Review by Choice Review
Mark Rothko (1903-70) is certainly among the foremost American artists of the 20th century, which regrettably makes this volume doubly disappointing as it appears under the series "Jewish Lives." It was first published in French in 2013, but it misleadingly cherry-picks from the very fine Mark Rothko: A Biography, by James E .B. Breslin (CH, Apr'94, 31-4166), and generally glosses over the complexities and inconsistencies of the great man's well-known, unpredictable interactions with other Jewish and non-Jewish artists, patrons, and friends. His life was an ongoing, earnest struggle as a Russian immigrant painter venturing through naturalization (representationalism), classical mythology, surrealism, and even Christianity to a heroic abstract expressionism style that perhaps could ultimately be seen as Jewish in nature. The de Menil chapel murals in Houston alluded to in the subtitle, now a nondenominational setting, were originally commissioned from Rothko to be a Roman Catholic crucifixion series with a format of traditional triptychs. Finally, the three trips to Europe that Rothko did make in his lifetime have been curiously transformed by Cohen-Solal into a diagram of 11 transatlantic crossings from New York to the Continent. Summing Up: Optional. General readers and lower-division undergraduates. --Mary Michele Hamel-Schwulst, formerly, Towson University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
THE CONTRIBUTION OF Jewish writers, musicians, movie directors and art critics from Eastern Europe to American cultural life in the 20th century is undeniable and has been copiously documented. Jewish artists, however, have largely escaped this scrutiny. Perhaps this is strictly owing to a scarcity of significant figures until the rise of abstraction in the second half of the century, which occurred, first and foremost, because of Judaism's notorious aniconism and its vexed relationship with art. Annie Cohen-Solal, a veteran French cultural historian and biographer of Sartre, sets out to fill this gap conscientiously in a mostly penetrating biography of Mark Rothko (1903-70). It is the latest installment in her continuing project about art in America, including "Painting American: The Rise of American Artists, Paris 1867-New York 1948" and "Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli." Written in succinct and fast-paced prose, this streamlined volume (part of Yale's Jewish Lives series), perhaps more of an essay, argues that Rothko's Jewishness is at the core of his life and art, and played a decisive influence in the austere and majestic canvases recognized today as his signature work. Born in Dvinsk, Russia, in a territory then known as the Pale of Settlement, where Jews were compelled to reside, Marcus Rotkovitch emigrated with his family to the United States at the age of 10. Much later he would change his name to Rothko (a less identifiably Jewish patronymic than the common abbreviation Roth) and become, in Cohen-Solal's view, a passeur, "a cultural agent crossing geographic boundaries," who transformed the American cultural landscape. Cohen-Solal draws on sources unavailable to James E. B. Breslin for his masterly 1993 biography of Rothko, especially Rothko's own writings about art ("The Artist's Reality," a manuscript from 1940, as well as "Writings on Art," his correspondence and notes from the years 1934 to 1969). In "Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel," she carves out a portrait of the artist as an intellectual and original thinker, a cerebral figure rooted in his father's Jewish background and progressive ideas and in his own Talmudic education, who took up art almost by chance after dropping out of Yale. His idea of art as an experience, the large scale of his canvases in direct and intimate interaction with the spectator (versus smaller paintings he deemed "controlled" by the spectator), his meticulous staging of the light falling on his paintings when on view, as well as his obsessive quest for the adequate layout on museum walls - all seem to us quite obvious today in the context of installation art, but were radical for his time. Rothko favored paintings hanging in a crowded arrangement rather than pieces theatrically singled out on a wall, in order to saturate the public with the feeling of the work. A fine inquiry overall, Cohen-Solal's book nonetheless disappoints on a few grounds: Writing in broad brush strokes, she often gives in to oversimplified statements, possibly not untrue, but often requiring further grounding (as when she appears to attribute Rothko's friendship with the collectors John and Dominique de Menil to their condition as outsiders). She is also brief on Rothko's mother, preferring to dwell on his father's intellectual legacy, and quite laconic on Rothko's first wife, Edith Sachar. Cohen-Solal's style, hasty at times, detracts from the intimacy of the portrait, and unlike Breslin in his minute and sympathetic narrative, which proved him deeply enmeshed with his subject, she keeps Rothko at bay, and often elusive for the reader. But she excels at studying the constellation of galleries, gallerists, art critics, artists and power players; and her sociological depiction of artists in the United States, in a period (the '50s and '60s) when the art world's center of gravity was shifting from Europe to America, is quite astute, an extension of her remarkable book about the gallerist Leo Castelli. As one herself, Cohen-Solal often writes about the figure of the passeur. Born in Algeria to a Sephardic family, emigrating to France at the age of 14, she later became the French cultural attaché in New York. However, her thesis, operating appositely for Castelli - whom she rightly construed as a passeur - is somewhat superficial in Rothko's case. She is correct in pointing out the insider/outsider tension that fashioned him - also duly noted by Breslin - but isn't that tension an artist's very condition? As for his art being configured by his Jewishness, it is an enticing theory, albeit somewhat of an extrapolation. The question of Jewish art is still an unsolved riddle in Jewish cultural debates. YAËLLE AZAGURY is a freelance journalist who writes about French and Jewish culture, as well as contemporary art.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 28, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The artist we know as Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rotkovitch in 1903, the youngest child in a secular Russian Jewish family and the only one enrolled in a traditional Talmudic school. This experience, Cohen-Solal (Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli, 2010) argues in her tightly focused, profoundly clarifying biography, is the key fact to understanding the life and work of Rothko. With unprecedented access to revelatory archives, a fresh interpretive eye, and a gift for briskly establishing richly textured historical and social contexts, Cohen-Solal tracks Rothko's journey from pogrom-bloody Russia to Portland, Oregon, where, as a precocious high-school student, he protested discrimination against Jews. He went to Yale on a full scholarship but dropped out in disgust over blatant anti-Semitism. In New York, Rothko discovered his artistic calling, forged friendships with similarly radical painters, and took the lead in challenging the stodgy art establishment. Cohen-Solal illuminates Rothko's intellectualism, search for unity, abiding ethics, and the evolution of his purely abstract, transcendentally radiant, deeply emotional, and increasingly spiritual paintings. The first to reveal the secrets of Rothko's elaborate, almost alchemical methods for creating his glowing, contrasting colors, Cohen-Solal also sensitively elucidates Rothko's acute discomfort with success and the depression that led to his 1970 suicide. A defining and affecting tribute to a modern master.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this gripping biography, Cohen-Solal (Leo & His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli) examines the life and work of Rothko, an artist motivated by his spirituality and one of the most distinguished painters of the 20th century. The meticulous text begins with the artist's birth as Marcus Rotkovitch in the Russian Empire in 1903, during a time of "tensions, persecutions, and latent hostility" toward Jews, followed by his emigration to Portland, Ore., at age 10. It goes on to catalogue the political, social, and religious forces that contributed to Rothko's success and also caused him considerable setbacks throughout his career. Digging into archives and conducting interviews with scholars and the artist's relatives, Cohen-Solal illuminates the lifelong impact Rothko's time in Talmudic school, as well as the support he received from the immigrant Jewish community in Portland during his years as a minority student in high school. The author also traces Rothko's struggles at Yale University, in New Haven, Conn., the "inaccessible club of young WASPs," where he learned that "the Yale social system was based more on breeding than on merit." The book richly illustrates a contentious period in the American art world, including the Armory Show, clashes between artists and institutions, and the growing influence of European artists such as Rodin, Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse in the United States. This novelistic account is a rewarding close-up of Rothko's personal life and his experience as a Jewish immigrant. Photos. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Cohen-Solal's (Leo and His Circle: A Life of Leo Castelli, 2010, etc.) study of Mark Rothko (1903-1970) is notable for her ability to link his strong Jewish ties to his changing, evolving art. Her access to newly available archives enables her comprehensive portrait of the man.Born in Russia, Rothko's father insisted he attend Talmud Torah from ages 4 to 10, after which his family immigrated to Portland, Oregon, and a strong Jewish community. While he quit the temple shortly after his father's death in 1914, his ties to Judaism and his anger at being a minority and an immigrant often obsessed him. He abandoned his scholarship to Yale after two years due to the WASPish exclusion practiced against Jews. The author seems to skip over Rothko's art education; suddenly, at age 32, he has his first solo exhibition in Portland, followed by exhibits in New York and Paris the following year. His style changed often in the 1930s, when he was part of "The Ten," a group of radical, experimentalist individuals rejecting regionalism and searching for the true form of American art. He went from a mythological phase to surrealism to a multiform period. Dissatisfied with realism, he explored "subjective abstraction." When he saw Matisse's Red Studio in 1949, he plunged fully into the realm of abstraction. The artist was always angry, especially at art institutions, which made him hostile and suspicious. They rejected the new American artists and treated his paintings as "decorative." Rothko was obsessive and controlling in exhibitions, but his art conjured emotion out of simplicity; even in the dark, his swaths of color exuded their own light, making his work a complete experience. A sure hit for fans of art history, and readers looking to understand modern art and especially abstraction will find this wonderfully enlightening. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
