Barnett Newman was one of the leading painters of the American Abstract Expressionist movement and one of the leading colour field artists.
Colour field art, coming out of New York during the 1940s and 1950s, can be identified by large areas of colour on a canvas. Rothko, Ad Reinhardt and Motherwell are other artists of these periods.
If you don’t know too much about art and happened to be visiting the MoMA, I could see how easy it might be to giveNewman’s a cursory glance and keep walking towards the artists that have garnered more fame in our cultural landscape.
But recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about space in paintings — the space intentionally placed verses those ‘accidental’ spaces. Newman must have played with a similar idea at some point.
Barnett Newman‘s work is easily identifiable for its stark nature. He painted vertical bands running from the top to the bottom of the canvas. These he called “zips”. These zips run through a colour field, the edges of the zips creating “flares”.
How the paint from the zip flares outwards into the colour field leaves beautiful ‘accidents’ up and down the canvas.
When I first learnt about Newman, I didn’t think I’d like his work but now I notice things like lines on asphalt and think of his work — of zips and flares.
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Barnett Newman is a new exposure to me and the crisp contrast routes from eyes to mind – the stark yellow and trickling red! But the serendipity of the roadway and the pairing of parallel without straight edges appealed to a sanctity preserving untouched intersection as sufficient collateral. Thank you for sharing.
That makes me so happy. If you have a moment, please look him up. Rothko gets more attention than Newman but I’m not sure it’s entirely fair.
The yellow + red lines in that piece = my poor attempt at mimicking Newman’s work.
I think you would agree with me when I say, if we all spent time looking at art, looking for art, we’d be better off.
That’s the movement I want to see everywhere.
It’s SO true.
Art is everywhere and adjusting our eyes to see it – instead of seeing slights and criticism – would make us just happier humans.