5.21 Two Minutes to Midnight. Death arrives in Chicago to start a large storm chain that will trigger massive weather events globally, and will result in at least 3 million deaths. A man runs into him on the street. Kate Rothko talks about her father, the artist Mark Rothko . You sit opposite her, trying not to be distracted by the subliminal hum of the canvases on the walls - three early Rothkos to the right of me, and one to the left - and you wonder: how did she do it? Not that she even seems to know herself. I can't make up my mind whether she is warning me off, or welcoming me in. Kate Rothko turned 1. Then again, they are so starkly awful, it feels almost murderous to bring them up. What defences might I end up knocking down? It's hardly surprising that when she was younger and at medical school, Rothko would find herself categorically denying her relationship to that Rothko, or that later, when she married, she cloaked herself in her married name, Prizel, the better to be invisible. In 1. 97. 0, on the cold morning of 2. February, the body of her father, the painter, Mark Rothko, was found in his cavernous Manhattan studio. He had overdosed on barbiturates, and cut an artery in his right arm with a razor blade. He was found in a pool of blood six by eight feet wide, wearing long johns and thick black socks. He was 6. 6. Six months later, on 2. Michael Ripper, Actor: The Mummy. The British character actor Michael Ripper was born in 1913 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. His father was a speech therapist and encouraged him to participate in diction and public. Man at the Top is a 1973 British drama film directed by Mike Vardy and starring Kenneth Haigh, spun off from the television series Man at the Top which itself was inspired by the 1959 film Room at the Top and its sequel Life. August, Kate suffered another bereavement, less public, but just as bitter: at the age of 4. Mell, a book illustrator and Rothko's second wife, had dropped down dead as Kate's brother, Christopher, watched cartoons in the next room. The cause of death listed on her death certificate was 'hypertension due to cardiovascular disease'; however, like her estranged husband, she was a heavy drinker. Kate and Christopher, who was then just six years old, were now orphans (or The Orphans, as the art critic Robert Hughes referred to them some years later).
But however terrible their grief, it seemed as if they would surely survive. It wasn't only that they would be OK financially; by 1. Rothko's work was already achieving tremendous prices. It was more that Kate had always thought that 'the New York art world was the most idyllic place in which any child could grow up'; though their Rothko relatives were mostly out west and, to a degree, an unknown quantity, her father had been, in spite of his final catastrophic depression, a gregarious man, and a revered one. The family was nothing if not blessed with a multitude of friends. Or was it? It was the difference between the two funerals of her parents that revealed to Kate, even in the depths of her grief, that this might not, after all, be so. Perhaps the art world was not the bohemian extended family of her imagination. The two services took place in the same Manhattan funeral parlour, but they could not have been more different. After Mark's funeral, one art world viper is reputed to have remarked that it was 'the best vernissage of the season', and it is certainly true that it was well attended by the great and the good. Among the mourners were Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Lee Krasner Pollock, not to mention the rows of critics, curators, and collectors. She'd known these people for 2. It was disillusioning for me to see the superficiality of the art world, and that has never gone away, I must admit. It will never be that idyllic place for me again.' Unfortunately, there was worse to come. Within two years, Kate and her brother were fighting a legal battle of Bleak House proportions that few thought they could win - and her parents' 'friends', by now, were even thinner on the ground. People were hesitant to talk to me. Only a few were willing to stick their necks out. Lee Krasner, for one, gave multiple interviews in which she said how unwise I was to be fighting the case.'Kate and Christopher sued the executors of their father's estate - his accountant, Bernard Reis, the painter Theodoros Stamos, and a professor of anthropology called Morton Levine (Levine was also, until Kate took steps to remedy the situation, Christopher's guardian) - and his gallery, the Marlborough, claiming that the former had conspired with the latter to 'waste the assets' of Rothko's estate and defraud them of their proper share. The assets were 7. They contended that the three trustees had conspired to sell these Rothkos to the Marlborough at less than their true market value; the gallery had, for instance, got its delighted hands on one group of 1. The case was to rumble on for more than four years, during which Kate was mostly living in a $9. Brooklyn, watching what little money she had drain out of her bank account. It was to be seven long years before she had a Rothko of her own; if she wanted to see work by her father, her only option was to visit a gallery. How did she keep going? I only know that I was convinced from a moral standpoint, and that I had a conviction that this was what I had to do, because I knew how upset my father would have been by what was going on.'To everyone's amazement, Kate and Christopher Rothko won, and the court issued a crushing verdict. The executors were thrown out for 'improvidence and waste verging on gross negligence'. Reis and Stamos, long- time friends of Mark Rothko, were found to have been in conflict of interest; as executors, they could not negotiate with the Marlborough because the company had both of them on its payroll. All contracts between the Marlborough and the Rothko estate were declared void, and the judge awarded damages of more than $9m against Frank Lloyd, the founder of Marlborough Fine Art, who had laundered art through myriad Liechtenstein holding companies, and the executors. Lee Krasner, swiftly eating her words, removed the estate of her husband, Jackson Pollock, from Marlborough's grasp, and others followed (though Marlborough Fine Art survives, even today). It was, Kate concedes, a magnificent victory - though Reis and Lloyd were, in spite of her best efforts, never punished in a criminal court for their actions. One had to make do with the satisfaction of seeing the paintings come back. The judge sat down with me several times . But I always said no, because it wasn't about money.' Nor was it about ownership, or not in the private sense. Kate simply wanted to make sure that her father's wishes became a reality. Rothko may have been depressed at the end of his life, he may not have been as clear as he should have been when it came to writing a will; but with regard to his work, and where it might end up, he had long held strong views. While selling to private individuals from his studio, he would scrutinise their reactions to paintings; they had to pass a test they did not know they were taking. If they failed, they went home empty- handed, irrespective of the size of their wallets. Lighting, on which wall of a gallery a painting might hang; these things obsessed him. It was Marlborough's job to sell his work outside America, but so far as his legacy went, it was his wish that it should be seen by the public, and that groups of his paintings should stay together, like siblings. This was why, in the months before he died, he fell upon the idea of a Mark Rothko Foundation; this body, led by Reis, Stamos and Levine, would distribute his work to public galleries. The idea that individual works would disappear into the homes of millionaires was anathema to him. Unfortunately, the court did not rule on paintings that the Marlborough Gallery had already sold. What I've found hardest over the years is looking at what didn't come back. The most painful example I can give you is Homage to Matisse from 1. It's the one painting I would really like to have; I grew up with it. I gather that it went into a vault somewhere for a number of years and then it came up for auction.' In 2. Christie's New York for $2. But at auction, at these prices.. I finally found out who owns it, and it's another collector, one who will probably never let it out of his private home.' Do collectors ever invite her to come and see the paintings in their homes? Ostensibly, it's because they love the painting so much. But one has to wonder: does price come into it? They are scared of damage, which is always a possibility. I can only say that when the first major retrospective took place in 1. I find it horrible that art is just another investment.' She laughs. I'm sure, given what hangs on her walls, she has a good security system, but if so, it is unobtrusive; I've seen tiny terraces more fortified, and most of those probably contain only the odd David Hockney poster. What you notice immediately are not just the paintings, but the gaps: work, she tells me half- apologetically, is often on loan and, sometimes, when it comes back, the business of rehanging such large and fragile canvases gets put off - and off. I ask her how many paintings are still in the family. I can't say what we will have for ever. Christopher and I each have three children. It's clear to me that they care about the paintings, and would rather have them than cash. But there will be estate taxes one day, and here, giving to a museum does not credit towards your estate tax.'In the 1. Kate who was 'the point person' when galleries were putting together shows of her father's work, but these days that task falls mostly to Christopher, a psychologist who now works almost exclusively in the interests of the Rothko estate. Even so, Kate will be coming to London for the opening of Tate Modern's Rothko show, the first significant exhibition of his work to be held in Britain for more than 2. She is thrilled by the idea of this exhibition in particular because it is not a retrospective, but a unique gathering of Rothko's late work, including the Seagram Murals, originally commissioned to hang in the dining room of the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York, and several other series, including the very last he ever painted, known as Black on Grey. With retrospectives, there is often a feeling . But look at them in isolation, and instead you simply feel something opening up before him. I do not connect any feeling of frustration in him at this time with a frustration over where his work was going.
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