Page 38 - Studio International - February 1970

and professional resurrection in 1958. Since is the essence of the cry of Jesus, the sacrifice by these paintings is amazing: and all through
then his work has been as widely varied as of Abraham, the timeless tragedy of humanity the physical scale of their surface relational
that exhibited in 1951, but its variety has begun with Adam—as well as the essential areas and the very subtle discretions amongst
been on a much larger and more complex cry of each of the fourteen paintings in the Magna, acrylic and many varieties of oil-
scale. He has done series of paintings and series, and the series itself as a statement with based pigments. There is a progression, not
lithographs, individual etchings and pain- its own poetic and historic, concrete limita- just in the sequence in which Newman made
tings; sculpture, but also the more public tions. the individual paintings. In the first six
place problem of the monument and archi- The Stations of the Cross are a series in that they Stations, the left band is solidly imperturbed
tecture. There seems to be a larger scope of are paintings of equal size, using only the by the experience of repeated effort, the right
relational consistency in his work, a greater `absolute' colours of white, black, and un- zone and its verticals gain strength and the
apparent simplicity of means and expression, primed canvas, and presenting a repeated zones become more solidly equal—until after
and an intensity of feeling ranging from agony implicit format of surface zones proportionally the flashing chop of the Thirteenth Station there
to droll wit. 1: 9: 3 from left to right. But each painting is is complete release in the annihilation of the
The agonized terror of Newman's personal quite different—not only in its physical reality right zone into the soft whitenesses of the last
confrontation with death is objectified in the as an object of humanly reachable scale step. As a total work, The Stations of the Cross
raw black against raw canvas of 1958 pain- separated by space from its neighbours. Each require and determine the viewer's sequen-
tings like Outcry. The outcry with which New- painting reads somehow as a confrontation tial position, both physically and metaphysi-
man was coming to grips from 1958 to 1966 between the left and right, but there are no cally. But like . . . Red, Yellow and Blue III they
was Lema Sabachthani: 'My God, my God, duplications in the manner of articulating are not 'environmental' in their external
why forsake me ?' —in the present tense charac- these lateral dialogues of verticals. The left scale relations, but are as particularly con-
teristic of Newman's focus on the Here and zone is more consistently treated as a solid crete as the whole human beings which they
Now. In the first of the Stations of the Cross band contiguous with the painting's edge; confront without dependence on the inter-
subtitled with this particular cry, the skinny only in the turning point of the Seventh Station mediary of a specific environment.
un-primed zip at the right seems to screech is it present through a crisply drawn line. The While The Stations of the Cross were being
like fingernails up and down a blackboard of right zone varies tremendously, with edges of sequentially created over 1958-66, Newman
dry-brushed edges, as if in terror of the solid bands falling within a masking-tape's dis- was also working on many other things—some
vertical band which seems to move with tance of the proportional 'constant', and zips closely related, others an outlet for different
ominous slowness into the painting's space. of masking-tape width flanking with different concerns. There is the 18 Cantos of 1963-4:
This painting almost shrieks vital terror in the interstices, and differing roughnesses to articu- obviously related as a series, but almost the
face of death as an inevitable absolute : which lation of edges. The variety of colour achieved obverse in language and content. The Cantos

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