(Credits: Far Out / MUBI / Alamy)
“From the pain come the dream / From the dream come the vision” is the ominous opening line of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Fourteen Black Paintings’. It was a fitting testament to Mark Rothko – the artist who inspired it – because the abstract artist drew from tragedies like the Second World War to create towering rectangular blocks of colour, using the conflict as inspiration to express emotions in opaque washes of blues and reds. Rothko built on the universal pain of war and material like Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy to bring his vision to life, which Gabriel nodded to in the 1992 track from the Us album.
Both the marketing and development of Us were shaped directly by art. Gabriel decided that album art featuring only his face didn’t gel well with the album’s innovative approach and enlisted help from artists like Nils-Udo, David Mach, Helen Chadwick and others to create unique artwork for it. With the cover entrusted to contemporary artists, Rothko inspired an entire song on the album.
Before writing ‘Fourteen Black Paintings’, Peter Gabriel visited the Rothko Chapel and composed five sparse lines set to North African, Middle Eastern, and Northern African instrumentation. The Chapel itself was founded by John and Dominique de Ménil, who invited Rothko to fill it with art. They’d seen glimpses of his work in a New York hotel and wanted to utilise his unique vision.
Across two years, he filled it with 14 paintings, done at the artistic peak of his career. But it was also when his career ended, as he tragically committed suicide before the Chapel could be completed. But he did manage to create three tryptics, seven purple-toned paintings, and seven black rectangles.
At the time, the de Ménils said: “We saw what a master could do for a religious building when he is given a free hand. He can exalt and uplift as no one else.”
Ever since the Rothko Chapel opened in 1971, it has served as a place of contemplation and creativity for a host of musicians. Composer Morton Feldman wrote a piece in tribute to the building and his late friend, and it was constantly visited by musicians ahead of writing. When Phillip Glass visited, he called it a “revelation” and said he sat in front of the paintings for “long stretches”. Likewise, the Cult’s Ian Astbury visited often, saying: “I make a pilgrimage there every time I’m in Houston.”
Gabriel was one of many artists who did the same and was inspired by Rothko’s ability to turn objective tragedy into something beautiful. On Gabriel’s tribute track, he attempted a similar feat with his lyrics, which seemed to urge people to transmute pain into something visionary.
