Tag Archives: Mark Rothko

Arthur Hall Smith Remembers the Phillips

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Pamela Carter-Birken is a doctoral student at Georgetown University who is researching Duncan Phillips’s relationship with Mark Rothko. She traveled to Paris to interview Arthur Hall Smith who was employed by the Phillips when the museum’s Rothko Room was first installed in 1960. She guest posts about their meeting here.

Arthur Hall Smith. Photo: Pamela Carter-Birken

“I still have dreams about the Phillips Gallery,” says artist Arthur Hall Smith of the Washington, D.C., art museum celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. Hired by founder Duncan Phillips in 1959 to be a “welcoming presence,” Smith worked at what is now known as The Phillips Collection for 14 years as curatorial assistant, tour guide, lecturer, and handyman. At The Phillips Collection, he heard abstract expressionist Mark Rothko demand the lighting be changed in the museum’s original Rothko Room, and he bantered in French with Russian painter Marc Chagall.

Smith, a student of abstract painter Mark Tobey, left the Phillips in 1974 to teach painting and drawing at George Washington University, where he stayed for more than two decades. During his professorial years, Smith spent summers at his apartment in Paris, where he now lives year-round and continues to paint in his adjacent studio. The thick-walled building which houses his fourth-floor rooms contains elements from the fifteenth century and is located on the rue Visconti, among galleries of antiquities from Africa and South America.

Even before he graduated from high school in his hometown of Norfolk, VA, Smith aspired to an artist’s life in Paris. In 1951, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts. He served in the Army during the Korean War then returned to the United States to study under Tobey at the University of Washington in Seattle. From there, he came to Washington, D.C., where he worked in federal jobs until his interview with Duncan Phillips.

“His diction when he wrote his art criticism was almost Edwardian,” Smith says of Phillips. “He had that elevated Yale-educated turn-of-the-century vocabulary. Of course what became of his art criticism was the Collection itself.” Continue reading “Arthur Hall Smith Remembers the Phillips” »

Becoming Rothko: Edward Gero in the Rothko Room

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Actor Edward Gero is blogging about his process of preparing for the role of Mark Rothko in John Logan’s Red, which opens at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in September and then here in town at Arena Stage early next year. Here, Gero shares his experience of our Rothko Room and discussion with Rothko-expert and Curator at Large Klaus Ottmann. Follow the rest of his journey as it unfolds.  

(left) The Rothko Room at The Phillips Collection. Photo: Max Hirshfeld. (right) Actor Edward Gero. Photo: Scott Suchman

I still am not sure what happened today. I can tell you the narrative, but I am not sure what the effect of the event is yet. Today I went to meet the new Curator at Large of The Phillips Collection, Klaus Ottmann, who was gracious enough to spend a few hours with me in the Rothko Room and at lunch talking about the artist and his art.  I came early, not knowing what to expect, but very excited to spend my first time in the first of the “Rothko Rooms.” It was installed in The Phillips Collection in 1960. The room and the four paintings were the first room ever dedicated to a single artist, which has become commonplace now, but at the time was quite the acknowledgment of Rothko.  Rothko himself consulted with the museum about the space, chose the bench for the space, and saw it completed. It is the only room he did see, unlike the much larger Rothko Chapel. He committed suicide before that project’s completion.

I was too excited to wait in the cafè, so I went immediately upstairs to the room.  I entered a very small space with off-white walls, four large canvasses, dim lights, and a simple wooden bench in the center. It was very theatrical. The lighting made for a hushed environment, like entering a meditation room. The paintings were large and imposing, dominating the space.

Having read that Rothko hoped that one would spend time with the paintings, I sat down quietly and hoped that the room and the works would start acting on me. They did.  Continue reading “Becoming Rothko: Edward Gero in the Rothko Room” »

Until we meet again, Riccardo

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Postdoctoral Fellow, Riccardo Venturi, atop a post, at the Center. Photo: Sarah Osborne Bender

As soon as I met our spring Postdoctoral Fellow , Riccardo Venturi, I knew I would enjoy having him in our midst. He has such a wonderful sense of humor, both about himself and the world. One of my (many) favorite things about him is the set of adorably hilarious idiosyncrasies he exhibits on a daily basis. During presentations and class lectures Riccardo must place his materials – his pencil, moleskine notebook, wristwatch, and sometimes his glasses – perfectly parallel to each other and to his laptop from which he is working. If they’re not positioned “just so” he has to stop and fix the arrangement. Then there’s the glass vase he used as a water glass everyday (he admitted he knew it was a vase, but claimed it worked much better as a water glass). There he was, every day:  materials perfectly placed, drinking water from a flower vase.

I recently sat down with Riccardo to learn more about how he came to the field of art history, how the fellowship helped further his research, and his experience teaching an art history course at the Center. Continue reading “Until we meet again, Riccardo” »