Rothko Chapel

In our search of cheap entertainment, Ryan and I decided to go to the Rothko chapel last week. 

Basically, it's a non-denominational sacred place that was mostly designed by Mark Rothko (he worked with an architect) and the inside is covered with some of his large panels.  It was extremely lame.  First of all, I think my expectations were off.  The Paris Opera House commissioned Marc Chagall to paint the ceiling dome there and it looks awesome.  I kind of forgot what Mark Rothko's "thang" was and was expecting something awesome like what Chagall did at the opera house.

Chagall ceiling in Paris:

That was not the case.  We walked in and found ourselves in a pretty uninteresting room full of dark, nearly-identical panels.  I found this photo online, believe me - I'm converted to the magic of photography now.  The place didn't look halfway as cool as this, which only looks semi-cool anyway. 

Rothko Chapel:

The building itself even seemed kind of lame.  We went in, sat down, and it was just this small room (full of chairs, not these nice benches) and the lighting was lame.  I don't think the lighting illuminated the paintings nearly as well as in the photo, but it could have been the time of day.   Ryan was like, "I'm not going to pretend to admire this stuff." So we walked out.  I feel like Ryan aren't connoisseurs, but we can appreciate art.  Thankfully the trip wasn't an entire waste, in the same block was a modern art collection that we went to instead.  It was a smallish museum, but there were some good things (a little heavy on the Surrealists if you ask me, but it was a private collection).