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The New Color Field Culture PlaCe,Volume 3 T his season, Mark Rothko is in the air. The unveiling of Houston's Rothko Chapel restoration is the first phase of a transformative $30 million campaign that adds the Suzanne Deal Booth Welcome House, subtle new landscaping by Nelson Byrd Woltz, and, upcoming, a program center, admin/ archives building, and guest house. Thanks to thoughtful modifications in the Chapel lighting system, Rothko's suite of 14 large minimalist paintings — his magnum opus, according to his son, Christopher Rothko — can now be savored the way that patron Dominique de Menil and the artist envisioned a half-century ago. In that spirit, we bring you our picks for the best of the new Color Field: 10 paintings, two works on paper, and a singular sculpture, that speak to Rothko's legacy. Here's what to covet now. We begin with arguably Texas' most important 20th-century painter. That would be Dorothy Hood, available through McClain Gallery in Houston, which collaborates with the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, on selling works not in the museum's permanent collection to fund programs devoted to the late Houston artist's scholarship, as well as conservation of AMST's trove of paintings from the estate. Texas-born Hood, whose life and art propelled her from a Rhode Island School of Design scholarship to the heart of the Mexican avant-garde, was the subject of a compelling 2016 volume and accompanying AMST blockbuster, written and curated by Susie Kalil: "The Color of Being / El Color del Ser: Dorothy Hood, 1918- 2000." At McClain, a classic canvas from the height of Hood's prowess, Untitled, 1980s, is a mid-sized (60 x 60 inch) work that doesn't require a vast wall to install. Hood's depths of fluid color are in evidence: organic, limpid pools — in this case crimson and ultramarine — balanced by deft passages of her signature, tightly controlled frottage technique. The resulting image resembles floating landscapes set against a deep void. Hood's subliminal use of red, white, and blue, as well as black, evokes a patriotic metaphor as dark clouds encircle primary colors. While this may have been unintended on the artist's part, this abstract canvas bears a powerful conceptual reading, a hallmark of Hood's oeuvre and talent. Also creating enigmatic space in the language of Color Field, Houston painter Kristen Cliburn has honed her work down to its most reductive and pure. The artist's dramatic diptych Here, Again, 2020, is a compelling offering available via Cris Worley Fine Arts, Cliburn's Dallas dealer. A similar expansive atmospheric sensation, but in a calmer palette, is achieved by Scottish artist Eric Cruikshank in his oil-on-paper painting Untitled, Number 1, 2019, a continuation of his series "Paper Skies," last seen in a 2018 solo at Holly Johnson Gallery (Dallas), the Culture Place gallerist who features Cruikshank's work this month. Dorothy Hood's Untitled, 1980s, at McClain Gallery All imAges courtesy the Artists And their respective culture plAce gAlleries In an ode to the reoPenIng of the rothko ChaPel, CaTheriNe d. aNspoN Curates ContemPorary artIsts who dIalogue wIth the great Color fIeld PaInter mark rothko — artworks aVaIlable exClusIVely from texas' new onlIne art CommerCe sIte, Culture PlaCe, CulturePlaCe.Com. (Continued) 70