The fourth largest city in the United States, in terms of population and sprawl, though it doesn't really feel like it from this little pocket of the Museum District, where I am staying for 10 days installing our loans to the Gifts of the Sultan exhibition - which promises to be a visually rich and glamorous show. I arrived in the States on the day that Steve Jobs died and Sarah Palin announced she wasn't running for the White House - both momentous events in their own ways.
It is three years pretty much to the day since I last visited the States, arriving in New York for my six-week fellowship at the Met - what an amazing treat that was - and it is really nice to be here. Houston is perhaps not my number 1 holiday destination, but it is actually surprisingly civilised! There is lots of cultural stuff going on here, including some interesting museums. Also the Rothko Chapel is here, which I have been wanting to visit pretty much all my life, and finally got to yesterday evening after finishing my installation work for the day.
It's a deeply meditative space, and the particular deep purple colour of some of the canvases really draws you in and you start to see mysterious shapes and whole worlds in the brush strokes. I sat in there for half an hour while other visitors came and went in a few minutes. (For more posts on my obsession with Rothko, see here.)
The Rothko Chapel is a small satellite building of the Menil Collection, the private collection especially of modern and contemporary American art formed by the Texan couple John and Dominique de Menil and now housed in a Renzo Piano building and visitable free of charge.
I had a walk around one of the wings, intending to go back up there over the weekend to see the rest of it and visit the other satellites, which include another chapel housing Byzantine frescoes from a church in Cyprus. I was the only person in the galleries for much of the time, apart from the security staff, which was a bit disconcerting, given the quality of the collection.
Unexpected treat: one room of the galleries house alternate canvases for the Rothko Chapel. Different, and I don't know why these weren't used. Up close and in a comparatively small gallery space, the canvases are truly monumental. This is what I was inspired to write in my notebook:
"These have a deep burgundy red and large black squares at the centre. Impenetrable black. You stare up at them - they're giving nothing away. In fact they seem to be staring back at you. They're Giants. Like Gods. But implacable, not benevolent. Is this the revelation that drove Rothko to suicide?"
I find I can't get away from thinking about his death when I look at his paintings - especially topical since the Rothko Chapel was dedicated a year after he died.
The de Menils also bought up houses in the neighbourhood surrounding their museum building which are all painted the same shade of 'Menil grey' and it has a really nice feel - traditional clapboard houses, quite small, but cosy-looking. A nicer area to walk around than the gigantic villas in some of the other residential parts of Houston!
I think K will probably want to live here...I walked from here to meet some of my fellow couriers at the 'English pub', The Black Labrador, which has a red telephone box out front and a mannequin dressed up as a Beefeater inside! After that we went to Nelore Churrascaria, a Brazilian steakhouse, for dinner - which was an expensive but rather amazing experience! The waiters wander around with massive skewers of differently prepared meats and if you turn the card on your table over to green - for go! - they keep coming by (it's all you can eat) and slicing off bits from their skewer which you grab with little tongs. It was delicious but filling, though some people were really letting their plates pile up!
This was the prime sirloin - house specialty apparently!Well I had better get on with the day, or I will miss the hotel breakfast! I haven't really figured out what I am doing today - K is insistent that I visit the Space Center, but it is 25 miles outside of Houston and there just seems no feasible way of getting there by public transport! I will think about it over a cup of coffee... More anon.
3 comments:
Ah yes, the Briton in America looking for the public transport... :-D As inevitable of large lumps of meat in Texas, which you've also scored, we see!
The Rothko Chapel looks stunning. As you've noted, the endless stimulation of modern life seems to have left many with the inability to stop and appreciate something requiring an application of something as simple as time.
I was told there was a good post with 'smart remarks at the end'. How did i know whose they'd be?
The word missing began with 'a' and ended in 'ss', and referring to myself...
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