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I’m driving to Melbourne
on Wednesday. The usual grooves of PBS FM is displaced by Radio National’s Books
and Arts Daily talking about John Logan’s play Red currently at the MTC.
Before I can switch back
to PBS’ Roots of Rhythm, my usual Wednesday driving companion, I realise that
Red is about Rothko and my all time favourite restaurant, in a design sense,
the Four Seasons in New York.
I’m certain that the
vision, extravagance, drama and conceit that made up the gestation of this
Madmen extravaganza will, even in these post Bulli times, be hard to Trump.
Bit of background..Put
Yankee post war binge in the late 1950’s, a prime piece of Park Avenue real
estate, the Seagram Corporation, Mies Van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Joe Baum.
George Lang, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock into a skyscraper of a cocktail
and what you got was a deadly mix of an operatic scale played out in the
opening of the most extravagant modern restaurant dining room of the most
extravagant city at a time when extravagance new no bounds.
I was really looking
forward to the play especially to see how the serendipitous Australian
connection will be revealed. I ring the Hyphen, make a booking and slide
breathlessly 8 hours later into Script dining room for a pre dinner meal.
Without giving anything
away [its been reviewed in all the media quite closely] the play centres around
Rothko’s moral soul search in taking a big commission from a large corporation
for work that he sees as transcending all previous attempts at abstract
expressionism. It’s a two-hander between the new assistant and the master
confronting his own demons while monstering the young up and coming artist with
questions of Pollocks suicide, the trivia of Pop Art, the nature of colour, the
interplay of light, Nietzsche, Apollo- Dionysus and the eternal questions of
generational change.
Colin Friels gives a good but predictable
performance with a very stilted accent [why do we need to copy accents?] the
assistants role is restrained and he brings the drama to a head by confronting
the Artist with the essence of his moral dilemma. After visiting the Four
Seasons [its already open] Rothko reneges and brings on the climax and return of
the substantial commission.
As the lights dim and applause
begins I realise that the full story with the equally dramatic Australian connection
is not going to be revealed.
What happened
next.........
When Jerry Brody of Restaurant
Associates one of the consultants working on the restaurant realises that they
will not have the Rothko paintings they turn to art collector Ben Heller to ask
if he had something appropriate to fill nearly 20 meter space. Heller suggested
a painting in his garage that his kids were in danger of destroying. Of course
it was Blue Poles. The painting goes into the private room of the Four Seasons
before Rothko’s visit but strangely this is not mentioned in the play.
Fast forward to 1973
Rothko has committed suicide three years earlier. The Four Seasons has fallen
on hard times and James Mollison from the Australian National Gallery convinces
Whitlam and the acquisition committee to pay the highest price [A$2 million] to
that date for a modern American painting. Resulting in a scandal that rocked
the art world at the time.
Post Script: Blue Poles
whatever you may think of it, is, today valued at between $50M and $150M
The opera continues to be
played out still every day in the restaurant that now desperately needs a new American
vision to feed the desires of today’s madmen. If you get a chance to go the bar
snacks at the 5 pm happy time are brilliant and the interior is totally intact.
