Beauty and the Stillness That Moves

I have always loved the work of Mark Rothko. Abstract Expressionism is a term often used to describe his style yet apparently he was less interested in being so named. Beauty transcends labels.

Rothko Chapel in Houston bearing purplish black canvases on the interior by Rothko and an obelisk on the exterior to honor Martin Luther King is intended to be a place of worship for all faiths. According to its website, “The Rothko Chapel is a spiritual space, a forum for world leaders, a place for solitude and gathering. It’s an epicenter for civil rights activists, a quiet disruption, a stillness that moves.” 

As we consider Beauty in all its forms and with all its transformative power, it occurs to me that space itself might be beautiful and might invoke the sacred. 

I have had a lot of blessed experiences with space and what I refer to as its liminal quality. Space can be a threshold to the holy, an in-between to connect this world to the next, humans to the divine. 

Learning of the Rothko Chapel evoked those memories of such numinous, liminal spaces: Chartres, Chagal chapel in Tel Aviv, St Paul’s in London, The Wadi Quelt, the Vietnam War Memorial, and Christ Church Episcopal Sharon. I could go on but what these have in common for me is a beauty and wonder which activate and animate the space with such power as to cause tears, chills, prayer, buckling knees. In short, the Beauty and the Space invite me to, compel me to, fall on my knees. 

Roger Housden says in describing the Rothko Chapel: “Rothko is not religious but he created a beauty in the Houston chapel that can draw you into a silence and wonder that is at the heart of religious experience.” Rothko himself claimed the only accuracy was the silence and the encounter between art and onlooker. 

There is a magnanimous offering in this wherein the artist lets go and the real holy experience is between the viewer and the viewed. Artist and Art, God, Angels, mediate; beauty and space take us deeper. Stillness moves...