Back to Life: Rothko’s Moment
Christopher Benfey, 21 May 2015
In the old ‘Rothko room’ of the pre-expansion Phillips Collection in Washington DC, it was possible to feel that you had stumbled on a private sanctuary, furnished with a single bench, in which four extraordinary paintings – soft-edged rectangles of pulsing orange and saturated blue, yellows both earthly and otherworldly – slowly worked their enchantment. Total...