Page 21 - Studio International - February 1973

. . My idea was that with an automatic move, surrealist and 'neo-plastic' notions of the
you could create a world.'55 The few surviving function of intuition. (This 'thoughtfulness' is
works from the years 1944-5 include vivid oil parodied in those paintings by Kline in which a
and pastel paintings with organic, broadly grand 'spontaneous' brushmark is touched up
`genetic' rather than specifically 'sexual' motifs. along the edges.) Newman's first vertical
The first vertical stripe — 'reserved' by canvases of 'human' scale, such as Abraham and
brushing ink over a masked line, thus Concord, date from 1949. In the three years
establishing both 'surface' and 'void' at once — 1949-51 Newman painted some of this
appears in a small monochrome work on paper century's greatest paintings.
of 1945. From this point on Newman's The vertical elements of Newman's
paintings became consistently more compositions provided him with a decisive
`generalized', more 'archetypal' in form, more solution to the limitations and equivocations of
extreme in their non-figurativeness, and more late-cubist space without driving him into
expressive and individual in colour. His oil proto-surrealist aformalities. The vertical
paintings of 1945-7 are based upon circular divisions echo the framing edges and thus
forms (with potential associations ranging from establish a relationship in which the literal,
vulva and void to seed and sun) (Pagan Void material limit of the painting — its actual edge —
1946), or upon verticals (`break', 'path', shaft of is given identity as a compositional function
light, man, etc.) (The Command 1946), or upon rather than merely as a condition of composition.
combinations of the two (Genetic Moment 1947). Besides reiterating the framing edges,
Until the end of 1947 the verticals, however Newman's verticals also reiterate the significance
sharply drawn and flatly painted, appear against of explicit verticality in a context which admits
or in context of textured and associative fields. the heritage of a tradition — a tradition in earlier
The terminus post quern of Newman's mature stages of which such explicit relationships —
style is marked by a small oil, Onement I of 1948, such 'geometry' — had symbolic significance.
in which an impastose cadmium red light Conventionally 'geometry' underlined the
stripe, overlaid on masking tape, is all but metaphysical, non-anecdotal content in
centred vertically upon a more thinly painted, paintings with representational subject matter. Barnett Newman
even cadmium red dark field. The painting was (See, for instance, Duccio's Maesta Onement z 1948
the result of an 'accident'. Newman was Crucifixion. The three elongated crosses, each Oil, 27 x i6 in.
testing the brighter red on the masking tape addressed in precise vertical alignment with Coll: Annalee Newman
prior to its removal. The decision not to remove the frame, with each crosspiece a precise 9 Mythology, Metaphysics and
the tape and not to 'paint up' the unmodulated horizontal, establish a relationship of identity Common Sense
ground was undoubtedly not prefigured and between painted subject and painted surface In 1943, in a radio broadcast and in a letter to
seems moreover to have been made over a long in which the ideal function of the painting as the New York Times (upon which Newman
period. It was not for some months that object is implicit.) In painting with narrative/ collaborated)57 Rothko and Gottlieb
Newman proceeded to a new painting." representational content such conventions of proclaimed their involvement with 'eternal
Thoughtfulness in the face of 'new' association were vital as signifiers of a symbols', their 'kinship with primitive man',
possibilities, new assertions, was a transcending non-referential function. The their conviction of the expressive power of
characteristic of the abstract-expressionist interrelationship between subject and object myth and their insistence upon the primacy of
painters at their best, and a counter to both thus established is an epistemically more subject matter.
secure — better educated — means of In pictographic paintings dating from the
Barnett Newman
The Command 1946 instantiating 'transcendental' aspects of the early mid forties until about 1952 (strongly
Oil, 48 x 36 in. painting as object than the somewhat Hegelian reminiscent of the work of the Uruguayan
Coll : Annalee Newman
concept of the illusionistic painted surface as a Joaquim Torres-Garcia) Gottlieb disposed
created 'something other' (something 'non- individual motifs — abstract shapes, human
literal'). It is partly in terms of this features and forms largely derived from North
interrelationship of significance that Newman's American Indian cultures — in a more or less
paintings lay claim to 'sublime' status. Now compartmentalized structure. Greys and dry
that the naturalizing impulses which had earth colours serve to 'localize' the space of the
supplanted the earlier geometry were deprived painting without resort either to 'deep' space
of their raison d'être — the world of things and or to post-cubist planes. 'It's a primitive
beings to be 'naturally' delineated — Newman method', he wrote in 194558, 'and a primitive
could resurrect the significance of the geometry necessity of expressing, without learning how
— invoke that aspect of the tradition — in a to do so by conventional ways . . . . it puts us at
context which was devoid of narrative and the beginning of seeing.'
which discouraged association with any In the later of these pictographs, more
encapsulated metaphysic. (This was the `neutral' and more 'painterly' elements — dry,
antithesis of Mondrian's 'neo-plastic', neo- scumbled areas, soft, thick brushmarks and
Platonic geometry.) None of this is intended to symbols such as arrows and plus-signs —
demonstrate direct 'influence' nor to suggest become interwoven as 'compartments' and
that there is anything inherently mystical about `contents' merge. There is a considerable
the functions of Newman's verticals; merely affinity with the works of Klee's last years. The
that, given as wide a view over the history of art surfaces of the pictographs become
as Newman himself was evidently concerned increasingly painterly, comparatively less
to take, their functions can be seen in some anecdotal, prefiguring the Burst series which
respects as conventional. Gottlieb began in 1957. But Gottlieb's works

55