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Lot Essay
Untitled 2 is a unique and fascinating painting belonging to the singular and decisive moment of epiphany in Barnett Newman's career. Often compared by critics to the biblical story of Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus, the profound and dramatic moment of realisation and redirection in Newman's art came in January 1948 with the creation of his first 'zip' painting, the now legendary Onement I. This small painting, like Saul's conversion, divides all that went before from all that was to come. It was 'my first painting,' Newman said, and it marked 'the beginning of my present life". This having been said, the blinding flash of insight that Onement I provided for Newman took time to take its effect on his art. Newman recalled that he 'lived' with Onement I for a year trying to 'understand' it, studying it on an almost daily basis, questioning its validity and assimilating its implications for the future direction of his art.
Untitled 2 is one of only two oil paintings made on paper by Newman that exist, and both of these works belong to the period immediately after Onement I when Newman was considering this revolutionary painting's impact and meaning. As Newman has said, he made Onement I and then " stopped in order to find out what I had done." It seems likely that the two oil paintings on paper that Newman made during this period of intense self analysis and philosophical as well as aesthetic reflection were made as a part of this period of investigation. As Brenda Richardson has pointed out, it is most unlikely that these two oils "are the only two 'paintings on paper' that Newman ever did; their preservation could be coincidental or it could be that the artist saved them intentionally as particularly successful examples of such work. (Brenda Richardson, Barnett Newman: The Complete Drawings, 1944-1969, exh. cat. The Baltimore Museum of Art 1979. p. 142)
Of these two paintings, the earlier, Untitled 1 is extremely similar to Onement I and may well have been made in conjunction with the genesis of this now legendary and iconic work. It carries the same single 'zip' and is executed in similar colors. In contrast Untitled 2 is a larger and more expansive landscape format work that anticipates many of Newman's later masterpieces. With its two 'zips' (the white line and the hint or echo of a second shadowy line to its right) it very closely resembles Newman's 1949 painting Covenant (now in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.) and of the two works seems to point forwards to his later work rather than back to the pivotal Onement I.
According to Thomas Hess, Newman's original intention with Onement I was to texture the background in the same way as all its immediate predecessors and to divide this textured background with the cadmium red 'zip'. In preparation for the zip Newman laid down masking tape and then applied the red paint with a palette knife, intending to later remove the tape and fill in a precise line. Startled by what he had done at this early stage of the work however, after much deliberation Newman resolved to leave it in this 'unfinished' state. "What [Onement I] made me realise," he later said, " is that I was confronted for the first time with the thing that I did, whereas up until that moment I was able to remove myself from the act of painting, or form the painting itself with this painting, the painting itself had a life of its own I feel that I brought a new way of seeing which could not have happened if I hadn't brought in a new way of drawing." (Barnett Newman cited in Schiff, Mancusi Ungaro , Colsman-Freyberger Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven, 2004, p. 44.)
Rather than dividing the background field of the painting, Newman felt that the 'zip' of Onement I actually united it and made a sense of the whole. This vertical existential line, signified for Newman man's physical and existential nature amidst a metaphysical void. It was for this reason that many of his works later carried biblical titles. The union or integration of this single existential line with the apparently infinite field of the background was what led to him later entitling the work and others like it Onement. An earlier title for this seminal work had been Atonement, a word that carries particular weight of meaning for members of the Jewish faith and one that is often used for marking a division or change between earlier and later actions. For Newman, the 'zip' was not a line but a 'field' in the same way that his backgrounds can be considered 'fields'. An integral and necessary part of the whole it was a field that "brings to life other fields, just as other fields bring to life this so-called line." (Ibid p. 45)
Like Onement I , Untitled 2 embodies almost all the key elements of Newman's art during this vital period. The textured background of the work points back to earlier paintings like Euclidean Abyss or Moment while the jagged, fissured zip, equates it with the mottled lines of the Onement paintings and other works of the immediate present such as End of Silence. In its broad expansive landscape format and with its hint of two corresponding 'zips' potentially establishing a visual dialogue within the work, however, Untitled 2 also establishes itself as probably the most prophetic and forward-looking of all Newman's celebrated 1948 paintings.
Untitled 2 is one of only two oil paintings made on paper by Newman that exist, and both of these works belong to the period immediately after Onement I when Newman was considering this revolutionary painting's impact and meaning. As Newman has said, he made Onement I and then " stopped in order to find out what I had done." It seems likely that the two oil paintings on paper that Newman made during this period of intense self analysis and philosophical as well as aesthetic reflection were made as a part of this period of investigation. As Brenda Richardson has pointed out, it is most unlikely that these two oils "are the only two 'paintings on paper' that Newman ever did; their preservation could be coincidental or it could be that the artist saved them intentionally as particularly successful examples of such work. (Brenda Richardson, Barnett Newman: The Complete Drawings, 1944-1969, exh. cat. The Baltimore Museum of Art 1979. p. 142)
Of these two paintings, the earlier, Untitled 1 is extremely similar to Onement I and may well have been made in conjunction with the genesis of this now legendary and iconic work. It carries the same single 'zip' and is executed in similar colors. In contrast Untitled 2 is a larger and more expansive landscape format work that anticipates many of Newman's later masterpieces. With its two 'zips' (the white line and the hint or echo of a second shadowy line to its right) it very closely resembles Newman's 1949 painting Covenant (now in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.) and of the two works seems to point forwards to his later work rather than back to the pivotal Onement I.
According to Thomas Hess, Newman's original intention with Onement I was to texture the background in the same way as all its immediate predecessors and to divide this textured background with the cadmium red 'zip'. In preparation for the zip Newman laid down masking tape and then applied the red paint with a palette knife, intending to later remove the tape and fill in a precise line. Startled by what he had done at this early stage of the work however, after much deliberation Newman resolved to leave it in this 'unfinished' state. "What [Onement I] made me realise," he later said, " is that I was confronted for the first time with the thing that I did, whereas up until that moment I was able to remove myself from the act of painting, or form the painting itself with this painting, the painting itself had a life of its own I feel that I brought a new way of seeing which could not have happened if I hadn't brought in a new way of drawing." (Barnett Newman cited in Schiff, Mancusi Ungaro , Colsman-Freyberger Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven, 2004, p. 44.)
Rather than dividing the background field of the painting, Newman felt that the 'zip' of Onement I actually united it and made a sense of the whole. This vertical existential line, signified for Newman man's physical and existential nature amidst a metaphysical void. It was for this reason that many of his works later carried biblical titles. The union or integration of this single existential line with the apparently infinite field of the background was what led to him later entitling the work and others like it Onement. An earlier title for this seminal work had been Atonement, a word that carries particular weight of meaning for members of the Jewish faith and one that is often used for marking a division or change between earlier and later actions. For Newman, the 'zip' was not a line but a 'field' in the same way that his backgrounds can be considered 'fields'. An integral and necessary part of the whole it was a field that "brings to life other fields, just as other fields bring to life this so-called line." (Ibid p. 45)
Like Onement I , Untitled 2 embodies almost all the key elements of Newman's art during this vital period. The textured background of the work points back to earlier paintings like Euclidean Abyss or Moment while the jagged, fissured zip, equates it with the mottled lines of the Onement paintings and other works of the immediate present such as End of Silence. In its broad expansive landscape format and with its hint of two corresponding 'zips' potentially establishing a visual dialogue within the work, however, Untitled 2 also establishes itself as probably the most prophetic and forward-looking of all Newman's celebrated 1948 paintings.