We would like to congratulate PhD student, Jackson Doyle, for being selected as one of the two graduate recipients of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s 6th Annual Emerging Scholars in Object-Based Learning Award. The awards recognize two undergraduate and two graduate scholars who have demonstrated excellence in the methods of object-based scholarship.
Jackson’s paper, "Rothko's Renaissance,” explored the connections of the Rothko Chapel (and his two other monumental installations, the Harvard and Seagram Murals) to a long lineage of sacred art, specifically via Rothko's influences from the Italian Renaissance. When asked about the inspiration behind his paper, Jackson shared, “my project began with regular meditations last year at the Rothko Chapel; for a while now I've pursued Rothko's ability to conjure the void, and to cause that visual void to open and intrude on the viewer's sensory space. I learned this impulse is not as uniquely modern as some suggest. I focused on the diachronic web of his inspiration (from Byzantine concentric geometry to a sense of denial/blockage drawn from Michelangelo) as well as the technicalities of his practice through the accounts of his contemporaries as well as current scholarship on the works' troubled conservation. Tracing the development of these techniques across his three monumental commissions— the Seagram murals, Harvard murals, and the Chapel itself— I learned that both his taste for blocked vision as well as his dissemblant surfaces of temper and distemper can be traced to the Italian Renaissance, in particular Rothko's trips to Florence in 1950, '59, and '66. In Fra Angelico's underpainting at San Marco and Michelangelo's architectonics in the Laurentian Library Vestibule, Rothko found the tools that he would continue to refine across three mural projects, which is to say up until the end of his life. I tried to stay true to the Chapel's dialogue with death and voidness while remaining as sensitive as possible to the physical craft of Rothko's process."
The ceremony took place on October 22nd at the Hirsch Library and featured readings from the winning papers, as well as the presentation of awards to each recipient. MFAH event page.