In the second, narrow room of the Tate Modern exhibition Rothko: The Late Series a single canvas fills most of one of the long walls. Rothko, who wanted people to have the experience of being enveloped by his pictures, would have been happy with the way the constricted space pushes viewers towards the empty facing wall. It is as if the picture was a radiator the heat of which drives you back. You must wait for your turn in the line because people linger. Some pictures are read quickly: Rothko's are best taken slowly. Yet even if we all say the same things about the exhilaration and the pleasure we feel when reading black on purple-black or red on red on red, finding the depths in the pictures suggested by some of Rothko's statements is now, and probably always was, an act of faith that requires a sort of self-hypnosis.

LRB 23 October 2008 | PDF Download