Rothko Chapel murals

Fourteen enormous panels in plum, maroon and near-black — three triptychs and five single canvases — line an octagonal, top-lit room, their surfaces almost without incident, so that the viewer's own adjustment to the dark becomes the experience. Rothko worked on the commission for John and Dominique de Menil from 1964 to 1967, controlling the architecture as closely as the paintings, and died in 1970 before the chapel opened in Houston in 1971. Non-denominational and still in use, it is the fullest realisation of his belief that painting could function as a place rather than an object.