911010

Both titled Head of an Apostle, and painted in c. 1764, by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779)

The Girl on a Motorcycle, 1968

Cave of the Storm Nymphs, 1903, by Edward Poynter (1836-1919)

more

Norman Bean Films; Phoenix/BFA Films & Video, A First Film on Insects, 1981

In June 1958, Mark Rothko accepted a commission to decorate a dining room in the Four Seasons restaurant of the Seagram Building on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a new modernist skyscraper by Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe. Departing from his wonted format of floating rectangles in glowing colors, Rothko produced wine-dark paintings with ambiguous portal shapes evoking what he called a “closed space.” From the fall of 1958 into 1959 he was completely absorbed, making more than thirty even though the room only offered places for seven. At the same time, he became increasingly doubtful that a luxury restaurant with its wealthy patrons was the appropriate venue for his art. He withdrew, canceling what would have been his first painted environment—a “place,” as he ambitiously said, rather than just a group of paintings. 

thom browne fw 2015