AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

Barnett Newman (1905-1970) was one of the most iconic artists of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the United States of America, known for his large color field paintings that in their expression of composition and color struck many viewers as repetitive. One befuddled individual after viewing a Newman show asked “How simple can an artist be and get away with it? There was absolutely nothing there.”[1] Despite the apparent similarity of his works to casual observers, Newman was very leery of repetition; his wife, Annalee, said that he “hated redundancy, that he wanted above all to avoid repeating himself and that each painting had to be for him like a person, a unicorn.”[2] This concern may have been why Newman only ever created one formal series of paintings that he considered a cohesive grouping: Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani (1958-1966), which was limited to a black and white palette. He did sometimes choose to revisit a concept or problem and created series of paintings with the same name.[3] One exemplar of this category are the four paintings titled Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue (1966-1970), which explored the titular colors. Newman created only a single other work that contained all three primaries, Chartres (1969), one of his few works exploring triangular-shaped canvases. Despite containing the three primary colors, the title of this work indicates Newman did not consider it part of the main series.

The four works in the Who’s afraid series, created over a period of four years varied in their media, oil or acrylic, and in their size, the smallest being the first of the series at 190.5 x 212.9 cm and the largest the last at 274.3 x 604.5 cm. The first of the series was sold in 1967; thus, it was not available to Newman as a reference when finishing Who’s Afraid III (1967-68) or during the creation of Chartres and Who’s Afraid IV (1969-70). These works have also never been exhibited together, leaving photograph-based comparisons as the only means to assess their similarities- a fraught undertaking. Thus, we do not really know what Newman’s reds, yellows, and blues are- are they even the same color? To understand Newman’s artistic vision and his interpretation of the primary colors we have scientifically documented the color of the reds, yellow and blues on Chartres and Who’s afraid I, II, and IV, and the materials he used to create them. Our findings reveal that while he had a clear and consistent vision of what ‘red’ is, his yellows and blues, particularly the latter, varied widely both in tonality and materiality, a previously unappreciated and surprising complexity of his work.

[1] M. Stevens: ‘Power and Melancholy’, New York Magazine, Jan 16, 1995 (1995), pp.58-59, p.58.

[2] Y.-A. Bois: ‘On Two Paintings by Barnett Newman’, October, 108 (2004), pp.3-34, p.3.

[3] Examples include Onement I – IV and White Fire I – IV.