Houston’s Rothko Chapel Is a Transcendent Artwork—But the Path to Create It Was Long and Difficult

ARTNEWS
Tessa Solomon

In a 1966 letter to the collectors John and Dominique de Menil, Mark Rothko wrote that the chapel commission “is teaching me to extend myself beyond what I thought was possible for me.”

Mark Rothko was known to be a perfectionist, but even by his own standards, creating the iconic abstract murals that now appear in a chapel in Houston, Texas, was a laborious process. Collectors John and Dominique de Menil had commissioned him to do the works in 1964, and according to some accounts, he dedicated a month to half an inch of canvas for the paintings for the chapel. He asserted so much control over the murals that, according to a 2018 biography of the Menils by William Middleton, his patrons never even got to preview Rothko’s work until 1967, when the painter invited them to see his paintings in progress. [More]