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his assurance, the surrender to Reis's persuasion often resulted in
decisions repugnant to him . Nevertheless, he went along with Reis
for fear of offending him and, perhaps, of being betrayed .
A case in point was the proposed deal with Marlborough . Mark
was to sell twenty or thirty more paintings to the gallery at Reis's
insistence, but he died the night before these works were chosen.
M eyers describes the arrangement, which was never concluded, as if
it were to have been routine. He goes on to quote Mrs. Bedford, Ad
Reinhardt's widow, who had dinner with Mark that evening, as say–
ing "he had been perfectly all right." Had Meyers checked with her,
she would have told him, as she told William Rubin (Director, De–
partment of Painting and Sculpture, the Museum of Modern Art)
and myself, that Rothko had been disturbed and resentful at being
persuaded so insistently by Reis to sell. Mark did not need the money
nor would his career be furthered. Mrs. Bedford even suggested that
he use an excuse to avoid the meeting. (She had no inkling of his in–
tention to kill himself.
If
she had, she told me, she would not have
left him alone.) For some reason, Mark could not resist Reis . The
extent to which Mark's resentment and fear was the cause of his sui–
cide will never be known .
Meyers describes Frank Lloyd as an enterprising "cherub" with
a "spiked helmet" who made the reputations of his group of American
artists. Again we are faced with only half the story . Meyers should
be aware that it required no great perspicacity to choose , with Reis's
advice, those artists who were leaders of the New York School and
were selling well. He only took on artists who had a good sales
record and then skillfully promoted them .
Meyers's description of Mark as a hypocrite who "pursued the
rich and the powerful" cannot be reconciled with the man whom I
had known closely since
1947-
when we both first exhibited at the
Betty Parsons Gallery - and I never heard even rumors of such
hypocrisy. On the contrary, he returned a five thousand dollar ad–
vance, for instance, when he learned that he had been misled about
where his paintings were to hang in the Seagram Building. Further–
more, he did not pursue Mr. and Mrs. de Meni!. They came to him
for the Houston Chapel paintings because they liked his work, and
because they saw some spiritual, mystical, or religious content in it.
On one occasion, I witnessed the exact opposite of the duplicity
Meyers imputes to Mark, when he said he told an influential critic
who wanted to do a piece about him, "Do me the favor of not writing
about me ."
