Lot Essay
Barnett Newman startled his friends and critics with his first one-man exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in January, 1950. Newman's paintings were as radical as Jackson Pollock's drip paintings in their transcendent abstraction and their attempt to capture the sublime by engulfing the viewer in a total chromatic environment. Their reductive style caused the Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell to remark to Newman, "We thought that you were one of us. Instead your show is a critique against all of us" (H. Rosenberg, Barnett Newman, New York 1978, p. 243).
Born in 1905, Newman was late in coming to his mature style. But when the paintings arrived in a New York scene dominated by the gestural Abstract Expressionism of Pollock, de Kooning and Motherwell, their seemingly simple motifs of large fields of saturated color divided vertically by "zips"--Newman's term for the narrow bands of color in his paintings--shocked and dismayed his critics, and led to few sales. After his second one-man exhibition at Parsons' gallery, the criticism was so severe that Newman felt compelled to withdraw his work from the gallery and not to exhibit again. However, the paintings had an austere presence and a subtle complexity that informed the next generation. Artists such as Donald Judd, Frank Stella and Dan Flavin would identify with his ideas and find inspiration in his paintings for their own Minimalist works in the 1960s.
Transcendent meaning was paramount in Newman's work. Evocative titles --Moment I; Ulysses; The Voice; The Way--suggested that Newman's pursuit of the sublime was his ultimate subject matter. His "zip" stood for his Transcendental Self, not the personal "I," but "'the self, terrible and constant' of tragedy, embodied in his sign and standing for him in the various situations of his higher life" (Rosenberg, op.cit., p. 67). It could be seen as "a channel of spiritual tension, introduced on the canvas with infinite care for its placement, as if in response to some supernatural instruction" (ibid., p. 54). From the moment the "zip" first appeared in Onement, 1948, Newman stated that "I realized that I'd made a statement which was affecting me and that was, I suppose, the beginning of my present life" (ibid., p. 47).
The Word II is an austerely magnificent work of art, one whose subtelty of design and masterful execution is emblematic of Newman's mature painting style. The obdurate black of the largest rectangle on the left exerts its massive weight over roughly half the painting, in contrast with the second largest rectangle on the right, painted thinly and luminously blue. A flat, densely painted, pale blue rectangle separates the other two. The entire surface seems to be broken into one-half and two-quarters, but this is not quite the case. The black area is broken by a narrow, blood-red zip, placed on the central axis, which makes the black area appear larger than one-half. A second, wider zip of the same red, with loosely brushed and ragged edges, further reinforces this perception, and the viewer's eye is fully occupied in its attempt to sort out the balance of the whole.
Beyond the design and the careful placement of all of the elements, the color carries a message of metaphysical presence. The black is somber, weighty, opaque; the blue is translucent, transient, celestial. The black echoes man's vision of the world: solid, dense, eternal. The blue echoes man's ideal: open, deep, transcendent. And the blood-red color of the zips might represent man's being, his Self, with all of his doubts and equivocations as he faces the meaning beyond explanation: his faith.
The Word II is one of a series of culminating pictures which closed out Newman's first period of mature work. Newman created no pictures in 1956 or 1957 due to poor health and his despondency over the negative reception received by his work. When he returned to painting, he quickly began his greatest series, The Stations of the Cross (Collection National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)--fourteen paintings which occupied him for eight years and confirmed forever his place among the greatest painters of his generation.
Born in 1905, Newman was late in coming to his mature style. But when the paintings arrived in a New York scene dominated by the gestural Abstract Expressionism of Pollock, de Kooning and Motherwell, their seemingly simple motifs of large fields of saturated color divided vertically by "zips"--Newman's term for the narrow bands of color in his paintings--shocked and dismayed his critics, and led to few sales. After his second one-man exhibition at Parsons' gallery, the criticism was so severe that Newman felt compelled to withdraw his work from the gallery and not to exhibit again. However, the paintings had an austere presence and a subtle complexity that informed the next generation. Artists such as Donald Judd, Frank Stella and Dan Flavin would identify with his ideas and find inspiration in his paintings for their own Minimalist works in the 1960s.
Transcendent meaning was paramount in Newman's work. Evocative titles --Moment I; Ulysses; The Voice; The Way--suggested that Newman's pursuit of the sublime was his ultimate subject matter. His "zip" stood for his Transcendental Self, not the personal "I," but "'the self, terrible and constant' of tragedy, embodied in his sign and standing for him in the various situations of his higher life" (Rosenberg, op.cit., p. 67). It could be seen as "a channel of spiritual tension, introduced on the canvas with infinite care for its placement, as if in response to some supernatural instruction" (ibid., p. 54). From the moment the "zip" first appeared in Onement, 1948, Newman stated that "I realized that I'd made a statement which was affecting me and that was, I suppose, the beginning of my present life" (ibid., p. 47).
The Word II is an austerely magnificent work of art, one whose subtelty of design and masterful execution is emblematic of Newman's mature painting style. The obdurate black of the largest rectangle on the left exerts its massive weight over roughly half the painting, in contrast with the second largest rectangle on the right, painted thinly and luminously blue. A flat, densely painted, pale blue rectangle separates the other two. The entire surface seems to be broken into one-half and two-quarters, but this is not quite the case. The black area is broken by a narrow, blood-red zip, placed on the central axis, which makes the black area appear larger than one-half. A second, wider zip of the same red, with loosely brushed and ragged edges, further reinforces this perception, and the viewer's eye is fully occupied in its attempt to sort out the balance of the whole.
Beyond the design and the careful placement of all of the elements, the color carries a message of metaphysical presence. The black is somber, weighty, opaque; the blue is translucent, transient, celestial. The black echoes man's vision of the world: solid, dense, eternal. The blue echoes man's ideal: open, deep, transcendent. And the blood-red color of the zips might represent man's being, his Self, with all of his doubts and equivocations as he faces the meaning beyond explanation: his faith.
The Word II is one of a series of culminating pictures which closed out Newman's first period of mature work. Newman created no pictures in 1956 or 1957 due to poor health and his despondency over the negative reception received by his work. When he returned to painting, he quickly began his greatest series, The Stations of the Cross (Collection National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)--fourteen paintings which occupied him for eight years and confirmed forever his place among the greatest painters of his generation.