Page 39 - Studio-International-January-1974

description are not important here — in any case content in relation to an 'abstract' imagery thus : have been the devices of Western European
little is said about the method of these `The question that now arises is how, if we are painting. Instead of making cathedrals out of
painters). This preoccupation with the means living in a time without a legend or mythos that Christ, man, or 'life', we are making it out of
of painting, Newman maintained, effected a can be called sublime, if we refuse to admit any ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image
laissez-faire approach towards the choice of exhaltation in pure relations, if we refuse to live we produce is the self-evident one of revelation,
subject matter. It was natural that the in the abstract, how can we be creating a real and concrete, that can be understood by
impressionists should become a school of sublime art ? We are reasserting man's natural anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic
landscape painters. As a model for the study of desire for the exhalted, for a concern with our glasses of history'.
the effects of light an 'automatic' choice would relationship to the absolute emotions. We do Newman insisted in this essay, as elsewhere,
be the 'theatre of the outdoors'. Similarly a not need the obsolete props of an outmoded and that the subline was not to be confused with the
concern with mass would inevitably lead to a antiquated legend. We are creating images `sensual' ideal of the beautiful, nor presumably
`school of still-life painters for men with a whose reality is self-evident and which are would it refer to any class of sense response, i.e.
nature morte critique towards all things.' devoid of the props and crutches that evoke the overwhelming feeling that sheer magnitude
Newman's emphasis on the literal choice of associations with outmoded images, both inspires. In the highest sense, sublime
subject matter (more precisely object matter), sublime and beautiful. We are freeing ourselves emotions were to be identified with our
however, does little to reveal the method or of the impediments of memory, association, cognition of metaphysical truth. (As I
purpose of these painters. The subject matter of nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that understand it they might be thought of here as
Impressionism or Cubism might more properly
have been considered the 'complex of sense
facts' that was abstracted from reality. As
I have suggested elsewhere, the abstract
constitution of these facts is in itself
conditioned by an 'aesthetic attitude' or 'state of
mind'.22 Nature was used as a means, not in a
`literal sense', but in a 'symbolic sense'.
His general conclusion is nevertheless
informative; as a whole he considered the
modern movement in painting as 'a critical
preoccupation of artists with solving the
technical problems of the medium' (a critique
of the language of aesthetic experience), but the
art of the first half of the twentieth century
would also read as a search for something to
paint (a critique of its aesthetic purpose).
Newman paid small tribute to the surrealists
for re-emphasizing the importance of subject
matter, but was critical of both the form and the
subject matter of their art, the play of fancy on
realism, and their concern with 'the
psychological mystery of personality'. In his
earlier paintings (1944-47), however, he
employed surrealist techniques in an attempt to
create metaphysical symbols. Using
`automatism' as a means for releasing
ideas, he painted quasi-naturalistic images
across a flattened space that refer mostly
to the themes of creation and rebirth. But
for all the lyrical intensity of these paintings
their meaning is obscure. Except in a more
obvious 'imagist' sense, the meaning can only
be made accessible through identifying
associated notions. By drawing analogies with
past mythology this process might in turn be
made less arbitrary or even given credence. But
even accepting a certain explicitness, the result
is still an ascribed statement that has literally to
be mentally 'stuck on' to the given visual
experience. (A similar weakness is probably not
true of primitive art, where it appears 'spirit'
Barnett Newman
symbols are directly presented together with a Adam 1951-52
literal or invocatory mode of expression.) It was Tate Gallery, London
not until Newman confronted the possibility of
an entirely 'abstract imagery' that he solved the
requirement of a 'specific' language, and in an
alternative sense created a truly rcvelatory art.
In Newman's essay 'The Sublime is Now'
(1948),24 he stated the possibility of a sublime
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