'Painter tried to heal wounds of people'

Annie Cohen-Solal, a French writer, historian and sociologist, at the French Institute in Seoul, Tuesday. / Korea Times

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Annie Cohen-Solal, a French writer, historian and sociologist, said that her encounters with a great contemporary philosopher and a painter, Jean Paul Sartre and Mark Rothko, respectively, were life-changing experiences.

She first read the works of philosopher, novelist and political activist Sartre when she was a college student. She later met him in person.

Cohen-Solal took an interest in Mark Rothko (1903-1970), an American painter of Russian Jewish descent, in the late 1980s when she served as cultural counselor at the French Embassy in the United States.

Sartre and Rothko motivated the writer to trace their lives and works. Her studies of the two great figures later led her to begin writing.

Cohen-Solal released a biography of the French philosopher, titled “Sartre: A Life” in 1988. The book has been translated into 16 languages.

In March, she published a book about the abstract expressionist painter titled, “Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel.”

“Despite the differences in their areas of specializations, I realized that Sartre and Rothko were similar in that they were not hierarchical at all when they interacted with people,” she told The Korea Times through an interpreter on May 19 at the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul.

“They were sincere and tried to engage with their audiences. They both taught how to interact with people.”

Cohen-Solal visited Korea as part of her book tour to Asia and met art-loving Koreans at the museum for a lecture about the life of Rothko. Her guided tour of Rothko’s 50 works on display followed.

The French writer said her area of interest has shifted from culture to art after she was struck by Rothko.

“Rothko and his family were forced to leave Russia when he was 10 because of the sweeping anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe at that time. They immigrated to the United States,” said Cohen-Solal. “His life in the United States was not easy, either, because a backlash against ethnic Jewish people existed there, too.”

Rothko went to Yale University, seven years after he moved to the U.S. “He was an intellectually well-prepared man as he read lots of books and had the capacity to do independent research even before he was accepted to Yale on a scholarship,” said Cohen-Solal.

“But he dropped out of the university two years later. Coupled with the Jew bashing atmosphere, his superior intellectual capability made it even more difficult to survive there because his classmates were jealous.”

The French writer said Rothko’s decision to leave Yale for painting was a starting point to his life-long journey to search for his social identity. Rothko ended his life tragically by committing a suicide in June, 1970.

“He was an immigrant, artist and trailblazer. As a person who had lived as a stranger because of his ethnic background, he knew how difficult it was to live as a minority and tried to heal the wounds of people and society through his work,” she said.

The Mark Rothko exhibition at the Hangram Museum will continue until June 28. Korea is the first Asian country hosting the late American abstract expressionist’s work.