark Gable is like well down and apparently was here. He was had a much more minor role, but was also my father's understudy.
11:28 Alec Baldwin? Are you kidding me?
11:29 Speaker 05 No, so it was really true. Now, the story, my father's story, and this we have no way of confirming is that Clark Gable only got a part because his girlfriend was the director. But, but in any case, so that, but my father had no contact with art until a friend invited him to the Art Students League. For to a drawing class one, one day, just kind of on a lark, my father went and he fell in love with it. And.
11:48 Alec Baldwin? Oh my God.
11:49 Speaker 05 But it was largely self-taught, just took a couple of courses there and was largely self-taught and doing this evenings and weekends because he had to work odd jobs. I mean, he had, he had to pay the rent, which occasionally he did, so.
11:59 Alec Baldwin? So you guys weren't alive then?
12:01 Speaker 05 Oh, no, no, no.
12:02 Alec Baldwin? This is eons before.
12:04 Speaker 05 This is, you know.
12:04 Alec Baldwin? Was your mother an actress? Thirty meters from the theater?
12:07 Speaker 05 No, my, my mother was an artist too. My mother was a graphic artist and they got introduced by a mutual friend.
12:12 Alec Baldwin? Now, your father goes to the Art Students League. I find that intriguing because I have a few friends of mine who passed through there and it was maybe not where they landed as a career, but they recall it as one of the most beautiful times of their life, being able to go there. Your dad was how old when you were born?
12:31 Speaker 05 Almost sixty.
12:32 Alec Baldwin? Wow, we could have been great pals. And he was famous, and I loathe that word, but he was famous and successful. How long before you were born? You were born into a Rothko. The Rothko that was your father was successful.
12:47 Speaker 05 Yes, yes, but my sister was not. My sister's 13 years older than me, and she was born in 1950. And that's just the moment he starts getting discovered, along with the other New York artists, New York school artists, I should say. But, you know, even though he got discovered at that point, and he starts having some exhibitions, he can't support himself just painting until about the time I'm born, shortly before that. So it's, you know, it's still is a long, hard slog. And, you know, he was born in 1903. So it's really, he's almost 50 years old before he gets recognition, and almost 60 before he's really can just be an artist.
13:18 Alec Baldwin? Now, your father passed away, and you were six. So many years go by before you're doing these installations and things like that. Was your entree into that world?
13:27 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm, that's right.
13:27 Alec Baldwin? And your lighting and installing and so forth. The current position you hold is what is your title?
13:33 Speaker 05 I don't have a title.
13:34 Alec Baldwin? No title?
13:35 Speaker 05 I'm self-employed.
13:37 Alec Baldwin? I'm Mark Rothko's son.
13:38 Speaker 05 I'm Mark Rothko's, I'm an occasional curator. But I, you know, for me, it's been the collaboration work with professionals in the field with, you know, just really brilliant people who have completely different viewpoints about my father's work. That's been incredibly satisfying to have those kind of interactions. It's also given me an opportunity to write a lot. I went into college thinking I was going to emerge a writer. Somehow I didn't, but I've written as a music critic and other things over the years. But this really got me a chance to be an essayist, and I've written now 20 some essays on my father's art and related topics. And I lecture a good deal, too, which, you know, if you'd asked me 20 years ago, would I enjoy that, I'd tell you, no, no, I really, I don't like the public limelight. But in fact, it's been great.
14:14 Alec Baldwin? I see this bibliography of things related to you and your father. I want to get to the chapel for a moment because, I mean, I live in East Hampton, Long Island, in Amagansett, and the Demon Hills were a big presence out there. The Demon Hills donated the structures on their property that was sold. They sold their private land of 50 acres, oceanfront acres, to two people. They built two houses on 50 acres. And the houses are not really compatible because they skin them alive. I mean, they just stood, all the trees are gone, all the growth is gone. And you see this soaring or this looming pathway down to these houses toward the ocean. But the De Monille sold their property and they took the structures on the property
14:56 Alec Baldwin? and donated them and the money to restore them to become town hall of the town of East Hampton, rather, not the village. And I mention that only because, you know, I mean, everybody knew the De Monille's out there and so forth. So the chapel, it was their idea? That's why it's in Houston? How did your father end up, or this thing end up in Houston? This was after he passed away?
15:14 Speaker 05 No, no, it's
15:15 Alec Baldwin? While he was alive?
15:16 Speaker 05 No, well before he passes away.
15:17 Alec Baldwin? Right, okay.
15:18 Speaker 05 So they had known my father for a number of years. They were instrumental in getting him one of his early big shows, which is at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston in 1957.
15:26 Alec Baldwin? Right.
15:26 Speaker 05 They've been collecting his work for a number of years. And then it was really Jean De Monille had the idea to make a chapel. They were deeply, deeply religious people, deeply spiritual Catholics. And they were collecting a broad range of art, particularly contemporary art. And he had an idea to create a chapel and a quiet place for reflection and one that would speak to the believer or the non-believer with a, with a different voice. So not one that's going to be filled with crucifixes and pietas, but in fact, use contemporary art to engage the seekers, really. And they thought that that sort of modern language of art would connect with a, a modern generation in a way that older churches were not. So they immediately thought about my father. They knew about the mural series he'd done for the Four Seasons Restaurant, which he'd withdrawn. They thought about those works.
16:10 Speaker 05 They approached him and he said, no, no, no, I want to do something from scratch. I want to do something that's specific to this idea, specific to this place. And in fact, I want to design the space as well. So that's in 1964. And he basically put everything else aside for the next three years to create not just the paintings, but the whole interior of that space. It's really one artwork.
16:31 Alec Baldwin? Remind people, by the way, what the Four Seasons Restaurant, Brolio, was about.
16:36 Speaker 05 So he was hired to decorate a private dining room at the Four Seasons Restaurant by Philip Johnson, the famous architect. To my father, it was not a decoration job. It was he was going to create a temple, basically, inside this restaurant. And over a course of a couple of years, there are different visions for what that was going to be clashed too much. And my father realized he's never going to make artwork that anyone's going to look at seriously when they're cutting private deals, the wine is flowing, you know, there's the most expensive food in New York in front of them, they're not going to look at his artwork. So he eventually withdraws from that, from that commission, having, having painted like five times more paintings than he needed to for the commission, but he got completely caught up in the whole idea.
17:14 Alec Baldwin? What happened to the paintings? Did he destroy them?
17:16 Speaker 05 No, no, no, he never destroyed anything. No, never destroyed anything. From the earliest works, we have hundreds of sheets of, you know, sometimes just doodles, but little line drawings and things, never destroyed anything. And continued to hang some of his early work at home, so it's.
17:30 Alec Baldwin? Home was where?
17:31 Speaker 05 Home was at East 96th Street. That was the home I knew. My sister grew up in Hell's Kitchen.
17:35 Alec Baldwin? And the studio was where?
17:36 Speaker 05 Well, the last studio again, which was rented for that chapel commission, because he wanted to be able to mock up three walls of this chapel, was a carriage house on East 69th Street.
17:45 Alec Baldwin? Did the DMOs gift him that?
17:47 Speaker 05 Well, they rented it for him and then, and then he maintained, he took it over in the, the three years that he was still painting after the commission was done. He took over the rent of that and stayed in that studio because he just found it such an inspiring space.
18:02 Alec Baldwin? Rothko Foundation conservator, Christopher Rothko. If you enjoy conversations with the families of legendary artists, check out my episode with the children of Leonard Bernstein, Jamie and Alex Bernstein.
18:15 Speaker 06 There was this Aunt Clara who moved to Florida, and so she sent all her furniture over to her brother Sam's house. And along with all the couches and break fronts arrived this upright piano. Our dad was 10 years old. The piano got hauled into the house and as our father told it, he touched the piano and that was it. He knew. It's one of those stories and he taught himself theory. He just played the piano, he could figure it all.
18:49 Alec Baldwin? To hear more of my conversation with Jamie and Alex Bernstein, go to here's the thing.org. After the break, Christopher Rothko reveals what his father would have thought of the current price tag on his paintings and the commodification of art today.
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20:44 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. In March of 2010, playwright John Logan's Red made its Broadway debut after opening in London the year before. Red tells the story of the Rothko murals that the painter was commissioned to create for the world-famous Four Seasons Restaurant, and his ultimate decision to walk away. I wanted to know what Christopher Rothko thought of the depiction of his father in the show.
21:10 Speaker 05 There are a lot of very compelling things about Red, but it's not truly a biographical work. The two things that are not true about it, first of all, the assistant, who is his foil in all of this, and who he really bullies throughout most of the play, didn't really exist. And my father was certainly highly opinionated about art, and was very passionate about art. And I think it's great, 90-minute play, really about a philosophy of art and a philosophy of life. But he would not have, I don't think he would have beaten up on his assistant for an hour and a half.
21:39 Alec Baldwin? He wasn't rude.
21:40 Speaker 05 No, no. He was actually quite caring. He was a big-hearted man. I think you can see that in the artwork. But, you know, that said, we get together with his artist buddies, and they would certainly debate into the night, you know, their different ideas of what's important in artwork, and what is the role of the artist, and, you know, and especially when he's younger, a lot of political ideas as well, so.
21:59 Alec Baldwin? Well, I think it's interesting to me that someone, for dramatic effect, obviously, they create a character. I mean, I'm glad to know that. I didn't know that. I thought there was some guy walking around New York who was like talking to himself for 20 years after your father was gone. So damaged from that whole relationship. But the other thing is this idea of money and wealth and paintings. Your father, he hated that, the speculative market in painting, which we have, which is wall-to-wall now. He was really down on that?
22:25 Speaker 05 I mean, he was adamant that an artist should be well-paid, that they should be able to support themselves to their livelihood. He was very pleased when he had some success, and he, you know, he would sometimes sell from his studio, and he would, you know, insist on getting what he felt he should get for his paintings. That said, when it became a commodity, it really started to bother him. And if you saw it today, you know, with investment groups buying his paintings rather than people who loved the paintings, oh, he would be devastated.
22:52 Alec Baldwin? I was often said, I thought there was a term as to where the painter, their estate should be paid for every transaction of the painting. If you take a painting and you buy it for $4 million, and you sell it for $20 million 10 years later, you've got to kick back some vig on that to the estate.
23:06 Speaker 05 So there actually is a term for that? It's a French term, it's called the droit de suite, which means, basically, it's the right of what follows. So in France, and much of the European Union, it's 10%. And the Artist Rights Society, who works with our estate, but many others as well, has been pushing for years to try and have something similar in the US. But America is about the art of the deal, right? The businessman who makes the clever purchase. And I don't think we're going to see that for a while.
23:32 Alec Baldwin? Now, one would imagine, from a layman's perspective, that it's easier to knock off a Rothko, because it's the classic frame and two bands of color, or a box, it's this interaction of color. And I think to myself, it's much easier to knock off Rothko than these much more complex, detailed, intricate figures. And then I thought to myself, is it the opposite in the modern world, because of all the resources that are available to do? How have you dealt with, in your career with this, now that you're in charge, so to speak, knockoffs of your father's paintings?
24:08 Speaker 05 Well, so I think there is a certain format that's familiar, and people sort of recognize, oh, that's a Rothko, or it's Rothko-like, we see them knocked off in advertisements all the time. But what's hard to do is create the magic. And there's nowhere to hide. If you make a mistake, there's nowhere for it to hide. You have to be pretty good to make something really wonderful happen from those very simple elements. But in fact, yes, we, and this is not the real we, this is my sister and me, because we're the co-copyright holders. You know, we've had to deal with this over the years. We know that my father was really protective of his art. He really wanted to be seen in the best circumstances, and really in situations, particularly museums, where people could go and appreciate it, and really have communion with the painting, if you will. So the very idea that it's used in advertising, for example,
24:53 Speaker 05 was something that he would not be happy about. So when we do see that, we use our copyright agency, we try to get the ads taken down. Sometimes it's successful, sometimes it's not, but... You know, for us, it's, and I really have really learned this from doing big exhibitions. The work, when it's, when it works, it's so much an experience. It's so much that interaction between the viewer and the painting that we try to limit. How many other ways there are to see the paintings or things that are like Rothko's. We wanted people to really have that face-to-face interaction.
25:22 Alec Baldwin? Where is the location around the world, in the US and in New York? Literally, I want to ask all three, that hangs the most of your father's art?
25:32 Speaker 05 Well, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, they were the recipients of my father's foundation. That's a complex story, but let's just leave it at that. And so they have a dedicated Rothko room on the top floor of one of the towers of the I Am Pay building. And they often have Rothkos dotted elsewhere in their collection. They're also incredibly generous, loaning their works to Rothko exhibitions elsewhere. But they consistently have a room. MoMA has, for the last five years, had a room up. They have, I think, ten Rothkos on canvas, plus more on paper. And the Metropolitan has also hung a room off and on for the last several years. But there are major Rothko holdings in Los Angeles at the-
26:06 Alec Baldwin? Houston, I would say.
26:07 Speaker 05 Houston, at the Manille Collection. Of course, the Rothko Chapel is its own artwork. But LA, LA Mocha has a fabulous collection of Rothkos. The Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago has three major Rothkos. So they're dotted around this country. And then the Tate Gallery in London, they have a set of those murals that my father painted for the Four Seasons, as well as three other wonderful paintings.
26:27 Alec Baldwin? The ones your father painted for the Four Seasons are on display at the Tate?
26:31 Speaker 05 They have nine of the thirty-three. So he put together-
26:34 Alec Baldwin? Where are the others?
26:35 Speaker 05 He put, he put together a group and gifted them to the Tate in 1970, because he'd had such good interactions with them and with the British public around his artwork. So they've had that Rothko room, basically, on a more or less permanent display for the last fifty years. And then there's another group in Japan at the Calum War Museum, a group of seven. That was a group that my sister and I put together, and they've created a dedicated room. And the others are at the National Gallery and a few in private collections.
27:00 Alec Baldwin? What's a book you would recommend, which I'm gonna run out the door and go buy it right now, that shows this field of paintings of your father's? If I wanna see in a book what the Four Seasons paintings, or what they look like, because I've never seen them, I don't think. What do you think is a book that's a great book in terms of displaying a sampling of your father's work?
27:19 Speaker 05 Well, my sister and I put together the most comprehensive book that's ever, ever been done. A few years ago, it's a Rizzoli published this, it's just published this in 2023, I believe it was. And it's a large slipcase volume. It's just called Mark Rothko, and Rizzoli's a publisher, and I think there are 240 works. That's both paintings and on paper. And then the Rothko catalog resume of paintings, of just the paintings on canvas. It's over 800 works, and that's still in print, that's at Yale University. So both of those are gonna get you enough Rothko for a lifetime.
27:50 Alec Baldwin? Enough bang for the buck, I think. It's interesting that you say there's a strong presence of this stuff in Japan. I'm wondering, does your father's work, this is a glib word, but does it play better in certain parts of the world than others?
28:01 Speaker 05 Absolutely, absolutely. The Japanese love his work, they were early collectors of his work. There are major paintings in multiple collections around Japan, both private and public. And they have this mural room, and there's gonna be, there was a really good show in 96 there. And we're gonna do another show in 2028. That is not my show, but working with a dear friend of mine, who's a fabulous curator, Sumi Hayashi. And she has a fabulous team that's gonna be showing at multiple locations around Japan in 2028.
28:28 Alec Baldwin? Now, you mentioned something about the gestalt of your father's paintings. You approached it that way, I think. What did you mean by that?
28:36 Speaker 05 You know, it's interesting, in the course of doing this exhibition in Paris that was last year, and which had, I think, 850,000 visitors, which was remarkable. But I did a lot of tours during that time. And somebody actually pulled me aside at one point, and said to me, you know, I notice you never get up close to the paintings. You're never like looking at the details, you're always standing back. And it's true, and I do that with my father's work, I do that with other work as well, but especially my father's. There are a lot of details, there are a lot more details than people would think in these big, broad, abstract works. But in fact, it's all additive. All these different layers of color. There's a summation into one feeling that you get from the painting. And so while it's interesting to see how it's made,
29:18 Speaker 05 I think the idea is to have a conversation with the painting. Through that painting, have a conversation with my father about what's important in the world. What's our common human experience? Where are you at psychologically right now? And you don't get that from looking at, oh, there's a little hint of white coming out here. You get that from actually taking in the whole painting. And it's almost a full body experience. It really, it's beyond just the sensation of looking.
29:42 Alec Baldwin? When I go to museums and I want to look at art, and of course, art for me is as much as paintings. And on an even keel with paintings is film and photography. I went to the Prado once because I was there making a film and I was off this day. And I realized I couldn't devour it in a day or a week. But I spent two days and I walked one section of it. And then I finally get to what I'm after, which is the Velázquez Christ. That's at the Prado. And I finally confronted toward the end of the second day. It's kind of at the buzzer here. I find the painting and I'm standing there. I mean, the tears just start rolling down my face. I mean, this is my, this is my Jesus, you know what I mean?
30:22 Alec Baldwin? What I learned at that trip to the Prado in those two days was you have to drain yourself. And you have to really, really do the concentrated relaxation that is the hallmark of Strasberg's teaching about acting. You must empty yourself and just be present and just keep your focus on yourself. And the same I found was seeing and experiencing painting. I had to go and really, really be, turn my phone off and just have everything happen, you know, when it was there.
30:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, no, I get exhausted at museums. Like after a couple of hours, it is draining because if you're really having those intense interactions, it pulls a lot out of you. That is arguably my favorite museum in the world, the Prado. And it just, I'm incredulous, my father never saw it. I mean, it was all Franco-controlled all through his adulthood. And he never, he never went. And I mean, he saw Great El Greco's of Velázquez in New York, but he never saw the full suite that they had at the Prado, along with, you know, the Bruegels and the Bosch's and the Goya's. Yeah, it's a pretty incredible place. Was he much of a traveler? No, hated to travel, didn't want to leave the studio. No. So, didn't want to leave the studio, would not fly. So, he went three trips to Europe, all by boat. And almost exclusively in Italy.
31:33 Speaker 05 So, I have an upcoming exhibition, last one I'm going to do, in Firenze, in Florence. At the Offizi? Not at the Offizi, so we've, this show has almost happened a few times. Show contemporary art or no? Probably not, right? Not in their, not in their collection. Occasionally, they'll do, you know, comparisons, or they'll do, they'll do sort of discussions between contemporary and older art. But it's complicated working in Italy because all the museums are controlled by the municipalities. And if the government changes, which it does frequently, then your exhibition is paused, discarded, what have you. So, this is our third go of it, but we're working with a private foundation this time. So, I'm pretty confident it's going to come off next year, or in a year and a half. But that was my father. My father was just basically in a lifelong wrestling match with all those Italian Renaissance
32:19 Speaker 05 artists, loving so much of what they did, questioning a lot of what they did, and really just seeing artists who are asking the same kind of questions that he was, and fascinated by their attempts to answer them, and not always thinking that they got it right. But he, he, he loved going, I mean, he would spend, you know, eight or 10 hours a day in churches and museums in Italy and just take it all in and just sort of put himself in their shoes and look at each of these paintings, or altarpieces, or frescoes, or whatever it was, and try to imagine what is he trying to say in that, how is he trying to achieve it, what am I trying to do in my own painting that's similar and different. Was your father a fan of other painters? Oh, absolutely. There were many artists that he just worshipped.
32:59 Speaker 05 Turner, primary Rembrandt also, loved Turner and Rembrandt, and Matisse, amongst more modern voices. So, Matisse's famous Red Studio painting, you know, there's been, there was a show at MoMA a few years ago, it's now traveled to France. That painting came to MoMA in the 1940s, and my father went there to look at it every single day for six months. And he was just overwhelmed by the idea that you could basically take a canvas and just make it, just cover it in a color. And yes, there are a few details around the canvas, but you're just overwhelmed by the What's he called? The Red Studio, Matisse. Matisse, okay. He loved Matisse. He loved both the simplicity, but also the boldness to just say what he wanted to say very directly and not to decorate the painting with things that were not necessary. Only put in exactly what he needed.
33:44 Speaker 05 Was he a fan of any contemporary artists? I mean, Matisse was contemporary. I mean, Matisse dies not that long before my father does. So, I mean, he had a very long life and my father did not. But, I mean, he certainly not only looked at, but actually helped promote some of the work of his contemporaries in the New York School. Clifford Still, who was a few years his older, he got him his first show at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of the Century Gallery and actually curated that and hung it himself. He, I think, was more than respectful of the other artists in that school. But he didn't hang out with them at some Algonquin Roundtable of Artists, of Contemporary Artists? Well, they did. I mean, they had their own little more private roundtable, but he and Barnett Newman and Adolf Gottlieb were particularly a trio. And they wrote little manifestos together, but they talked out art a lot.
34:28 Speaker 05 And eventually that broke down, but he was friendly with Franz Kline. He was friendly with Motherwell, and he certainly knew Pollock and de Kooning well, too.
34:39 Alec Baldwin? Christopher Rothko. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend. And be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Christopher Rothko details how the Mark Rothko estate was defrauded after his father's death and who stood to profit.
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36:45 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Before Christopher Rothko was traveling the world as the ambassador of his father's legacy, he worked as a clinical psychologist. He gave up his practice when he moved to New York and began curating exhibits of his father's work full-time. I was curious if he missed his previous career and whether he's ever considered returning to that field of work.
37:11 Speaker 05 You know, I miss it when it was at its best. I worked at some clinics when I was in Michigan that were just fabulous places where I could see, see people at low fee. And I saw a really broad spectrum of people and could work with them multiple times a week for extended periods of time. The world of the HMO came into being right around the time I got my degree, and it really limited how much I could see patients, for how long. And they would sometimes come to me with a diagnosis and a medication plan already. And what I really could do with them was, was very limited. So, you know, there's been a lot of push and pull since then, but the freedom I had in those, in those early years, I think, I think it's gone. Yeah, I think it's gone, so.
37:47 Alec Baldwin? Well, that way, which, which, you know, someone said that to me, they said, some doctor I was seeing, maybe, said to me that it's all changed in the sense that it's like, you know, people lying, sitting in a chair or lying on a couch and talking, those days are over because it takes too long. You know, that takes a long time and it costs money.
38:03 Speaker 05 It's crazily expensive. I mean, insurance won't pay for that. So either you're charging a lot of money, or you, it's hard to do this in New York, but in other places where maybe your rent's not so high, you can have a sliding scale, which is what I was able to do in Ann Arbor. I was able to see people at different levels of fees. But, you know, in New York, you're hoping that you cover your rent after like three weeks of doing therapy.
38:23 Alec Baldwin? What's next for you in terms of the, you have more books in you, or do you have more, you wrote a memoir about growing up with your father or no?
38:31 Speaker 05 No, I haven't written a memoir. I've been actually urging my sister, who, you know, knew him much better. She was 19 when he died, not six. So she knew him much better. So we've been slowly, she's, she's written a couple of biographical essays for catalogs, but the family's been urging her to write her memoir.
38:44 Alec Baldwin? She doesn't want to.
38:45 Speaker 05 You know, I think maybe she's slowly coming around. You know, we both went off into our own professions. She was a medical doctor, I was a psychologist.
38:51 Alec Baldwin? What kind of medicine did she practice?
38:53 Speaker 05 Well, she's retired now, but she was a pathologist. And really, and then ended up being a doctor who was doing blood chemistry. So, yeah, so she, yeah, she never really wanted the limelight. She does do interviews, but she really wants to keep the focus on our father.
39:08 Alec Baldwin? We couldn't have done this without your sister as well, obviously, because you wouldn't be here right now if the two of you hadn't been doing this on a collaborative level of maintaining this.
39:16 Speaker 05 And one thing we didn't talk at all today, but, you know, the estate was defrauded.
39:19 Alec Baldwin? You were defrauded how, the estate?
39:21 Speaker 05 So my father set up one of the first artist foundations, and it was set up for him by his accountant slash lawyer, who turns out was also the CFO of his gallery. And really, as soon as my father passed, before my mother even passed away, they started passing all the major works from the estate to the gallery for sale.
39:42 Alec Baldwin? To Marlborough.
39:43 Speaker 05 Yeah, to Marlborough Gallery, which had never been, never been the understanding. They were supposed to, they were supposed to, you know, take the work and place it in museums. They were supposed to do charitable work on behalf of older artists who had not had success. And my sister started catching wind of this. She was 19 years old, and asked, these were people she'd known for years, the executors of the estates. And I said, what's going on? And they were just completely dismissive of her. They just assumed she was stupid and she would go away. And the more dismissive they were, the more, the more. Curious she got and she ended up getting a lawyer and it found and it turns out that they are really defrauding the state. They were selling them to Marlboro Galley for next to nothing and Marlboro was turning around and selling them for eight, 10 times the price. So it was an incredibly long legal battle. We had very little money to fight it and they almost blood us dry.
40:27 Speaker 05 But after years and years and years of court battle and documents back and forth, I mean, we have, we have file box after file box of legal documents. We actually, we actually prevailed and we prevailed through two appeals and we actually got back quite a few paintings. And some financial compensation for the ones that, that we couldn't get back. But it was really quite miraculous. My sister gave up, I mean, really some of the best years of her life. While somehow she did this while she was in college and in medical school, going to medical school, having her first, her first two children. She somehow managed to do this and really I'm, I am forever, I'm forever in her debt.
40:59 Alec Baldwin? I want to thank her.
41:00 Speaker 05 She will never lord that over me because she is just a very generous soul, but she is forever my hero.
41:06 Alec Baldwin? Is there a documentary I can recommend? When I want to study a subject, I don't just necessarily reflexively go into the documentary world. Cause so many of them are just very tepid and very, you know, not that special. Is there one of your father that you think is worth people watching to learn more about him?
41:21 Speaker 05 There, there have been a bunch of documentaries. I don't know how many of them are readily available for streaming or on DVD. But there was one that was done just before the pandemic called Paintings Must Be Miraculous. And it was done actually by Oregon Public Broadcasting and then got taken up by the PBS Masters series.
41:38 Alec Baldwin? Oh, he was in American Masters?
41:39 Speaker 05 American Masters.
41:40 Alec Baldwin? Oh, wow.
41:41 Speaker 05 And it's, it's about him. Yes. It's a well, it's a well done film. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's just about him.
41:45 Alec Baldwin? When can we expect the next major exhibition of your father's work in New York?
41:50 Speaker 05 So we're actually a little overdue for a New York show. There's been so much activity around, around the world that we haven't really had a big New York show. There was a fabulous exhibition of his paintings on paper this past year that was in Washington, but then it traveled overseas to Oslo. So we're really overdue for a New York show and yeah, it's, my sister and I have actually talked to each other. It's time to start talking to museums and find out what's the right moment, what's the right location. But yeah, I think, I think before the end of the decade. It's been since 1999.
42:15 Alec Baldwin? And what, and what you reveal for people who don't know as much as I don't know much about this, what you. ...sinuate there is that the key to these exhibitions is you've got to gather and glean everything together that you want from around the world. You have to get them to give you the paintings, correct?
42:30 Speaker 05 Absolutely. I mean, that was my big job with the Paris shows, 115 works, and they all had to be, they all had to be requested, and I mean-
42:38 Alec Baldwin? And timed.
42:38 Speaker 05 Yeah, and some of those were, you know, immediate yeses and others, we went back three or four times and then sometimes had to redirect. Yeah, no, it's especially, you know, these are often large paintings and very complex to ship and people and institutions are reluctant to let them go.
42:54 Alec Baldwin? Are you perplexed by the prices that are attached to your father's work now?
42:58 Speaker 05 Yeah, I'm perplexed by those prices. I'm perplexed by a lot of prices in the-
43:03 Alec Baldwin? The modern world?
43:04 Speaker 05 Yeah, and so I don't think you can really put a price on, on great art, but I'm, you know, I think it's, I'm glad that's something that is so valued because I think there's a whole lot of garbage out in the world that people, you know, spend crazy amounts of money for. And, you know, the idea of life, the art is it's forever on some level. Hopefully it lasts forever, but certainly the feeling behind it is something that is, you know, reaching back and looking forward as opposed to some piece of plastic that catches your fancy and you pay some crazy amount of money for.
43:33 Alec Baldwin? What's the highest number of your father's paintings have ever commanded?
43:37 Speaker 05 It has been whispered to me about private sales that are well in excess of this, but publicly, I think 92 million was the highest in-
43:43 Alec Baldwin? Can you believe that?
43:44 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's-
43:45 Alec Baldwin? Can you believe that?
43:45 Speaker 05 I mean, he'd be scratching his head. I mean, I think after a certain number well below that, it's kind of monopoly money, and obviously it's a very limited group of people who can afford that, but-
43:54 Alec Baldwin? Hopefully he'd be scratching his head online at the bank, maybe, so he can do a little head scratching there. Was there anything you learned about your father that surprised you as you immersed yourself more in his work and his oeuvre?
44:07 Speaker 05 I think the moment of discovery for me came in 2003, 2004, when I edited his book of philosophical writings. He wrote actually as a relatively young man before he had any recognition as an artist. And I see him really churning through ideas and of trying to get a hold of what he's trying to say. He doesn't acknowledge at any point in the book that he's an artist, doesn't have his, he never really sort of takes- An eye position as an artist doesn't acknowledge that he paints. But he's like working through all of these questions, all of these questions. And I realize as I'm editing this book that not only am I asking myself as a non artist, a lot of the same questions. These are questions about painting, but they're also questions about how we see the world. I ask myself these same questions.
44:50 Speaker 05 I also realize that he and I write quite similarly, which actually to my mind gave me license to edit the book because I felt like I was editing with a similar voice. And in the end, it was the conversation about art that we never had. And you know what? I'm not sure even if he had lived another 25 years, maybe we never would have had it either. And this was a chance to really be sort of inside his head a little bit and have that talk. I mean, sometimes I'd actually stop and say, you know, Dad, what the hell are you saying? Trying to crack a nut that he had really, you know, it was an unfinished manuscript. So he didn't flesh out the ideas sometimes and I had to do my best to intuit that. But it was fabulous because I felt like it brought me closer to him in this strange
45:33 Speaker 05 way posthumously and it was really, it was really a gift.
45:37 Alec Baldwin? You know, when you see paintings that speak to you this way, that pull you in in this way, you just want to learn more and more about the artist. You know, I wanted to learn everything I could about Caravaggio when I would go to Italy and stay at the Hostler and go down to the Popolo and go into the cathedral there, the little mini cathedral. And there are the two framing side to side Caravaggio there in front of that, which they had to protect with some, what looks like a not really very sturdy security system. I mean, somebody could go in there to throw these people who want to kill art. What do you think about these people that are throwing buckets of soup and all kinds of organic matter on paintings and protesting climate change, for example?
46:19 Speaker 05 Well, I'm all for protesting climate change. I wish they would find other ways to protest it. I mean, you know, I think they're targeting artwork because they see these as icons and trophies, but in fact, the artists who made these, in almost every case, struggled their whole life to try and get their message across and get it before the public. So I think they choose a very unfortunate target and.
46:39 Alec Baldwin? I find it sickening.
46:40 Speaker 05 Yeah, you know, I am all for making a lot of noise about climate change. It's something I'm passionate about, but please don't go into a museum and damage something that belongs to all of us. It's there for, it's there for all of us.
46:55 Alec Baldwin? My thanks to Christopher Rothko. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
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