Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting. Red is a moving and compelling account of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century whose struggle to accept his growing riches and praise became his ultimate undoing.
What Is the Story of Red?
It is the late 1950s and Mark Rothko, the famous Abstract Expressionist painter, is at a crossroads in his career. Intellectual, controlling and often bombastic, Rothko is at work on a surprising (and very well-paid) commission: a series of murals to hang at the Four Seasons restaurant in Midtown Manhattan’s Seagram’s Building. The play takes place in Rothko’s studio, where he works with the help of a smart, young assistant. The action follows the artist’s struggle for integrity and understanding in the face of fame, self-questioning and impending irrelevance. Will his paintings survive in a place that represents everything—greed, commercialism, bourgeois comfort—he detests?
