Page 49 - Studio International - February 1970

another whole. There is no implication that openness, wholeness and scale that he has it is thin enough to show brushmarks and
the parts extend beyond the edges, just as developed. The colour, areas and stripes are becomes a little illusionistic. Newman's
there is none that they occur within the edges. not obscured or diluted by a hierarchy of colour is itself a major and influential
Everything is specifically where it is. This composition and a range of associations. The achievement. It is full, rich and somewhat
wholeness is also new and important. It is few parts, all equally primary, comprise the austere, for example, a lot of maroon and a
why the stripes and the edges correspond. quality of a painting. little orange or a full blue and a whitened
Mondrian's work, taking it as representative `We are reasserting man's natural desire for cerulean blue. Vir Heroicus Sublimis is a good
of his generation, if greater, clearly has tradi- the exalted, for a concern with our relation- example of the colour. The black and white is
tional and naturalistic aspects. The lines are ship to the absolute emotions. We do not need also colour. Obviously neither this colour nor
dominant and the white is secondary, volume the obsolete props of an outmoded and anti- the handling of the paint is pure and geo-
and space once removed. The white is both quated legend. We are creating images whose metric. As with the canvas, there is much that
comparatively frontal, only recessed a few reality is self-evident and which are devoid of is specific about what Newman does with the
inches, and infinitely recessive. The lines form the props and crutches that evoke associations paint, much that is particular to it, such as
a bound structure and one that is very with outmoded images, both sublime and the way it bled under the masking tape along
ordered. Newman's work is not geometric in beautiful. We are freeing ourselves of the the narrow black stripe in Shining Forth or the
this sense, just as neither his nor Pollock's is impediments of memory, association, nostal- effect of stencilling in the white stripe. Simi-
expressionistic. Mondrian's fixed platonic gia, legend, myth, or what have you, that larly, Newman sometimes leaves brushstrokes
order is no longer credible. 'Hard-edge- have been the devices of Western European along an area, since that is the way the paint
painting,' primarily defined by Ellsworth painting. Instead of making cathedrals out of was applied. A good deal more could be said
Kelly's work, is mainly old abstraction.2 It Christ, man, or 'life', we are making it out of about Newman's work, but there isn't space.
employs, though somewhat abridged, the new ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image Shining Forth, Noon-light and Vir Heroicus Sub-
scale and simplicity and has some of the new we produce is the self-evident one of revela- limis are great paintings. q
specificity of colour but also uses the old tion, real and concrete, that can be understood
abstract space, composition and colour. The by anyone who will look at it without the
1 Frank Stella has done a lot of good paintings since
openness of Newman's work is concomitant nostalgic glasses of history.' 3 1964 and he shouldn't be second even to Newman.
[Don Judd 1969]
with chance and one person's knowledge; the We are making it out of ourselves.
2 I haven't changed my mind about the paintings I was
work doesn't suggest a great scheme of The colour or bare canvas of Newman's writing about, the Arpish ones, but Kelly's later
rectangular paintings are another case. At the time I
knowledge; it doesn't claim more than any- paintings is very frontal and is necessarily
had seen one early sectional rectangular painting in a
one can know; it doesn't imply a social order. spreading, lateral. The doubled frontality of Green Gallery Show but didn't know there were more
like it and took it for a fluke. [Don Judd, 1969]
Newman is asserting his concerns and know- Shining Forth is an example. The colour is 3 Extract from 'The Sublime is Now', by Barnett New-
ledge. He couldn't do this without the usually applied flatly and thinly. Infrequently man, Tiger's Eye, Vol. 1, December 1948.
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