
By Gus Saltonstall
Mark Rothko, the iconic painter best known for his work with color, spent multiple years living on the Upper West Side in the 1930s. Now, more than nine decades later, his son, Christopher Rothko, who also calls the neighborhood home, has curated or helped oversee two major current exhibitions of his father’s work, including a groundbreaking retrospective of some 115 of Rothko’s paintings in Paris, France.
The Mark Rothko exhibition opened at the Foundation Louis Vuitton on October 18 and will run through April 2. While Christopher typically advises and helps secure funding for Rothko exhibits — in this case — he stepped into the curator role.
“I don’t think I understood how much it meant to me, until we had it on the walls,” Christopher told West Side Rag in a phone interview. “And then I was just struck with wonder at how beautiful it looked, how powerful each gallery was.”
“[My father’s] work is so experiential. You can see it in reproduction all the time, you can know theoretically that a work is particularly strong, but it is not until you can actually see it on the wall and stare it in the face that you realize just how powerful an exhibition can be,” he said.

Mark Rothko lived the majority of his life in New York City after emigrating from Russia (present day Latvia) in 1913. For two years, he lived on the Upper West Side, returning decades later to a studio in the neighborhood.
“He loved, loved New York,” Christopher told the Rag. “He never wanted to leave. He didn’t want to travel, he just wanted to be in his studio and be in the cultural hub that was New York City.”
Specifically, Rothko lived in 1930 at 314 West 75th Street, between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, and in 1932 at 137 West 72nd Street, between Columbus Avenue and Broadway.
Here’s what those addresses look like in 2023.


Christopher, 60, has lived on the Upper West Side with his family for 23 years. He mused about what attracted him to the community. “I’m not sure how consciously we thought about [the Upper West Side’s connection to the arts] when we were looking for a place in the city, but we certainly knew a lot of people who fit into that category of people who are in the arts, people who are intellectuals, people who are multi-generational New Yorkers, who live and breath its spirit,” he said. “So I think that’s what attracted us to the area.”
The Paris exhibition, which comprises paintings on canvas displayed chronologically, is the largest retrospective of Rothko’s work in the 21st century, and features paintings from museums across the United States, international private collections, and the family’s collection. It coincides with an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. of Rothko’s paintings on paper, which opened on November 19 and will run through March 31.
A handful of the paintings at the Paris retrospective have never been presented in public before and many of the works have never been shown in Europe. Christopher described the chance to present the never-before-seen works as a “thrill” that “sheds new light on the painter my father was.”
In terms of Christopher’s favorite paintings at the Paris exhibit, he pointed to “Arizona Painting: Green on Blue, 1956,” and “Toronto Painting: No. 1, 1962.”
Rothko’s paintings are famously untitled, but do possess names centered around locations and years in order to differentiate between them.
“Your interaction with a Rothko painting is deeply personal,” Christopher said. “I think my father gives you his own sense of meaning and emotion that he puts into a painting, but that is never fully realized until the interaction with the viewer.”
“I certainly hope people are open to having that deep, emotional experience. If you just look at them on a pure pictorial level, they can be very attractive, but that’s only a small portion of the story,” he said. “I’m hoping people are open to having that full experience with the works, and let them stir around a little on their insides.”
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I’d love to see that exhibit! Christopher, any chance you can bring it to the UWS, after Paris?
The exhibit actually runs through April 2nd. In Europe it’s day/month/year
Call me an uncultured barbarian. I’ll never get this art. Didn’t someone pay 10s of millions for some red slapped on a canvas?
Mandy put it so well. Rothko’s work is impossible to experience in reproduction, and you really need to be in a quiet place with it, standing fairly close. I once saw one at Sotheby’s (before it was purchased and disappeared into a private collection). It was tucked into its own niche, and it was like a small chapel. Wonderful.
Unless you have sat in a quiet room and lost yourself in the colors and energy (or peace) of some Rothkos, don’t knock it. Truly an artist worth spending some time with, ideally not in a crowded space. I don’t know much about art, but even I get the deep and elemental appeal of the Rothkos I have seen. (A room at the Phillips, maybe?) So many photos and paintings have basic elements- sky, sea, land. Mountain, woods, lake. Foreground, background, distance. Wall, couch with figure(s), floor. Window, cat, room. Something about his color rectangles speaks directly to the emotions using just color and simple shape. I don’t mean it’s the same as say an Angel Adams western landscape photo, or a Georgia O’Keefe skull. But it is extraordinary how Rothko found he could evoke similar emotions for a viewer using completely different and absolutely fundamental artistic language. Wish very much I could go to Paris for this one. Would like to view more of what he did in his short but remarkable 20th century life. Congrats to his son on the show, thank WSR for the UWS angle and report!
The exhibit is on display at the Fondation Vuitton until April 2, 2024 (not February 4).
fixed, thanks.
I’ve always been intrigued by the work of Rothko and of his contemporary Adolph Gottlieb (born also in 1903, in New York City- d 1974 in New York City). They both share a similar sensibility and mode of expression. Would be great to see a joint exhibit of their work (maybe a Whitney Dissenters show at the Whitney :-))
An Adolph Gottleib canvas at MoMA elicited my first real visceral reaction to art — I stood and stared until my classmates grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away. I was maybe 14.
A joint exhibition – what a great idea!
I just saw another Rothko installation at The Phillips Collection in Washington DC and it is stunning. Worth a trip out of UWS.
Got tickets to the show in Paris next month — paid less than $18 per person. (Well, not including airfare!) I read that the works are collectively so expensive that it would be prohibitive for a “normal” museum to hold this kind of exhibit. But the owner of Louis Vuitton is the 2nd richest person in the world, so he’s able to do it.
BTW, I know you meant that Rothko lived on 72nd between Amsterdam (not Broadway) and Columbus. Minor nit of the day! Thank you for this article.
We just saw the exhibition last week when we went to Paris for our Thanksgiving break. It was very impressive and packed with people! Enjoy!!
I saw the exhibit in Paris last week . It was a bit overwhelming because of the number of fantastic paintings on display. I went back a few days later to spend time watching my preferred ones. hope to go back to Paris to visit again.
A good reason to go to Paris!
Why isn’t the show traveling to the US?
Probably because no insurance company would provide coverage given the smash and grab crime spree throughout major US cities.
Rolling my eyes at the scaredy cats who take every opportunity possible to talk about how afraid they are of the lowest crime rates in generations.
Rolling my eyes at the crime deniers. If we were to meet, you would quickly figure out that I have nothing to be afraid of. Pretty capable of taking care of myself.
Every artist needs a son (or daughter) like Chris to cherish and curate their work!
Such a pleasure to read articles like this
I will never forget sering the Rothko exhibition at the Gugenheim in the late 1970s. You were able to stand in the center of the museum and see the progression of colors over the years. It was amazing. It was the perfect venue, taking up the whole musrum. A shame I can’t get to Paris to see again.
My husband and I saw this exhibition last Saturday. It is beautiful and inspiring. We’re thrilled to have Chris as our neighbor and to have that connection to his father’s work.
Can someone explain to me why working class upper west siders should care ?
I saw the Mark Rothko exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Foundation museum in October shortly after its opening. The number and scale of the LVF galleries as the setting for these works is outstanding and Chris Rothko did a magnificent job in curating it. The exhibit gave me a deeper and more profound appreciation for MR’s work and the evolution of his painting. A Rothko painting is a particular meditative experience and while I have viewed individual works at MOMA or the National Gallery or the Phillips Collection, this is the closest I have gotten to fully engaging in that experience. If you admire his work, try to find a way to go see this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition.
I saw the show in Paris a couple of weeks ago. As you progressed through the exhibition, the galleries became quieter and quieter. People stopped talking and absorbed the spiritual ambiance that surrounded them. It changed my perception of Rothko forever.
Mark Rothko is one of my favorite painters, and I have always wondered about something that I think Chris would be able to answer.
I know that Rothko painted with very thin layers of paint and solvent so that the paint soaked into the canvas. And that leads me to wonder, what does the back of a Rothko painting look like?