Page 43 - Studio International - February 1970

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Newman's 'internal shapes' have taken
cognizance of the 'literal shape' of their
canvas limits for over twenty years. What dis-
tinguishes Newman's triangular paintings
from his others is primarily the obvious excite-
ment of non-perpendicular, non-parallel
relations between internal verticals and
external shape. The triangle, a more fixed
geometric gestalt than the rectangle, is broken
with more punch. That Newman's interest
in using a triangular canvas was related to
his work on Broken Obelisk is not irrelevant.
For in monuments (not sculpture), the pyramid
and obelisk have epitomized images of death
and geometry since the time of the pharaohs;
and three years before he began to plan
Broken Obelisk, Newman had stated in the
catalogue of The New American Painting (1959)
that 'It is precisely this death image, the grip
of geometry that has to be confronted.' He
did just that, with an explicitness which is
almost literal in treating the obelisk as if it
had been stood upside-down on the apex of
the pyramid by some super-human hand,
leaving rough edges to limit its skyward
thrust; but the real break is made by the
internal vertical axis, accentuated by pinching
the over-all triangular shape into a meeting
point more powerful for its seeming fragility.
But it was only in the late sixties that New-
man gave such explicit combat to canvas
shapes other than rectangles. Although he had
used the rectangle in an exploratory way
before, he had accepted its five-hundred-year
tradition, and his shift is surely related to his
involvement with his younger contemporaries
as much as to the geometry which had plagued
him for twenty years. This is not only appar-
ent in the triangular canvases, but also in
Shimmer Bright: the only painting I know in
Newman's oeuvre which uses a perfect square.
Its white square is opposed and extended in
the alteration of white and blue bands at the
left—a format which relates to some of
Noland's work. But the translucent brilliancy
of the blues, and their hold against rather than
within the geometrical figure, makes Shimmer
Bright more visually exciting and concep-
tually concrete than Noland's more reticent
painting.
The beautiful thing about this is that New-
man is still in dialogue with his context—with
other artists whose work interests him, no
matter what their style, age, or public repu-
tation. The character of his context has
changed, but Newman's erect and combatant
stance in relation to his present and past has
not. It is just more lofty in scale and wide-
ranging in scope. A major retrospective of his
work—all of it—is long over-due. It would be a
concrete refutation of cherished art-world
cliches like : 'Painters are verbally inarticu-
late'; 'Stylistic revolutions are made only by
artists under thirty'; 'Conceptual art requires
the negation of objects'; 'An artist over fifty
is creatively dead'; 'A sense of history in-
hibits creativity'. q
63