Several years ago, while dining with a grade-school friend who was suffering from homelessness, he explained that a friend of his, also homeless—“You remember Dan from third grade?” he asked—had been living with his great uncle in the uncle’s subsidized old folks’ apartment. Unfortunately, the great uncle, a single man who’d made a life in art, interior design and fashion clothing, had gone into the local hospital with pneumonia. He died suddenly, leaving his great-nephew at the mercy of tenants who, upon learning of the old man’s demise, circled the wagons and told him, “You’re not supposed to be here. Senior citizens only!”
On this Saturday evening, and nearly done with the meal, my friend explained that his buddy had to be out of the deceased great-uncle’s apartment by Monday at noon. Everything his uncle had ever owned—vintage clothing, artwork, furnishings, personal effects—had to be removed, too, or else they would go in a dumpster. “These old people play hardball,” he told me, adding at this late hour, “Wanna take a look now?”
Minutes later on a cold December evening, I found myself standing in the man’s one-bedroom apartment in a former convent, the tall ceilings and semi-circle bay window hinting at a certain splendor many years gone by. The place was left nearly untouched from when the ambulance had taken him away not a week ago. Upon an unmade bed lie piles of vintage clothing, boxes sat stacked, and basics such as toiletries and pots and pans lay about as if the man had just stepped out. That’s when I saw it: the deceased man’s homage to Mark Rothko, American abstraction expressionist. The painting, four by three feet, featured two blocks of green and red on a background of tangerine. Without hesitation, I wrapped my arms around the work, walked out the door, squeezed it into the backseat of my small Subaru, and drove off. After a brief stint at home, the painting claimed a wall of my office, delighting students, staff and faculty, one of whom, a fine arts professor, said, “Hey, nice Rothko.”
A year later, I took my then-80-year-old mother to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. This was the first time in her long life she’d ever been to an art museum, and she was excited at the prospect. “Your father never cared for this stuff,” she told me as I wheelchaired her into a side entrance that began her journey in the art world. The very first painting she laid eyes on was one of Rothko’s “color field” paintings he’d become famous for after his death. By suicide. However, unlike the bright, cheery Rothko homage adorning my office wall, she stared straight into one Rothko’s “Black Form Paintings.” I stood off to the side with an “Oh boy/Uh oh” smirk and awaited her judgment. After a long, solid scan of the work, she turned to me and volunteered the oft-uttered opinion: “Well, I could have painted that!”
“Yes,” I replied, with the also oft uttered “But you didn’t!”
Without being pedantic and taking the fun out this experience, I explained that what appeared to be a totally black painting was really a combination of “several shades of black, with subtle shades of dark brown and green,” a description Mom was not buying. “Take a closer look,” I suggested and despite her gamely second attempt at comprehension, she shook her head. Before we moved on to another painting, I volunteered that Rothko’s goal in his color field works was to spark emotion in his viewer. Mom replied, “Well, he sure got a response out of me. Yuck!” adding, “Why can’t he do more of the nice painting you have on your office wall?” That was my cue to move along to the next work, so I spun her wheelchair around, only to be greeted by another black form painting.
“He must have been really depressed.”
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