Saturday, January 30, 2010

BARNETT NEWMAN b JANUARY 29 1905


"Newman’s compositions are built around a strict format: a field of color is bisected vertically by one or a few bands (narrow or wide) that he referred to as "zips." Such extreme minimalism, though, derives from an approach described by the artist as intuitive: "It each starpainting as if I had never painted before. … I have no formal solutions … I paint out of high passion, and although my way of working may seem simple, for me it is difficult and complex." Concord is not a geometric picture. The colored field is not meant as a void on which a simple boundary is delineated. Pictures like this one ask the viewer to consider whether space alone, without narrative detail, can convey meaning. In Newman’s words, "Instead of using outlines, instead of making shapes or setting off spaces my drawing declares the space." The zip is "a field that brings life to the other fields, just as the other fields bring life to this so-called line."" SOURCE.

newman is one of the ones who dispensed altogether w/the figural. what the visual field became was open space, the ground opened for singular consideration. the monochrome, the grid, the object all followed from newman's zips.

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