On the 17th of January 2026 I had a few hours in between a BFI Southbank screening of Le Bonheur and a BFI IMAX screening of No Other Choice (with a Q&A from Park Chan-Wook; normally I try not to have two movies so far apart). I decided to go and have a look at Rothko's Seagram Murals in the Tate Modern. I wrote down my cringe thoughts while I peered into the artworks for about 40 minutes. Here are those thoughts:
Bleeding and bruises. Cave walls with pools of blood dripping up towards the ceiling like stalagmites. A portal to a shadowy city situated right outside of focus. Edges of a torn manuscript, a void feathered like a painful gash upon maroon skin. A giant through a window. He isn't angry, just standing there. A thick, depressive haze disguises the direction he's looking. It's impossible to look away from the nucleation sites, epicentres of pain upon flesh. The light may dance across hardened scab, but this will hurt forever. A smudge of a seraph, filtered through corrugant hellfire, steps out of a train carriage. Her step lands in a pool of her own blood. Grime and limbs. Scorched engine oil stains. Dirt that could only come from blue collar work. A knee, a thigh, a graze. A sliver of light drowns in open darkness, vertical blinds defining its stippled bounds. A man sinks as he screams out to God. Freed from certainty, flames lick at his swollen ankles. The residual outline of a spine. Pillars of congesting smoke. With his brow furrowed, time is immaterial again. The tree's wooden eyelets appear to him now, mind muddied and sincerely unable to focus on anything. He reaches out to edges of his vision and only feels singed red. A speckled, stinging contusion.