Page 33 - Studio International - February 1970

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more self-contained Adam. There was the tile softness of the canvas texture omni- an urge to work in free-standing sculpture;
unique The Voice. Its whitenesses are colouris- present through the thin matte pigment. This and Here I, made in wood and plaster at the
tically differentiated by the discretion between warm softness holds the crisp cool 'logic' of time he was under pressure to complete
enamel and egg-tempera (yes, egg-tempera, the bands' placement, so that one's empathy paintings for his 1951 exhibition, seems an
with its thirteenth-century heritage). As an with any vertical carries a gently ordered inevitable concretion of Newman's concern
all-over 'white on white' painting it has the participation with the 'we' of others. The with the physicality of the vertical. Again, it
softness of a vowel slightly wider than square— Wild is more physically violent : itself a is not just the material uprights which
and it is more romantically 'impure' in the material 'zip' as tall as the others but less than achieve this, but the relation between two
subjectivity of its expression than the non- two inches wide, its dominating, searing gash verticals establishing a spatial place (alluded
colour geometry-related absolutisms of earlier of shiny cadmium red impasto seems to to in Concord) around which one can walk. As
Malevich or later Reinhardt. There were the squeeze the translucent ultramarine base pig- in The Wild, the rough edges of one vertical
extraordinary Vir Heroicus Sublimis and The ment into tenuously spatial lateral edges slow vision along its axis and, with the slight
Wild: both using physical proportions with a crispened by the edges of the frame which curve closing the verticals towards the top,
dramatically externally directed scale, con- accentuates the painting's protrusion from help to maintain attention within the piece.
trasts of hue and intensity rather than tonal the wall. On one hand, The Wild is like an This curve (seldom evident in photographs)
value in colour, and strongly tactile experien- attenuated slice of the left side of Joshua, a and the proportions of the base(s) also help
ces of pigment and canvas. Vir Heroicus Sub- small painting exhibited simultaneously; but to make Here I seem to rise, rather than to be
limis has an almost 18-foot width which fills its extreme contrasts in scale of colour, pig- gravitationally rooted in the existentially
one's lateral vision and dominates one's ment, and physical proportions create an morose clay footwork of Giacometti's Walking
personal 'place' experience. Its close har- energy which bursts through its character as a Men. The base also accentuates the interval
monies of colour—of intensities and hue physical line to radiate vitality into its en- between spatial and material verticals as a
between the flat-edged vertical zips and vironment. place 'other' than everyday usable space—a
lateral expanse of red— complement the tac- From The Wild, it is not a surprising jump to place as specially artistic in its human stance
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