Page 42 - Studio-International-January-1974

an acute sense of related proportion, serves to expanse of red, locked this time between two 2 Braque's attempt to bypass this issue and to present
`particularize' the undifferentiated states that opposing bands of blue and yellow along its the common object merely as a formal motif within
the felt orchestration of his paintings might account
are ordered. By contrast to his earliest paintings edges. The placing of the bands along the edges for a good deal of the uneasy conviction of his later
he avoided the associative moods aroused by make them function as parts of a lateral expanse work. On the other hand, for example, Rosenquist's
tints and pastel shades, and mostly used of surface change, as sections rather than wholesale acceptance of the sentiments related to the
identity of everyday objects has created more
elementary colour (reds, blues, oranges, white, divisions. In Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and acceptable and also more divergent 'felt' tensions
black, etc.) Heavily saturating his canvases, Blue III (96 x 214 in.) by contrast, he extends between them.
primary hues are utilized to energize large the expanse of deep saturated red, between the 3 Some of the issues involved in making such a
judgement have since been clarified by both Annette
expanding surfaces that create a terrific sections of blue and yellow, to an extremity that Michelson's and Rosalind Kraus's analyses of
physical impact unprecedented in painting. In a provides a devastatingly extended environmental Eisensteins's films. See Artforum, Jan., 1973.
different sense he also used dark colours to experience in time. The culminating section of 4 From a draft for a catalogue foreword 1 944.
5 'What Abstract Means to Me', Museum of Modern
indicate incipient states of awareness, and raw yellow on the right-hand side, by contrast, Art Bulletin, Spring 1951, reprinted in 'Readings in
canvas to create broad luminous expanses. By projects as an absolute of narrowness or American Art since 1900', edited by Barbara Rose.
averting illusionistic effects the experience of curtailed temporal awareness. Here again, F. Praeger, New York, 1968.
6 Abstract, Representational and so Forth, 'Art and
the colour in his painting is as exacting and however, once the painting is seen outside these Culture', Beacon Press, Boston, 1961. There is no
concrete as that registered by distinct physical limits, its proportions fail to support the question here of refuting the emphasis on quality as
or tactile actions. Within the form of his massive weight of the block of red. an intrinsic value. Without quality, accepting an
aesthetic experience as revelatory, nothing would be
paintings his use of colour in this sense is The experience of Newman's two triangular evinced in the first place. But the judging of art as if
largely objective or specific, presenting the paintings Jericho (106 x 114 in.) 1968-69, and it can be dissociated from the nature of the aesthetic
equivalent of statements that direct 'affective' Chartres (12o x 114 in.) 1969, are difficult to experience presented, or its purpose, no longer seems
tenable.
cognizance or insight in a manner that might be describe within the context of 'intuitions' For the Tate Catalogue to Barnett Newman's
regarded as similar to the use of concepts to established by his previous work. For example, exhibition, 1972. Thomas Hess has presented a
convincing thesis that traces Newman's ideas and
direct reason. Newman as much as any painter in Jericho it makes little sense to focus on an the various themes of his painting to sources in the
of his time had liberated the use of colour as an experience of 'resolved chaos' when the Kabbalah, the Zohar and Greek mythology, etc.
Ideographic Picture', Betty Parsons Gallery,
independent and abstract 'language'. structure of a triangle, unlike that of a rectangle, 6
1947, reprinted op. cit. 5.
Shining Forth (to George) (114 x 174 in.), 1961, already implies narrow preconditions for ° See Newman's 'Monologues', 'The Plasmic
(painted concurrently with the 14 Stations of the division. In Chartres the upward as well as the Image', 'The Problem of Subject Matter'; 'The New
Cross), displays to full effect Newman's later oblique lateral movement of the central areas Sense of Fate, 1943-45'; op. cit. 7.
10 op. cit. 8.
brilliance in perfectly resolving the formal draws attention towards extension as a property " It would have been interesting to know what
complexity inherent within his paintings. He that is more related to space than time. Also, Newman thought of Brancusi, for as I understand
expressed his use of raw canvas and black in the distinctive iconographic shape of a triangle, his sculpture, it perfectly subscribes to the aesthetic
Newman outlined.
these paintings thus : 'I had to make the material as emphasized in these paintings, tends to evoke 12 op. cit. 8.
itself into a true colour — as white light — yellow `symbolic' associations and sentiments that 13 Charles Baudelaire, 'The Salon of 1846'. From
light — black light. That was my problem. The divert from rather than reinforce their `Selected writings', P. E. Marvet; Penguin Books,
London, 1972.
white flash is the same raw canvas as the rest of abstract meaning. It would be untrue to assert 14 'The First Man Was an Artist', published in
the canvas'. In Shining Forth tenuously thin that the above is exclusively the case, but it Tiger's Eye, New York, Oct. 1947.
divisions are symmetrically spaced on either is the very presence of these contradictions that 15 Recently Carlos Castenado's 'Aesthetic Method',
in penetrating the spiritual reality of Yaqui teachings,
side of an assertive central band. The negative leaves the success of these paintings in doubt. has brilliantly confirmed Newman's case. For
division on the right-hand side, brought into In a period where fine art has become anthropology it must surely throw into question the
relief by freely brushed edges made over increasingly introverted, pursuing in its useless scientific methods and theories used to
interpret the nature of 'primitive' cultures.
masking tape, both interacts with the division highest form an abstract form of expression, its 16A conclusion both phenomenological and
on the far left and, by reversing the sense of operation has become increasingly confined to existential philosophers arrived at, in particular
overlaid 'black', fixes the divisions into the pure modes of sense experience. The recent Husserl and Heidegger.
17 'The New Sense of Fate'. op. cit. 9.
surface of the painting. The areas between the attempt to recover for art an alternative 18 'The Sublime is New', Tiger's Eye, New York,
divisions are spacious and taut, and emanate `formal' significance through rational or Dec. 1948, reprinted op. cit. 5.
a radiant yellowish light. As a whole the painting conceptual procedures, as modern philosophy 18 op. cit. 18.
20 'The Problem of Subject Matter', op cit. 9.
gives the impression of being a complete has made eminently clear, is intellectual 21 If pursued, this approach might also have gone a
segment that belongs to a temporal continuum, nonsense. The fact remains that knowing or long way towards illuminating the difficult issue of
the conduct of modern artists.
rather than that of being a self-contained event. utilizing internal states of felt consciousness
22 See 'Judd and After', Studio International,
In close up each division (zip) arrests attention can only be revealed or directed through one or Nov. 1972.
in an opposing manner, while the extended other consistent system of (substantive) 23 'The Plasmic Image', op. cit. 9.
24 Op. cit. 18.
experience of the empty areas of canvas between empirical experience. By redirecting the
25 See Lawrence Alloway's 'Exceptional
the zips are directed by a state of induced aesthetic means of art towards its metaphysical Interpretation of the Symbolism of the "Broken
tension. Both as environment and as totality purpose, its resolution of the tragic as inner Obelisk",' Arts Magazine, New York, May, 1971.
26 See John McLean's review of Barnett Newman's
the experience of this remarkable painting is conflict, Newman has more than any artist in retrospective at the Tate for The Guardian, London,
perfectly complementary in its effect.27 our time, I believe, recovered for art its highest June 28, 1972.
Of Newman's later paintings the group function.28 q 27 See also Don Judd's 'Acute Formal Analysis',
Who's Afraid of Red,Yellow and Blue, 1966-67, Studio International, London, Feb. 1970.
28 The return of Duchamp, the idolized progenitor
in which he returns to a concern with absolute of fine arts, to the metaphysical and revelatory, has
contrasts of hue, warrants attention as extreme been falsely acclaimed. For all his purported
examples of the kind of lateral experience his `inventiveness' he was, after all, an 'academic

symbolist'. Using the techniques and strategies of
paintings provide. In Who's Afraid of Red, Footnotes symbolism through Dada and Surrealism, he
1'By metaphysics we are inclined today to mean not produced what at best might be described as an art of
Yellow and Blue 1(75x 48 in.) the painting is
only (or perhaps not at all) philosophizing about God, `contrivance'. Strategy and 'accrued' complexity is no
presented primarily as a self-contained the world and the soul, but rather philosophizing substitute for creative insight or depth. His work
presence or image, emphasized by a deep 3 1/2 x 1/2 about such fundamental concepts as space, time, might be a boon for the exercise of 'psychological'
existence and many others'. Justus Hartnack, analysis and the tracing of 'mythical' analogies, but
in. slightly offset wooden frame. As in Eve, the 'Kant's Theory of Knowledge', Harcourt, Brace and within art, Greenbergs' s judgement, I feel, holds;
experience is that of a compressed lateral World Inc., New York, 1967. his contribution to art is, after all, 'mundane'.
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