The Rothko Chapel and the Transformative Power of Art, A Series

"Painting and Patronage"
David Novros, Artist

This series will celebrate the artistic and spiritual import of the Rothko Chapel, bringing three speakers with close ties to Mark Rothko and the Chapel.

David Novros is an American painter and muralist of geometric abstraction, including large-scale installations, and is known for his recurring motif of right-angled L shapes.  In 1975 Novros and Brice Marden exhibited their work at Rice University with four paintings from the Chapel commission in Marden, Novros, Rothko: Painting in the Age of Actuality.  Novros will speak about the public dimensions of creating major commissions like the murals in the Rothko Chapel and aspects of patronage.  In 2006 Novros told interviewer Phong Bui, “I learned a lot from seeing the way [Rothko’s] work was treated by “patrons.” Only the de Menils understood what he was after. I think that the pain one has to endure to get anything profound made in a public place makes the activity a form of masochism. Those artists who continue to pursue that ambition are a form of endangered species.”