Standing in front of the painting
I went to the Rothko Chapel because someone told me I should. I did not know what to expect. I sat down. The room was quiet and the paintings were enormous and very dark. I cried. I do not know why. I am not a crier. I did not understand the paintings. I still do not understand the paintings. I understood that something happened to me in that room, and it was not nothing.
Then I read that a banana duct-taped to a wall sold for $6.2 million and I felt stupid for crying.
That is the problem. The market makes the experience feel naive. The institutional critics are right that the system is rigged. The traditionalists are right that skill matters. The avant-garde are right that the Rothko Chapel works. All three are talking about the art world. I am talking about the moment a piece of art rearranges your afternoon.
I bought a print of a painting I saw at a gallery in Portland. It cost forty dollars. It is on my wall. I look at it when I make coffee. Nobody would write an essay about it. It does something to me that I cannot explain and do not need to explain. The banana costs $6.2 million. My print costs forty dollars. Neither price tells you anything about what happens when a person stands in front of something and is changed by the looking.
The camps are arguing about the system. The system is worth arguing about. But the experience came first. The system grew around it like a barnacle.
Where we concede ground: We cannot tell you why the Rothko Chapel works and a house-painted monochrome would not. Maybe it would.
What would change our mind: If we stopped being moved. We have not stopped being moved. The market has not killed the thing. Not yet.
Read the full synthesis: Is modern art a genuine evolution or did someone lose the plot?