Fighting for Great American Masters and bad fathers—the mess Mark Rothko’s death made

[astro]

Very interesting article.

Matter of Rothko - by David Levine
Fighting for Great American Masters and bad fathers—the mess Mark Rothko’s death made.

I’m going to break this down very simply, and as nonlibelously as possible.

On February 25, 1970, my mother received a call from Oliver Steindecker, Mark Rothko’s studio assistant, informing her that Rothko had committed suicide and was lying on the floor of his studio in a pool of blood. My mom took a cab from her house on East Eighty-Ninth to Rothko’s studio, twenty blocks south, and helped identify the body. She then took another cab uptown, to Rothko’s brownstone on East Ninety-Fifth, to tell Rothko’s estranged wife, Mell. She left a message with my father, who was, curiously, attending a funeral. Eventually he showed up as well, and helped to arrange Rothko’s funeral two days later.