Rothko revealed

IN Blank Space Theatre's production of Red, the great American painter Mark Rothko tells his studio assistant Ken to examine his paintings more closely: "Look at the tension between the blocks of colours ... They exist in a state of flux ... They ebb and flow and shift ... They float in space, they breathe."

Rothko describes well the strange appeal of his abstract paintings, made up of no more than blocks of iridescent colours, either stacked on top of the other or floating alone in a larger block.

He insisted that his paintings are not supposed to represent anything - making him the first artist to paint "emptiness".