Barnett Newman

gigatos | May 25, 2022

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Summary

Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905, New York – July 4, 1970, New York) was an American painter. He is one of the most important representatives of abstract expressionism and one of the first painters of Colorfield Painting.

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Childhood

Barnett Newman was born in his family home at 480 Cherry Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City on January 29, 1905. His parents, Abraham and Anna (born, respectively, in 1874 and 1882) were Jewish immigrants from Lomza, Poland.

The father made his living selling sewing machine parts to garment factory workers. Barnett Newman had 4 brothers and sisters. The eldest died in infancy, making Barnett the oldest of the siblings. Abraham Newman started an industrial clothing business. His business prospered and by 1915, the Newman family moved to Belmont Avenue, a middle-class neighborhood in the Bronx. There, Barnett enjoyed a childhood filled with sports and piano lessons.

The Newmans were Zionists and the children attended the National Hebrew School in the Bronx. In addition to the school”s classes, the children are taught at home by young Jews from Europe.

Adolescence

From 1919 to 1923, Barnett Newman studied at DeWitt Clinton High School. Newman later recounted that he regularly played hooky from school to entertain at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was located not far from the school.

During his freshman year in high school, Newman looked for a middle name which became Benedict which is a derivative of his Hebrew first name Baruch. Later, he would be called “Barney” and then “B.B.” Newman would use an extra “B” in his signature which he would use for the rest of his life on all his official documents.

As a senior in high school, Newman worked on his drawing in class six days a week at the Art Students League. He was rewarded when his Much-labored-over drawing was chosen in an exhibition of the best student work.

At this school, from 1923 to 1927, Newman met Adolph Gottlieb who had already begun his life as an artist since Gottlieb had dropped out of high school in 1921 to study art and visit Europe. They became friends and regularly visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

After high school, Newman enrolled at New York University where he studied philosophy. He contributes articles to the school newspaper The Campus and to a student literary magazine The Lavander. For example, he published a review of Roger Fry. During his studies, he became friends with Aaron Siskind, an artist who would later become a well-known photographer.

In the 1930s he painted what are said to have been expressionist works, but he destroyed them all. He then became a writer and art critic, organizing exhibitions and writing catalog prefaces. Later he became a member of the Uptown Group.

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After university

In 1927, Newman”s father offered him the opportunity to join the family”s thriving business in order to save money for the precarious future an artist might face. Barnett Newman accepted and was joined by one of his brothers.

In 1929, during the October stock market crash, the family clothing business is in crisis. While his brother left the business, Barnett Newman stayed on to try to help his father save the company. But the business continues to collapse. Barnett left the company and tried to become an art teacher in the New York City public school system. He became a substitute art teacher earning $7.50 a day.

Through his friend, Gottlieb, he met the painter Milton Avery in the 1930s. They became the center of a group of young artists who frequently met at Milton Avery”s house to study their work and to discuss literature. Newman and Gottlieb lived together during this period.

A few years later, Newman presented a manifesto with a friend entitled “The Need for Public Action by Men of Culture”, which had three parts: Broader Education, Greater Consideration of Crafts, and Fostering Cultural Life.

In 1934, Newman befriended Annalee Greenhouse, with whom he shared and loved music. She became his wife some time later.

In 1935, he took up a work he had done as a student on the defense of the rights of civil servants (teachers, garbage collectors, etc.), which he called “The Answer”. He wrote: “The books we recommend” and promulgated books such as Spinoza”s Ethics, Plato”s Republic and a mirror text entitled: “The books we condemn” and quoted the works of Marx or Lenin.

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His teaching career

On June 30, 1936, Annalee and Barnett were married. The couple wanted to move to Maine but financial concerns forced them to return to their teaching jobs in New York.

In 1939, Annalee landed a regular teaching position at a high school in Queens (William Cullen Bryant School).

A watercolor by Newman entitled “Country Studio” was part of an art show organized by members of the Art Teachers Association in March 1940. This watercolor is almost similar to the campaign, “Can We Draw?” that appeared two years earlier. In October of that year, Newman decided to drop some evening screen printing classes he was teaching. He pursued his interest in the natural sciences. He took courses at the American Museum of Natural History and was elected an associate member of the American Ornithologists” Union. During the summer, Barnett and Annalee studied birds and marine life in Maine and then took courses in botany and ornithology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

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Artistic career

In 1943, Barnett Newman wrote the preface to the catalog of the first exhibition of the AMA, the American Modern Artists. This show was a protest against the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York because of its exclusion of modern art in its exhibitions. In 1945, he devoted himself to several writings that would be published post mortem such as: “The Plasma Image”, an essay exposing his ideas on abstract art. That same year, Newman and his wife learned that some members of the family had been deported by the Nazis. It was at this time that they became close friends with Tony Smith, an architect and artist who helped him organize exhibitions. At the end of that year, Newman joined the artists exhibiting in the Betty Parsons exhibition. This was Newman”s first exhibition since the 1940 show with his friends, the members of the Art Teachers Association.

In 1947, Newman met Jackson Pollock and Lee Krashner. Newman and Pollock forged a strong friendship. Pollock was an artist who exhibited his work at the last “Art of This Century” exhibition created by Peggy Guggenheim. Newman”s friend, Betty Parson, would later add Pollock to the artists she exhibited in her gallery. Newman prepared an event at Betty Parson”s gallery that same year where he exhibited his works: Gea and Euclidian Abyss.

In June 1947, Newman”s father died. At the end of the school year, Newman left his job and his couple to live on the sole income of Annalee, his wife. Newman wrote an essay entitled The First Man Was an Artist. This essay will appear in the first issue of the Tiger”s Eye, a small art magazine. He made a strong contribution by writing on the theme “Why I paint” on which he expressed: “An artist paints so that he will have something to look at, sometimes he has to write so that he will also have something to read. That same year, his work Euclidian Abyss was exhibited by the Abstract and Surrealist American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago in November 1947. This painting was Newman”s first sale. The painting was purchased by collectors in Connecticut.

The following year in 1948, Newman painted Onement I. This painting must be seen as a major breakthrough in his career; the next two years would be the most productive of his life. Onement I is part of the Onement series, along with Onement II and Onement III. In the early fall, William Baziotes, David Hare, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko formed a cooperative art school. Newman suggested the name of the school, Artist”s Subjects, to emphasize the importance of the object in abstract art.

In 1949, Newman made seventeen works in the same year, the most productive of his career. In January, Newman joined the artist”s Subjects faculty. The Newman couple helps organize lectures for the school. Despite its popularity, the school closes in May 1949.

In 1950, Newman had his first solo exhibition at Betty Parsons” gallery. Immediately after this first exhibition, Barnett Newman said at a Studio 35 art session, “We are, in a way, making the world in our image.” Using his talent as a writer, Newman fights, foot to foot to reinforce his new image as an artist and to promote his work. But the reviews were largely negative. ARTNews writes: “Newman is there to shock, but he”s not there to shock the bourgeoisie – that”s already been done. He likes to shock other artists. Only one painting (End of Silence) was sold to friends of his wife. After the exhibition, Newman”s profit was $84.14.

Along with seventeen other artists, Newman wrote a letter protesting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its negative view of modern art. The letter appeared in the New York Times on May 22, 1950 and sparked a flurry of editorials in local and national publications. It was in this same year that he made his first sculpture Here I, out of wood and plaster. The artist reflects on verticality and brings it to the fore in this bronze work. He also made The Wild in the same year, which is a long and narrow canvas. Its surface is painted in orange and its edge in grey-blue.

In April 1951, Newman exhibited a second time at Betty Parsons” gallery. It was at this exhibition that a painting measuring 5.40 meters long and 2.40 meters wide, Vir Heroicus Sublimis, appeared for the first time. Unfortunately, the critics condemned him once again and none of the paintings were sold. He eventually withdrew his work from the gallery and ceased all activity. This painting would later become his most famous work.

In an essay entitled “Feelings is all” which was published in 1952, the critic Clement Greenberg belatedly recognized Newman”s work from 1950 and 1951 at his exhibitions and denounced his detractors. He declared: “Newman is a very important and original artist”. In April 1952, Newman was excluded from the Museum of Modern Art, which presented fifteen American artists, including many of his friends such as Pollock and Rothko. This event hurt Newman deeply. In the exhibition catalog, one can read: “For my friend Barnett Newman who should also have been represented in this exhibition”.

In June 1953, he bought back some of his works. He declared that he wanted to remove all these “small” paintings from public view. This action is representative of Newman”s desire to withdraw from the official art world. He did not exhibit again until 1955.

In 1955, Newman turned fifty and despite the fact that his wife started a second job, the couple”s financial situation was precarious. Indeed, the couple resorted to loans and pledged valuable objects. In the same year, the critic Clement Greenberg praised Newman”s art, describing it as “profound and honest” but also stating that he was a disciple of Still and that his work was very similar to that of his friend Rothko. This last statement deeply irritated Newman. One can quote for example his letter of April 9, 1955, “Letter to Sidney Janis: – It is true that Rothko speaks to the fighter. He is fighting, however, to subdue the world of the Philistines. My fight against bourgeois society has convinced me to reject it totally.”

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Betty Parsons” gallery, he exhibited one of his works “Horizon Light”. This was his first public exhibition since 1951. Then, until 1957, he did not make any paintings and if he did, he abandoned them. His friend Jackson Pollock, shows Newman”s studio to Ben Heller, a young collector, who buys two paintings Adam and Queen of the Night I for $3,500. Shortly thereafter, Jackson Pollock died in a car accident on Long Island, which had a profound effect on the Newman couple.

In June 1957, Newman was included in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts exhibition. But his troubles with critics continue “The stupidest thing in the show is Barnett Newman with Vir Heroicus Sublimis.” A few months later, toward the end of the year, Newman suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for six weeks.

Thereafter, in 1958, he was helped by his wife, mother and sister in his apartment and painted very little, including two paintings that would later be called First Station and Second Station. These paintings were the first of a long series entitled Stations of the Cross. A little later, Ben Heller, the young collector invited Alfred Barr and Dorothy Miller, who are part of the Museum of Modern Art, to visit Newman”s studio. Four of his paintings, Abraham, Concord, Horizon Light and Adam, were then exhibited on a touring basis at the Museum of Modern Art and he traveled to Milan, Madrid, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and London, returning to New York the following year.

On a business trip in 1959, Arnold Rudlinger, a Swiss art historian and museum director who would come to be regarded as one of the pioneers of American art in Europe, saw a work by Newman entitled Day Before One. He bought the work and became the first person to have a public collection with a Newman work. Later, MoMA would follow suit and become the first American museum to hold a Newman work.

Barnett Newman then had an exhibition organized by Clement Greenberg, the art critic and gallery advisor. The critics remained hostile, but the exhibition interested the younger generation of New York artists, for whom it was the first opportunity to discover his work. In August 1959, the Newman couple traveled to Canada where Barnett conducted a summer workshop for Canadian artists. He became very influential for these young artists, many of whom then went to New York. One of them, the sculptor Robert Murray, would later say, “He helped us with our provincial paranoia… He made it seem important to be an artist.

In 1960, he completed rough canvases with black paint. It was at this point that he began to think of Stations of the Cross as a series. He would work on it for the next six years. He will also work on graphic works, which he has not done for eleven years. He did a series of twenty-two ink drawings measuring 4.20 meters by 3 meters. In January 1961, the painting Vir Heroicus Sublimis was bought by Ben Heller. Other sales will take place that year: L”Errance and Onement VI.

In February, Barnett Newman fell into a deep depression following the sudden death of his younger brother, George. To get him out of this situation, his friend Cleve Gray invites him to join a lithography project at the Pratt Institute Graphic Art Center. This was his first experience with printmaking. Soon after, he painted a painting dedicated to his brother George, Surgit la lumière (For George).

In January 1962, he declined invitations to important events such as the Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, D.C. and the “Geometric Abstraction” event at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. It was also during this year that he created a painting called The Third. With the help of Robert Murray, Newman participated in a casting with his 1950 sculpture Here I (To Marcia) at the Modern Art Foundry in Queens. His name comes from Marcia Weisman who urged him to cast.

On October 23, 1962, Newman and De Kooning had an exhibition of their work in Tony Smith”s gallery. The waves of criticism were finally in Newman”s favor, declaring him one of the “most remarkable artists alive today.

In 1963, “Vogue” magazine published a glowing biographical essay by Harold Rosenberg entitled “Barnett Newman, a Man of Controversy and Spiritual Greatness”. Later Newman was encouraged by William Lieberman, a curator of prints at the Museum of Modern Art, to make lithographs. It was then that Newman decided to make a “book”, a collection of lithographs. He worked on four stones in his studio. His work will become a series of lithography processes named “Cantos” editions ULAE. He finished his project in 1964 with 14 “Cantos” but later decided that four more engravings were needed, bringing the total to eighteen. He is delighted with this number, which in Hebrew (chai) also means “alive”. For him, these are like musical songs that he dedicates to his wife Annalee. He then painted Seventh Station, Eighth Station, Ninth Station and Be II, which closed the series of Stations of the Cross that would be exhibited by the Guggenheim in New York. In September, Annalee retires. She now spends her days with Barnett in the studio.

In 1965, Newman”s work participated in two events that marked the end of Abstract Expressionism in Philadelphia, The Decisive Years: 1943-1953 and in Los Angeles, New York School, The First Generation: Paintings of the 1940s and 1950s. That same year, Newman makes another steel sculpture Here II at the Treitel Gratz Company that complements Here I. A few months later, Walter Hopps, a curator, names Newman as the central figure in a group of artists he selects for the U.S. Pavilion at the Eighth São Paulo Biennial. The other six artists were twenty years Newman”s junior. They are Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Donald Judd, Larry Poons, and Frank Stella. At the artist”s request, the seven paintings and two sculptures are presented out of competition. With this event, Newman charmed the journalists. He won the admiration of Oscar Niemeyer, an architect, and the famous footballer Pelé. But he also impresses the artists of São Paulo thanks to his knowledge of art history.

On April 20, 1966, the Guggenheim in New York held an exhibition of only Newman”s work, which included the Stations of the Cross paintings. These “Stations” gained attention far beyond the usual boundaries of the art world and his work was exhibited worldwide, particularly in Europe. He continues to work at the Treitel Gratz foundry where he makes a sculpture in Corten and stainless steel called Be III. That same year, he also made his first painting using primary colors, which would be the basis of the series of four Who”s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue completed with acrylic. He made several paintings that year, including one about 5 meters long: Voice of Fire, which was used in the American pavilion at the 1967 World”s Fair in Montreal, one of his most impressive paintings.

In August 1967, Newman was invited to speak on the spiritual dimension of contemporary art at the first International Congress on Religion, Architecture, and the Visual Arts in New York. In his speech, Newman stated: “What matters to a true artist is the distinction between place and non-place; and the greater the work of art, the greater will be that feeling. And that feeling is a fundamental spiritual dimension. Shortly thereafter, Newman began working with the North Haven Foundry in Connecticut, which specialized in making large art works. Newman then made a monumental sculpture: Broken Obelisk, which was later exhibited in many art galleries. Working on his obelisk, Newman wondered about the idea of a triangular painting.

In November 1967, the Newmans came to Europe for the opening of “The Poetry of Vision” in Dublin, an exhibition of contemporary and antique art featuring Who”s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue II, Queen of the Night II, and Now II. On December 21, 1967, Newman signed an open letter in the New York Review of Books protesting anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.

In January 1968, the couple came to Paris for Newman to participate in a conference honoring Charles Baudelaire and made his first visit to the Louvre. On April 28, Newman accepted a teaching position at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. That year, Newman executed a painting dedicated to his mother Anna”s Light. It was the largest painting Newman had ever done and the first to be unstretched and mounted directly on the studio wall. A few months later, he protests against Chicago Mayor Daley and the brutal police actions in removing the Gea work from a Chicago exhibition and makes plans for a sculpture entitled Mayor Daley”s Outhouse but will not have enough time to complete it.

On March 25, 1969, Newman opened his first gallery, M. Knoedler and Company, which would show his work from the 1960s. The four works Who”s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue were very successful, as were Now II, Anna”s Light and the two triangular paintings he had just completed, Jericho and Chartres. Then comes the first published monograph devoted to Newman written by Thomas Hess.

Newman”s work is controversial but widely praised by the field. Negative reviews from critics leave no doubt about Newman”s importance. His exhibitions attracted as much attention as the museum retrospectives of Willem de Kooning and David Smith that took place in the same year. That year he executed Zim Zum I, which was originally intended to be 3.60 meters high but was reduced to 2.40 meters so that it could be shipped to Tokyo for an exhibition at the Hakoone Open Air Museum.

Ten of his paintings and three of his sculptures spanning Newman”s career from 1946 to 1969 appear in the New York exhibition on Painting and Sculpture from 1940 to 1970, organized by Henry Geldzahler for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the end of the year, Newman began plans for major retrospective exhibitions to be organized by Thomas Hess at the Tate Gallery in London, the Grand Palais in Paris, MoMA in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

In January 1970, Newman contributed to the centennial of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he wrote: “I have always had a distaste even a disdain for reproductions and photographs of works of art, even those of my own work. I can only feel fortunate that my art education came not from examining photographs and slide superproductions or even from teachers, but from myself facing reality.”

On May 17, 1970, Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts honored Newman”s work with a Creative Arts Medal in Painting.

It was on July 4, 1970, at the age of sixty-five, that Barnett Newman died of a heart attack in his studio near the painting Who”s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue IV. Also in his studio is an unfinished canvas measuring 5.40 meters by 2.40 meters, a right-angled triangular canvas, and three of his completed but untitled works.

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First works

In the 1940”s his style was rather surreal and then became more mature. This is characterized by areas of color separated by thin vertical lines, zips as he calls them. In his first works with these zips, the color fields are not uniform, but later on, the colors are pure and flat.

In 1947, he exhibited two works in Betty Parson”s gallery, Gea and Euclidian Abyss. On a black background, vertical yellow lines, not quite vertical, are becoming more and more important in his works. These zips mark the artist”s singularity and will remain a constant element in Newman”s career.

He himself thought that he had reached the full maturity of his style with the Onement series, in 1948 . These are works with a burgundy background and vertical zips of other colors. They provoke upheaval and emotion in the viewer. Newman said about these works: “There are specific and separate transformations of feelings that can be experienced in front of each painting”.

In a few paintings from the 1950s, such as The Wild, which is two and a half meters long and four centimeters wide, the zipper is there, if it is not the work itself. Newman also made a few sculptures, including Here I, which are essentially a three-dimensional representation of zippers.

In 1951, he exhibited Vir Heroicus Sublimis, which would later become his most famous work. The number of Zips and their regularity brings a symmetry to the painting giving a red flatness that seems simple.

Although Newman”s paintings appear to be purely abstract and many of them were originally untitled, the names he later gave them relate to specific subjects, often with a theme of Judaism. Two works from the early 1950s, for example, are named Adam, then also Uriel (1954) and Abraham (1949), a very dark painting, whose name is certainly that of the patriarch of the Bible but was also that of Newman”s father who died in 1947. Newman expresses a certain mysticism with the titles of his works. In particular with “Adam”, the first name of the biblical character which is close to adom meaning red and dam, blood. This red-toned painting is the result of Newman”s Jewish identity, which he was very concerned about, especially during the horrors of the Second World War, the Holocaust. He said, “When Hitler was ravaging Europe, could we express ourselves by painting a pretty naked girl lying on a couch?” To this question, he answered with abstraction.

The series of paintings including variations of beige with black vertical stripes, The Stations of the Cross (1958-1964), began shortly after Newman had recovered from a heart attack and is seen as a career highlight. The series is subtitled Lema sabachthani – “Why have you abandoned me?” – words spoken by Christ on the cross. Newman sees his words as having universal meaning. The series was also seen as a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Newman wanted to express the universal tragedy and violence in relation to the passion.

Late works

Newman”s late works such as the Who”s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue series, which is made only of primary colors, and the zips give a dynamic to the painting as a whole. These works are made of pure, vibrant colors, often on large canvases – Anna”s Light (1968), named in memory of his mother who died in 1965, is the largest, eight feet by two feet. Newman also worked on non-rectangular canvases towards the end of his life, such as Chartres (1969), which is triangular, and then returned to sculpture, making a few pieces in polished steel. His later paintings are done with acrylic paint rather than oil paint as in his earlier works. Among his sculptures, the Broken Obelisk is the largest and best known, representing an upside down obelisk whose tip rests on that of a pyramid.

He also produced a series of lithographs, the 18 Cantos (1963-64) which, according to Newman, evoke music. His work also includes some etchings. He dedicates his works to his wife Annalee.

In 1962, he made a large orange canvas with two yellow zippers, The Third. About this work, Newman said: “I feel that my zips do not divide my paintings. I feel that they cause exactly the opposite, they unify the whole.

Newman is generally considered an Abstract Expressionist, based on his work in New York in the 1950s, where he and other Abstract Expressionists developed an abstract style that had nothing in common with European art. However, his rejection of expressive brushwork as used by other Abstract Expressionists such as Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko, and the use of flat areas of color on well-defined surfaces, may make him a precursor of the artists of the Hard Edge Painting, Colorfield Painting and Minimalism (art) movements, such as Frank Stella.

Newman did not achieve great success as an artist for most of his life, being overshadowed by such colorful figures as Jackson Pollock. The influential critic Clement Greenberg wrote enthusiastic papers about him, but it was not until the end of his life that he began to be considered seriously. Nevertheless, he influenced many young painters.

Newman has always insisted that his viewers must see his work up close in order to be enveloped by the dense colors. His paintings must give the viewer the feeling of drowning in pure color. His art is abstract, total and uncompromising. He said: “It is said that I have led abstract painting to its limits, while it is obvious to me that I have only made a new beginning.

Newman died in New York of a heart attack in 1970.

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Notes

Sources