Reflections on Red

Red starts out as the most pretentious play I’ve ever seen. An aging Mark Rothko, his back to the audience, is seated on a wooden chair in his New York studio, smoking a cigarette, blasting Bach, and gazing upon his latest work: a black and red mural he was commissioned to paint for the Four Seasons restaurant.

John Logan’s one-act play, on stage at the Goodman Theatre until October 23, is a psychodramatic saga of Rothko’s struggle with two things: the public’s ill-informed interest in his work; and the realization that he and his contemporaries, having achieved conventional success, must inevitably make room for the next generation of painters.

The cast of Red consists solely of Edward Gero as Rothko and Patrick Andrews as his young fictional assistant, Ken. The first hour of the 100-minute play is a series of passionate lectures by Rothko to Ken, lectures composed of a few genuinely thought-provoking lines (“Where’s the arbitration that separates what I like from what I respect?” is the artist’s criticism of a public he sees as too easily pleased), but mostly failed attempts at pithiness (“There is tragedy in every brushstroke”) that paint Rothko as a depressed egomaniac who wants desperately to be quoted.

All is forgiven at the climax of Red, when Ken calls Rothko out for being so pretentious. Rothko is the purest of the purists; pop art, poised to define the next generation, is cheap, vulgar, and void of integrity. Ken presses Rothko: Why does art have to be so damn serious? Where’s the joy? The humility? Soup cans may not be spiritually elevating but, as Ken points out, “at least Warhol gets the joke.”

Rothko leaves. Ken lights a cigarette, puts on a Coltrane record, and faces the audience. Part of the challenge of writing is knowing when to stop, and this would’ve made a great final image: the young artist confronting the world, in contrast with the reclusive old Rothko collapsing inward.

Red is primarily a play about authenticity. It is set in 1958-59, not longer after Rothko’s paintings were touted as good investments by the editors of Fortune. (This distinction did not sit well with Rothko, who took it as confirmation that his rise to fame was not the result of artistic communion with the public, but attributable to the herd mentality that catapults so many to conventional success.) Rothko is uneasy about the burgeoning relationship between art and consumption, which he blames in part for his friend Pollock’s suicide: “The Oldsmobile killed him. Not because it crashed, but because it existed. Why the fuck did Jackson Pollock have an Oldsmobile convertible?”

At the play’s end, Rothko calls architect Philip Johnson to announce that he is giving up the commission in order to protect his murals from the eyes of an undeserving public. To display the murals at the Four Seasons would be totally inappropriate, like placing a crucifix in a bar.

Red, though not perfect, is definitely worth seeing. It’s an accessible mash-up of theatre and abstract painting that is bound to provoke anyone who cares about art in the broad sense. I say “broad” because my own definition is centered on writing: essays, fiction, poetry, scripts, lyrics, ad copy, homilies, love letters, journal entries, instruction manuals, fine print. I love writing because it’s hard to bullshit. Visual art honors the enigmatic; writing makes a fool of it.

But after seeing Red, I can say that visual art is superior to writing in at least one major way: it can be imposed on people. A statue, a building, a graffiti tag can stop you in your place, mentally if not physically. But reading is an undertaking, one that is necessarily consensual. Before you can persuade someone with writing, you must persuade them to read.