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Earlier this spring, as I regarded the deep reds and blacks of Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals, I found myself so overwhelmed with the sadness of the work that I started to cry.

Molina, 70, has been nominated for three Tony Awards, for “Art,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and, most recently, “Red,” in which he starred as the painter Mark Rothko in 2010.

Paintings of city scenery from Rothko’s early career lead to his experiments with Surrealism; to the abstract, foggy rectangles he’s known for; and finally to the dark, colorless canvasses that embodied his later work.

The most substantial Mark Rothko retrospective in a generation has opened at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and it is a show of monumental dispersion: a pull-out-all-the-stops blockbuster where life passes into vapor.

Light and spatial abstraction spoke to contemporary interests in perception, represented by artists as diverse as Mark Rothko and Robert Irwin.