GANAELLE LAURA
THE ROTHKO ROOM: HOW TO
Feel small.
Feel very small.
Feel as small as an ant.
Choose a painting. Sit down in front of it. Let your eyes adjust.
Look at the painting. Notice its silence in a noisy room.
Decide if it is full or empty.
Sit.
Be face to face with it.
Listen to the hushed conversations around you, or
don’t listen to them.
Sit.
Open the painting’s window into a landscape
where something has happened,
where a bomb may have gone off the day before,
where the sky is grey, without clouds,
where you might witness a silent extinction.
Look at the painting. Let your eyes adjust.
Decide whether you think it can exist
without you there on the bench
in front of it.
Notice the painting reach out.
Feel something.
Feel different.