Mostly harmless

A gentle reminder, that if you see this photograph it is not a photograph of Mark Rothko's studio, but rather the set of a play. It's used even by big art accounts, frankly because they're lazy and not doing any research, but it's been floating around forever.

If you scrutinize it you can see there's some problems including that not very good painting in foreground which I suppose it's supposed to look like it's being worked on, but wouldn't really resemble one of his real paintings even if it was.

Written by: Meggan Watterson

Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. So what happened? How did Mary Magdalene become the penitent prostitute?

If Christian theologians in the fourth century were going to establish an exclusively male succession of spiritual power and authority, then the central figure in Christ’s story—Mary Magdalene—needed to be retold. The scriptures that affirmed her spiritual authority and extraordinary relationship with Christ were labeled apocryphal, or of doubtful authenticity. The Gospel of Mary, the only known gospel written in the name of a woman, was ordered destroyed by the end of the fourth century.

In the sixth century, Pope Gregory declared that the faithful would refer to Mary Magdalene as a prostitute by conflating her with the woman in the Gospel of Luke whom Christ heals of seven demons.

Diane Sawyer asked me candidly in a recent interview about Mary Magdalene, “What is it with men calling women prostitutes?” I shook my head slowly, taking in the weight and longevity of that trope. Then I added, “as if that could ever diminish our power.” Her smile started before mine. We smiled because we both knew that was the answer. It’s a word meant to diminish our worth—our authority.

It’s meant to diminish our authenticity and suggest that we are less trustworthy, less believable. If a woman’s worth is diminished, then so too are the crimes committed against her. This is the patriarchy’s indispensable linchpin.

And this is why I think the Gospel of Mary was so threatening to the patriarchal version of Christianity forming under Constantine in the fourth century. It’s why the Church had to create a lasting and popular fiction about Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. Because the Gospel of Mary asks the disciples—and us now—“if the Savior considered her worthy, who are you to disregard her?”

Because Christ, in the Gospel of Mary, challenges the unjust structures of power in the Roman Empire. This Christ—Mary’s Christ—believes she is worthy of significant spiritual authority. This Christ trusts her with his secret teachings: teachings that remind us we all contain an innate form of knowing, a treasure, a power to perceive the divine from within—teachings that call power back from people, places, institutions, and despots that try to convince us we have none.

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1959, seen at The National Museum of Norway, oil on watercolor paper, 38 X 25 inches.

Today we remember 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗥𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗞𝗢, who died on this day in 1970. Rothko's work has left an indelible impression on millions of people. It is work that draws us every day into museums and makes us travel great distances for the sole purpose of communion with it.

The fact that art exists at all is a steady miracle. It lives embattled, censored and manipulated, and still has managed to survive since people first identified the nature of their consciousness. It is the sincerity of art, rather than its fashion, that keeps it hanging on. In our world, it is only natural for honesty to be immutably compelling.

Many viewers have had transformative emotional experiences interacting with Mark Rothko paintings, the same kinds of experiences Rothko claimed to have painting them.

In his 1958 lecture at Pratt, Rothko's last public statement, he said,"Many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them."

Vision of St. Paschal by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696 Venice - 1770 Madrid), detail

Bretagne, 1921, David Kakabadze