Rothko, The Late Series is a collection of the last works of Mark Rothko (1903-1970). They spread over nine rooms, snaking around a central cathedral-like space. Each room is a perfect environment for the work it presents. Smaller rooms house sketches and model boxes, photographs and etchings. Larger rooms have ghostly works spanning 3m by 2m which tower over the spaces.

The works are mostly oil on canvas. They are always in reds, blacks, maroons, oranges and greys, with square after rectangle after square. There could be a danger of thinking that to see one Rothko is to see all of them. But this exhibition does lay that criticism of monotony to rest, and the worry that his work is depressing and oppressive. It's unique and life-affirming, and - thanks to the hands-off nature of its curation (by Achim Borchardt-Hume) - it leaves meaning entirely in the minds of the individual, to judge as each may.

This may seem a contradiction, taking into account the importance of the architectural and lighting contexts which envelop - and in some cases make - these works. Mark Rothko seemed obsessed with how to place a painting. Photos of his studio in Room Four show cameras, suggesting that he photographed his own work, and was fascinated in the whole mis-en-scene of the painting once hung. Which wall and which light is used during the hanging seem as intrinsic as the squares and rectangles on the canvas which dominate, but don't intimidate.

There's a feeling of quiet reflection, rather than oppressive depression. The enormous central point of Room Three has the essence of a religious space or an Italian piazza. It's full of murmuring people meeting and animatedly discussing the work, but also their lives and day-to-day concerns, which are somehow encouraged to be present and seem relevant in this room. Rothko's works seem to look down and watch, as they are watched. It feels as if the space in between the throbbing lines on canvas converse with this human experience. In the same way that a cathedral may inspire wonder at the human endeavour to meet with God, so Rothko's work seems to speak of a greater divine end. The dark internal squares suddenly feel not empty and hopeless, but full of a meaning which can be discerned and explored, questioned and learnt from.

Black on Maroon 1957, sits quietly in the corner of Room Three - more violent than its silent brothers through the intensity of its brush strokes, the roughness of its finishes and the almost primordial imagery evoking cave paintings. Unlike Rothko's clean lines in the later rooms, this looks like a crime of passion - three dark lines connected to make a structure resemble Greek columns, a temple to old Gods. The colour is more like dried blood than dull maroon, and the black is not smooth and unyielding - but rushed and brushed quickly and impatiently. The grander and more controlled paintings in the room seem almost to look down on it, but it is a powerful image. It suggests the strength of Rothko's passion, which sometimes seems clamped-down and stifled by the clean control of his later oblong forms.

Room Four is much smaller and brighter. It houses two paintings and some photographs of the artist's studio. One is Untitled 1964 - 1960s hipster-red, brash and blatant, fights with deep crimson brown. The flat cohesion of the duller, heavier square within the young, vibrant red suggests no hint of discourse between them. The cleanness of the lines which divide them robs this work of the virile power of Black on Maroon. By not speaking of either divine or mundane concerns, it is possibly the closest of the works to fall into Rothko's trap of mere decoration. It becomes a soulless, flat work in its perfect completeness, leaving no questions for the viewer.

The exhibition is inspirational in its confidence not to comment on Rothko's obviously very particular presentational concerns, giving space to the canvases to speak for themselves. The exhibition twists and floats on an Alice-In-Wonderland journey from the very little to the gigantic. There are massive hues of crimson red, and large cubed coloured blocks, through to tiny sketches of patterned orange and shocking and unexpected blue. However religious this exhibition may feel, it is Mark Rothko's version of empirical land, rock and mud which remain as a lasting impression. Iridescent as the pearly-grey sections are, the final space - Room Nine - is a sombre end.

Room Nine shows a series of Black on Grey paintings. They are seven simple canvases, with two sections of muddy black and marble grey. Grey is always on the bottom, giving the impression of a bleak and abandoned (and very real) horizon. They are evenly-spaced around the room, except that the wall with the entrance door is left blank. The horizon draws the eye from one painting to the other, in a journey which concludes at this empty wall. Mark Rothko's works and Achim Borchardt-Hume's curation ends with a place lacking any of the metaphysical thought of the artist's canvases. Instead, it seems to point to Rothko's final absence, by his suicide.

Cast Credits: Mark Rothko (Marcus Rothkowitz) (1903-1970) - artist.

Company Credits: Curator - Achim Borchardt-Hume. Company - Tate Modern www.tate.org.uk. Direct Web Link - www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/markrothko/default.shtm

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(c) Honour Jane Bayes 2008

reviewed Friday 10 October 08 / Tate Modern, London

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com