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flame containing fires, or the entrances to tombs, like the doors of dwellings of the dead in Egyptian pyramids behind which the sculptors kept their kings ‘alive’ for eternity in the
ka. . . .
These paintings—open sarcophagi—moodilydare, and thus invite the spectator to enter their orifices. Indeed the whole series of these murals brings to mind an Orphic cycle . . . the artist descending to Hades to find the Eurydice of his vision. The door to the tomb opens for the artist in search of his muse.” 35 It is indeed difficult to see how this mixture of Egyptian and classical references could help a viewer understand a Mark Rothko abstraction. But what it does reveal is Selz’s struggle to find a verbal equivalent for decidedly nonverbal works of art. This passage presents Selz at his most poetic, reaching for some way to explain that which is, finally, ineffable. He seems to be proposing that Rothko’s abstractions may be best understood as an expression of spiritual yearning, universal and timeless, and the artist’s way of coming to terms with the inevitability of death. Emily Genauer just did not get the metaphorical essence.
    John Canaday represents another misunderstanding of Rothko’s art and Selz’s effort to provide a framework in which it could be fully appreciated. Like Genauer, he describes Rothko’s abstractions as “decorative,” albeit “great decoration.” What follows is interesting beyond the artist and the show itself, however:
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    Offering an explanation for Mr. Rothko’s progressive rejection of all the elements that are the conventional ones in painting, such as line, color, movement and defined spatial relationships, Peter Selz . . . states that the “paintings disturb and satisfy partly by the magnitude of his renunciation.” This is nothing but high-flown nonsense if we begin with the assumption that the audience for painting today is anything but an extremely specialized one. But it makes sense if we understand to what a degree the painter today has become a man whose job it is to supply material in progressive stages for the critic’s esthetic exercises. 36
    This may be
New York Times
critic John Canaday at his most reactionary, but he nonetheless makes a thought-provoking observation about the relationship of artists to critical writers and museum curators, not to mention galleries. Even Peter, given other contexts and artists, would agree with what is now acknowledged to be a more or less mutually beneficial alliance. 37
    Futurism
(1961), which came directly on the heels of
Mark Rothko
, wasa first of a somewhat different kind. Futurist art also had not been showcased in an exhibition, major or otherwise. When Peter introduced Art Nouveau as a phenomenon worthy of both attention and a major exhibition, it was, he said, “like bringing in something that had been discarded. So that was controversial.” In the context of his career at MoMA, he went on, “In general, I would say that almost all the shows that I did, and that I’ve been doing since then, were never mainstream. The third show that I did was
Futurism
. At that time, Futurism was considered an aberration away from Cubism, because they didn’t know what they were doing—a misunderstanding of Cubism. Or, that they were Fascists—which they were. [laughing]” 38
    But as he wrote later, “Motion and speed, the watermarks of the new epoch, have long since been accepted as integers of urban life in the twentieth century . . . that have altered the realities of the human condition.” 39 And the Futurists, anticipating key elements of modernist art, represent both motion and speed. “With a violent burst on the public consciousness, the Futurists demanded ‘that universal dynamism must be rendered in paintings as a dynamic sensation.’ As they were conscious of the fact that ‘all things move, all things run, all