Word: seagrams
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...American painting, a man who struggled to find a way for mere pigment to summon immense reservoirs of feeling, and who took his own life when the struggle proved too much. This is why one of the most baffling episodes in Rothko's story has to do with the Seagram murals, a suite of vast, brooding canvases he produced for Manhattan's sparkling Four Seasons restaurant. Rothko was an artist who could say, and mean it: "The sense of the tragic is always with me when I paint." And the Four Seasons is the kind of place that serves petit...
Fifteen of the Seagram murals, exhibited together for the first time in one gallery, are the centerpiece of "Rothko," a quietly devastating show of his late work running at London's Tate Modern. By the time he made them, Rothko was at the height of his powers as an artist. He was also a favorite among rich collectors, which didn't sit well with him. Were the moneymen buying his beckoning fogbanks of color simply because they found them decorative? Possibly; that may be one reason why, in 1957, his palette darkened. Nothing about a glowering picture like Four Darks...
Given that history, it is all the more puzzling that just a few months later, Rothko would agree to provide work for a restaurant in the newly completed Seagram Building. The commission came by way of Philip Johnson, the American architect and peerless cultural middleman, who had collaborated on the design of the Four Seasons and had also arranged for New York's Museum of Modern Art to buy its first Rothko. So it may have been partly out of gratitude that Rothko agreed to a project that was in every way wrong for him. The Four Seasons was glittering...
...know that this whole celebrity machine is overblown, men, damn it, who have lived--could be straight with each other. When Willis, who was in Alcoholics Anonymous and now occasionally drinks, began to rave about the dangers of booze (perhaps provoked by my repeated references to his 1980s Seagram's wine-cooler commercials), and I countered with a question about a YouTube video of him looking a little plowed at a recent Nets playoff game, he smiled. He paused. And then he said, "Jet-lagged." Yes, I thought, dude was jet-lagged. I've been jet-lagged and mocked Cybill...
...album, The Return of Bruno, in his car's cassette player at all times. "Bruce Willis made me start drinking. I'm not a fan of alcohol. But when Bruce Willis sings about golden wine coolers, you have to get your drink on. I showed up at parties with Seagram's wine coolers, and people would say, 'What are you, crazy? We have a keg. We have vodka.' But no. I'm Bruce Willis smooth...