19. Barnett Newman: Vir Heroicus Sublimis
The American painter Barnett Newman (1905-1970) is the originator of the painting Vir Heroicus Sublimis from 1950. It is extraordinary in every way. It is of uniform color, primary red, constrasted only by single narrow strips. Besides that, it is big, 6x2.5 m.
[The painting Vir Heroicus Sublimis can be seen at the home page www.moma.org”. Click “The Collections”, “Browse and search the Online Collection”, “Advanced Search”, write Vir Heroicus Sublimis” and click the search result “Moma.org.The Collection/Barnett Newman Vir Heroicus Sublimis”]
In an article about his painter colleague Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman wrote:
In 1940 some of us woke up, discovering that we had no hope – that painting did not exist. Or, to use a modern sentence, painting was dead, a quarter of a century before the same thing happened to God. Our wake up seemed as intoxicating as a revolution. Our wake up inspired our aspirations – our search for the great goal which is something different than ambition – to start from point zero as if painting has never existed. This naked revolutionary moment made painters into painters.
The vision of a new start of the history of art, pretending that painting had never existed before, may sound rather naïve. For artists, it seems inevitable to relate to the art of their predecessors. And of course, this is strongly demonstrated when an artist openly rejects the endeavors of his predecessors.
It would be most consistent and in accordance with Newman´s project to give up analyzing his picture. His intention was that it should stand by itself. However, as he claims to be an artist, he must accept being subjected to an analysis, explaining why he is an artist. This is facilitated because his project deviates from the strategies of his predecessors. Hence, we are able to encircle his system and the concepts which are part of his efforts.
According to Newman, former art, even the works of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian with refined geometric shapes and primary colors, was based on sensual perception, that is, visual experience. Thus, former works of art were a naturalistic kind of art, even if they were called “abstract art”.
The vision of Newman was visual art, based on a pure idea, a real art of abstraction. Thus, he rejected trivial reality with apples and oranges, portraits, gas stations, billboards, scrapheaps and TV-stations in favor of a reality of constancy. As he wanted to start afresh, it is no wonder that his picture titles included words like Genesis, The Beginning, Abraham, The Name, Now, Here. Newman wanted to cleanse painting from significance, leaving nothing mere the idea of absoluteness. With this kind of philosophical point of view, the pictures have to be very different from traditional visual art.
The proportions of Vir Heroicus Sublimis deviate from the proportions of traditional art. The painting is much wider than tall. The vertical bands are not placed according to traditional proportional systems. Proportions, normally being conceptual elements of visual art, are utilized in an untraditional manner. They are meant to be metaphorical for the idea of absoluteness.
Traditional artists often use brush-strokes stamped with their personality. Jackson Pollock, the artist colleague of Newman, brought this tendency to the extreme by stating his personal presence on the canvas by means of brush-strokes, metaphors of his individual mind and physical attendance.
[The works of Jackson Pollock can be seen at the home page www.artcyclopedia.com. Write “Jackson Pollock” in “Search Artcyclopedia/artists by name.]
The current canvas of Newman is of uniform color at anonymous, with the appearance of the product of a car painter. Newman has no intention of expressing his feelings and personal presence. His pictures are objects of their own.
The size of the picture, the proportions, the color and the anonymity are crucial elements of Vir Heroicus Sublimis. The size alone is a deviation from tradition. When one alters the size of an object, the character of the object is modified. A blowfly in the size of an elephant turns into a frightening monster. The oversize (14 m) of Claes Oldenburg in Philadelphia is more than a monstrous clothes pin, it is a magical object. A picture with the size of 6x2.5 m is no longer a traditional painting fit for contemplation, but an inevitable fact, literarily unavoidable. >It becomes part of the surroundings. Without the decoration normally reserved for wall paintings, it attains the void significance of the wall.
Art history contains several instances of unicolored pictures, e.g. the white paintings of the Russian painter Kasimir Malevitch and the blue paintings of the French painter Yves Klein. Newman has made use of a color of a very dominant kind, primary red, protruding in space in a way that almost stupefies the spectator.
This effect is somewhat mitigated by the five vertical bands that break the cohesive areal of red. Some of the bands simulate a small indentation in the area of red; other bands are vibrant on the background of intense red, creating after-images on the retina. But these are minor deviation. They do not subdivide the pictorial area and do not try to compete with the strong color of red that overwhelms the senses of the spectator with intense presence, as if the spectator looks at some rough sea or awe-inspiring cliff scenery. The title word Sublimis is deliberately chosen – sublime means something which is elevated and frightening, producing a feeling of the spectator of being lifted into another sphere, surpassing sensuousness and finiteness.
These are the game pieces of the Visual Game of Art of Barnett Newman. The sense of the game is to implicate the spectator in the enormous field of color. At the time, we perceive the picture as a wall, at another time we perceive the color as one of the black holes of the universe – despite the red color – absorbing us throughout. The picture is transformed into an object of ritual, summoning up an experience of totality, a basic level experience on a par with the experience of primitive myth and symbols. An object of “tragedy and timelessness”, in the words of Newman´s colleagues Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. We are leaving the realm of placid aesthetics and heading towards the realm of ethics. Maybe we are even heading towards art, conceived as a sort of religion, suitable for saving a worldly and sinful society from damnation.
With an approach like this, we are tempted to attach to the vertical bands a significance of metaphysics. Newman himself claimed them to be Signs, representing his way of surpassing consciousness. Some of his admirers asserted that they represent the creative gesture of God or the divinely division between lightness and darkness created by God. Newman´s admirers considered the bands to symbolize the figure of Adam, and referred to passages in Jewish cabbalist teaching.
Finally, some observers have pointed out that the project of Newman, rejecting figuration, hunting for ultimate Truth and the rejection of worldly society, has important Jewish inspiration.
The project of Barnett Newman is ambitious. His faith in art as a redeemer for humanity is on the verge of getting out of control and his strategy of asceticism is close to doing away with art, even if he has no intention of doing so.
However, the solutions chosen by Newman in order to realize his art project are consistent. His project is original, and his issue about the role of art is relevant. His works of art have been inspiring for many contemporary artists who have incorporated his ideas of the picture as the concept of an object of its own.
References:
Harold Rosenberg. The De-definition of Art. New York. Horizon Press 1972.
Robert Hughes. The Shock of the New. London. Thames and Hudson 1991.
Sam Hunter. American Art of the 20th Century. New York. Harry N. Abrams 1972.
Edward Lucie Smith. Art Today. Milano. Arnoldo Mandadore Editore 1977.