Barnett Newman’s The Wild : as Spatial Intervention*

KENNETH R. ALLAN

Barnett Newman’s abstract typically present extensive fields of color interrupted by thin vertical lines that activate the richness of the colored broad expanses. But in 1950, he made several very unusual paintings that dra - matically minimized the surrounding fields of atmospheric color and emphasized instead the single vertical lines later known as “zips.” 1 With the most extreme of them, his narrow, vertical canvas of 1950 entitled The Wild (with dimensions of 243 x 4.1 cm), 2 Newman made an unprecedented work in which the thin vertical stripe is only slightly narrower than the canvas itself. 3 This painting is generally understood to function as a manifestation of the zip within an extraordinarily narrow field, and its success is said to be indicative of its self- sufficiency as a painting. I will argue to the contrary that claims of self-sufficiency and autonomy are not sustainable. More so than most paintings, The Wild is context dependent. With this work, it is not possible to maintain an illusion of separateness. Paintings are normally encountered and dealt with as fully bounded objects—unlike , which engage with, and articulate, the

* I would like to thank Barbara Kulicke for her invaluable recollections and insights regarding The Wild . I very much appreciated Ann Temkin’s and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro’s helpful responses to my questions about this unusual painting. Heidi Colsman-Freyberger and Uta Hoffmann at the Barnett Newman Foundation were of great assistance. Yve-Alain Bois provided very useful editorial suggestions. I also thank the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge for support through its Academic Research Enhancement Fund. The following galleries assisted with images and permissions: Yvon Lambert, Paris; Lisson Gallery, London; and James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai. 1. It was only in June 1966 (four years before he died) that Newman began to use the term “zip” in public. This was in a taped interview with Thomas Hess for the exhibition “Stations of the Cross.” See Sarah K. Rich, “The Proper Name of Newman’s Zip,” Reconsidering Barnett Newman , ed. Melissa Ho (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2005), p. 99. 2. The title of The Wild was first recorded for Newman’s 1962 exhibition at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York. See Ann Temkin, Suzanne Penn, and Melissa Ho, “Catalogue,” Barnett Newman , ed. Ann Temkin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 188. 3. An unfinished and untitled painting of around 1949 to 1950, owned by the Barnett Newman Foundation, is slightly more elongated than The Wild . It appears to be a single red stripe on an ocher ground and has dimensions of 278.7 x 4.7 cm. See Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, “Catalogue Raisonné,” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , ed. Ellyn Childs Allison (New York: the Barnett Newman Foundation; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 531.

OCTOBER 143, Winter 2013, pp. 71–94. © 2013 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 72 OCTOBER

space around them. Given its extreme dimensions and the limitations of visual perception, The Wild cannot do otherwise than to produce a perceptually height - ened surround as much as it attracts attention to itself. Since The Wild ’s creation in 1950, its manner of presentation has evolved considerably. One of the installation photographs taken by Hans Namuth of Newman’s exhibition at the Gallery in 1951 shows the painting flanked on either side by Newman and Parsons. It is unframed, and its sides appear to be exposed to view. Sometime between 1960 and 1962, 4 the painting was acquired by Robert Kulicke, a friend of Newman’s, who was a painter and an important framer and frame designer in New York. 5 According to Barbara Kulicke (who was married to Robert Kulicke at the time and worked as co-director of Kulicke Frames), 6 Newman and Kulicke closely collaborated in framing The Wild 7 prior to Newman’s participation in a two-person show with Willem de Kooning at the Allan Stone Gallery in 1962. 8 In 1969, the Kulickes donated the painting to the Museum of , and the museum retained the frame. In Newman’s retrospective of 2002 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, curated by Ann Temkin, the painting was once again exhibited without its frame in what was considered to be an act of historical recovery. The painting continues to be exhibited frameless at MoMA, where Temkin is currently chief curator. In this essay, I will consider the perceptual problems arising from the unusual dimensions of the work and the related consequences of framing, or not framing, The Wild . In its current unframed state, The Wild appears as a single red stripe on a dark, somewhat muddied, bluish-gray ground that I would characterize as gun - metal gray. Unusually for Newman, the gray ground is consistently applied to both the front and sides, providing visual continuity around the painting, and making one very conscious of viewing the object partially in the round. When seen from

4. Colsman-Freyberger, “Catalogue Raisonné,” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , p. 231. A date of around 1960 is suggested for Kulicke’s acquisition of the painting, but this may be problematic, as will be discussed. 5. In his obituary notice, writes: “[F]or much of his life Mr. Kulicke was the most innovative and influential frame designer in the United States.” See Roberta Smith, “Robert Kulicke, 83, Artist and Frame Maker, Is Dead,” New York Times , December 15, 2007, www.nytimes.com/ 2007/12/15/arts/design/15kulicke.html?pagewanted=print. 6. In addition to his significant work as a framer and frame designer, Robert Kulicke became well known as a painter of intimate still lifes and was an innovative jewelry-maker. While still with Kulicke Frames, Barbara Kulicke developed the Betsy Ross Flag and Banner Company in the mid-1960s with gallery owner Bob Graham. They produced banners designed by leading New York artists. This company later developed into Multiples Inc., which she co-founded with the emerging art dealer Marian Goodman and Bob Graham. Following the Kulickes’ divorce in 1970, Barbara took up a further career as an art consultant and as a painter of landscapes, still lifes, and abstractions. 7. Barbara Kulicke, e-mail messages to the author, October 27 and November 1, 2008. 8. The reproduction of The Wild in the exhibition catalogue, while unclear, does appear to show the painting with a frame. See Allan Stone, Newman/De Kooning (New York: Allan Stone Gallery, 1962), unpaginated. I thank the Allan Stone Gallery for providing me with a copy of the catalogue.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Barnett Newman and Betty Parsons with The Wild at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1951. Photograph by Hans Namuth. Courtesy of the Barnett Newman Foundation, New York, and the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 74 OCTOBER

an angle, the painting visibly protrudes from the wall, with the depth of its painted sides being almost equal to its width. There is no impasto or noticeable texture to the matte, unreflective paint. The canvas appears to have been first divided down the center by a strip of masking tape. Newman next painted the remaining front and sides with the ground’s gunmetal gray. The tape was then removed and a bright cadmium-red stripe was painted over that same central strip, roughly overlapping the dried gray ground in places. The red paint darkens where it overlays (with variable painterly markings) the dark-gray ground on both of its edges. This darkened and jagged-edged red overpainting provides two thin transitional areas between the bright and straight red central stripe and the dark- gray ground. Together, the muted but still contrasting red-gray color relationships, the counter-reverberations between internal shapes and external form, and the wraparound presentation lend the painting a considerable degree of internal frisson and complexity. The conservator Carol Mancusi-Ungaro has studied Newman’s technique extensively and writes: Regardless of the medium, what remains consistently and uniquely characteristic of Newman’s grounds is that they are almost without exception restricted to the picture plane—that is, they do not flow over onto the tacking edges. This is particularly obvious and significant in the post- Onement I paintings, which have largely remained unframed, in accordance with the artist’s intent. 9 However, the artist’s intent is much less clear in the case of The Wild , where the paint does flow over the edges and onto the sides, and which Newman himself exhibited both unframed and framed, in 1951 and 1962, respectively. Many of the larger paintings were also unframed for the Betty Parsons Gallery exhibition of 1951, but Namuth’s photograph of the receptionist’s area shows Newman and gallery assistant Monica Lockwood sitting in front of three framed Newman paint - ings, two of them being the tall, narrow paintings Untitled 3 and Untitled 4 .10 This photograph demonstrates that Newman could have initially framed The Wild for exhibition if he had wished, and that not framing it was a calculated decision. Although viewers cannot help but see the edges and sides of paintings or frames as they walk through painting exhibitions, they typically do not pay close attention to them but concentrate instead on the pictorial frontal surface plane. The sides are understood to be unimportant for the viewer’s perceptual engage - ment with the work. But it is essential to consider the painted sides’ significance for The Wild , if only because there is twice as much visible painted surface on the sides as there is on the front when the work is exhibited unframed. If Newman

9. Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, “The Paintings of Barnett Newman ‘Involved Intuition on the Highest Level,’” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , p. 119. 10 . See page 111.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 75

decided to continuously paint the front surface plane and the sides with the same colored paint, and if the sides constitute a much greater surface area than does the front, and if Newman first exhibited the work in a manner that directed attention to those sides (when he could have easily done otherwise), then one can only conclude that the sides were originally meant to be attended to as significant components of the artwork. When the dimensions of The Wild are listed in publications, typically only the height and width are included, as is the norm for paintings. But by not including a measurement of this painting’s depth, those publications maintain a conventional understanding of The Wild as essentially constituted by a two-dimen - sional plane, and this obscures the implications of its painted sides. 11 There are earlier instances in which the sides of paintings have served as components of the presentation. Piet Mondrian’s Composition 2 with Red and Blue (1929, also in MoMA’s collection) is mounted in a light, cream-colored, set-back strip frame and subframe in such a way that one can view the work’s painted and composed sides for more than a centimeter as the canvas wraps around the stretcher’s rounded edges. The painted black lines and the white or colored rec - tangular zones do not simply continue over to the side of the painting, they are compositionally transformed in places so as to suggest an extension of the sort of spatial ambiguity one sometimes finds toward the front edges of his paintings of 1921. In their introduction to the Mondrian-retrospective catalogue of 1994, Angelica Zander Rudenstine et al. note that for many earlier interpreters and advocates of his work, “the painterly subtlety of surface differentiation was gener - ally overlooked. In addition,” they continue, “Mondrian’s consistent preoccupation with the entire extent of the picture plane, with the relationship of each compositional element to the outer edge of the canvas and hence to the frame, has rarely been taken into account.” This has sometimes resulted in prob - lematic restorations and alterations. 12 The point made by the authors about the extremities of Mondrian’s paintings is useful in suggesting the need for expand - ing our field of attention when engaging with his better-preserved works. As is the case with Newman’s The Wild , the sides of Mondrian’s paintings are almost never discussed in the literature, even when elements of those sides are clearly integral components of the painting’s composition. This neglect is no doubt due to the power of the convention that holds that painting compositions are solely to be found on the frontal surface plane. Newman painted The Wild in 1950. Robert and Barbara Kulicke spent that same year living in Paris. They were originally from Philadelphia. Robert Kulicke was

11. However, when writers wish to concentrate on the unframed painting’s object quality, they will generally provide a rough estimate of the depth. This is true of a short article by Ann Temkin in which she provides dimensions of “8 feet tall by 1 1/2 inches wide and deep.” See Ann Temkin, “A Giant Zip for Mankind,” Artnews 101, no. 3 (March 2002), pp. 82 –84. 12. See Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Yve-Alain Bois, Joop Joosten, Hans Janssen, and John Elderfield, “Introduction,” Piet Mondrian 1872 –1944 , ed. Angelica Zander Rudenstine (Boston: Bullfinch Press, 1995), p. xix.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 76 OCTOBER

on the American G.I. Bill studying painting with Fernand Léger and learning fram - ing techniques from French framers. Barbara studied ballet and sought out modern dance, but she also attended the critiques at Léger’s studio. The following year, the Kulickes moved to New York, where they set up a framing business specializing in modern, traditional, and period frames. 13 The New York School of painters was then emerging, and Kulicke Frames developed new frame styles appropriate to the new painting. These were advanced developments related to the basic frame-making technique of earlier artists, who nailed wooden strips of lathing around the stretcher. 14 Their first success as framers was with the design and architecture com - munity, which was attuned to the “less is more” aesthetic that also drove the innovations of Kulicke Frames. Their modern frames, initially made of wood, were informed by design principles linked to a Bauhaus aesthetic. 15 That streamlined sen - sibility provided a less cluttered frame surround that enhanced the material qualities of the paintings while also harmonizing with the developing “white cube” properties of postwar display spaces. The Kulickes came to know many of the leading New York artists of the time, such as Newman, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, , and so on. Josef Albers became a particular admirer of their framing work. 16 Robert Kulicke states in an interview that he conceived of a welded metal frame not long after developing a wooden “floating frame” for the furniture and design company Knoll in 1953: After the many forms of parcel-gilded walnut and mahogany strip frames, and the band frames, I began to realize that the classic twen - tieth-century picture frame would have to be welded, polished metal . . . . Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell especially were insist - ing on narrower and narrower mouldings for their work and I decid - ed that only welded aluminum would be strong enough and light enough for the job. 17 In the late 1950s, MoMA commissioned Kulicke Frames to create an innovative welded aluminum frame for traveling exhibitions, which was produced beginning in 1960. 18 A technical problem was that aluminum is extremely difficult to weld with a clean join. Kulicke recalled, “If I could solve the problem, they agreed to

13 . Their first frame shop was in Brooklyn Heights. They then moved to 55th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan, near the 57th Street galleries. They subsequently moved to Madison Avenue and 78th Street, which had become another gallery area. Barbara Kulicke, interview with the author, December 17, 2008. 14 . Robert Kulicke, interview with Mark Guthrie, “Time Frame,” Picture Framing Magazine (December 2003), p. 95. 15 . Barbara Kulicke, interview with the author, December 17, 2008. 16 . Ibid. 17 . Robert Kulicke, interview with Mark Guthrie, “Time Frame,” p. 95. 18 . When MoMA later decided to standardize the frames on much of its painting collection, Kulicke frames were used. On a visit to the museum in 2008, I noted whole rooms in which paintings were almost exclusively framed in Kulicke aluminium floating frames.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 77

buy 2,000 frames from me over a three-year period. For the next year and a half I gave most of my time to this effort, with a great deal of help from the Utechni Corporation and their staff.” The frame was inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair. 19 Kulicke states: “Six months after I introduced my frame on the New York art market, I received a letter from Van der Rohe’s assistant conveying ‘the Master’s congratulations on [my] beautiful frame’ and ordering more than two hundred for a building he was doing.” 20 A Knoll aluminum floating frame was marketed from 1961, and it was this frame that was used for The Wild . According to Barbara, Newman suggested, approved of, and collaborated on the framing of The Wild carried out by Robert. 21 Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, of the Barnett Newman Foundation, recalls a telephone conversation with Robert Kulicke in which he stated that one day after being interviewed about framing on a radio program, Newman contacted him with the challenge of framing The Wild .22 About the type of frame that ended up around The Wild , Barbara writes: The frame was a floating frame, meaning that the inside space around the painting was about 1/4 inch or a little more, making the painting appear to be floating away from the surface of the frame, which was polished and welded aluminum (one of Kulicke Frames specialties) . . . . So the edge of the Newman painting was a little visible or as much as Newman and Kulicke agreed it should be. 23 The aluminum frame chosen for The Wild was a further development of the wooden floating frame originally designed in 1953 for Knoll. Barbara recalls: The Knoll account was my domain and I worked with their design group on many orders, mostly the Lever Brothers building in which they designed all the interiors. 24 They needed a frame to work with the Knoll interior and furniture design. Florence [Knoll] was very involved with all this as she was the head of the firm at that time . . . Bob was

19 . Robert Kulicke, interview with Bruce Gherman, “20th Century Frame Innovator: Spotlight on Robert Kulicke,” Picture Framing Magazine (January 1990), pp. 49 –50. 20 . Robert Kulicke, interview with Mark Guthrie, “Time Frame,” p. 95. 21 . Barbara Kulicke, e-mail message to the author, October 27, 2008. 22 . Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, telephone conversation with the author, January 20, 2012. The date of Kulicke’s radio interview is unknown. 23. Barbara Kulicke, e-mail message to the author, November 1, 2008. The advantages of float - ing frames include having the painted surface of the paintings visible out to the edges of the stretcher. The darkened space between the paintings and frame allowed for the illusion of suspension even when the paintings had uneven stretchers. Barbara Kulicke, interview with the author, December 16, 2008. Attaching a frame directly to the sides of uneven stretchers would accentuate any imperfections. 24 . Lever House, located at 390 Park Avenue, was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and built between 1951 and 1952. It was the first International Style curtain-wall skyscraper in New York, predating Mies van der Rohe’s , constructed between 1954 and 1958 and located diagonally across the street.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 78 OCTOBER

involved with the workings of the manufacturing end of the business at this time. He also reviewed all the aesthetic aspects of the company as well. He had an excellent and creative eye . . . . Bob headed the details of the design and fabricating and I was involved in the marketing end.

The Floating or Knoll Frame was a perfect solution for what Barney and Bob wanted to put around The Wild .25 According to Barbara Kulicke, Barnett Newman gave The Wild to Robert Kulicke as a gift around the time that Kulicke Frames began producing this signifi - cant welded aluminum floating frame. 26 The two families were on friendly terms, exchanging visits while living close to each other on the Upper West Side. Barbara suggests that one reason the two men got along so well was that, in contrast to many artists of the 1950s generation who were put off by Newman’s intellectual - ism, “Bob really respected him and admired him a lot, and accepted Barney’s view of himself as a serious leader in the avant-garde.” 27 The Wild had earlier been enti - tled The End of Silence 1 when it was exhibited at Bennington College in 1958. Although in recent years two speculative suggestions (from Richard Shiff as well as from Ann Temkin, Suzanne Penn, and Melissa Ho) have been put forward as to how the painting may have received its second name, Barbara states that in giving it a new title, Barney named the painting after Robert Kulicke. He thought he was at least eccentric if not Wild. He was both actually. They had a lot in com - mon. Both night people. Drank a lot, both very smart, eccentric, fol - lowed their own dreams and were both very original or unique and inventive, intensely creative. Also, The Wild was the essence of Barney’s painting. It was the ZIP, as he called it. 28

25 . Barbara Kulicke, e-mail message to the author, November 3, 2008. Newman was known as “Barney” to friends and colleagues. Kulicke Frames did not patent its frame designs, some of which became international standards for museum and gallery display. These include the Knoll welded alu - minum floating frame, the metal section frame, and the plastic box frame. 26 . Barbara Kulicke, e-mail message to the author, October 27, 2008. 27 . Barbara Kulicke, interview with the author, December 17, 2008. 28. Barbara Kulicke, e-mail message to the author, October 30, 2008. Richard Shiff suggests another possibility for the title: “Beyond the humorous absurdity of birds taking an interest in ornithology, Newman’s analogy—aesthetics is to the artist as ornithology is to the birds—expressed a deeper thought: aesthetic science constrains the artist, who must remain wild and free like a bird (free as a bird, the cliché says). Hess records that Newman was ‘drawn to ornithology by “the wildness of birds”—the idea of freedom.’” Shiff goes on to write: “This may explain Newman’s title for The Wild . . . which he applied to an extremely narrow painting . . . created to assert his freedom from the broad expanses of color he was then in the habit of creating. Birds that live in ‘the wild’ are free. Regarding The Wild and other paintings, Newman said that he wanted ‘to transcend the size or, better still, to overcome it [for] size is not enough.’” Shiff, “To Create Oneself,” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , pp. 106 –7, n. 58. In the Newman retrospective catalogue, the entry for the painting suggests a further

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 79

Carol Mancusi-Ungaro provides a different narrative regarding the Kulickes’ acquisition of the painting. Citing a conversation she had with Annalee Newman (Newman’s wife) in 1995, she writes, “One exception is the metal frame on The Wild . . . which was made by Robert Kulicke in 1962. Newman reportedly said to Kulicke, ‘If you can frame it as I like, you can buy it.’ Three years later, Kulicke owned the framed painting.” 29 Following her husband’s death, Annalee Newman was very involved in directing matters related to his estate and with interpreta - tions of his work. Regarding her comments on The Wild , however, the Newman catalogue raisonné suggests a date of circa 1960 for Kulicke’s acquisition of the painting. The catalogue for the Newman –de Kooning exhibition of 1962 at the Allan Stone Gallery indicates in the painting’s caption that it was already in the Kulickes’ collection. 30 (However, Heidi Colsman-Freyberger has noted a Kulicke Frames invoice dated October 23, 1962, the day the Allan Stone Gallery exhibi - tion opened, which lists an aluminum frame with dimensions of 96 3/8 x 2 inches. That would seem to have been the frame prepared for The Wild , but Newman is charged a $100 fee for it, to be credited to his account, which is strange regardless of whether Kulicke had received the painting as a gift or a purchase, 31 unless it was to be a promised transaction in the future.) Annalee Newman’s recollection would seem to suggest that the Kulickes came into possession of the painting in 1965 (unless Newman’s proposal was made in 1959) and that it had been bought rather than presented as a gift. Yet Barbara Kulicke states that one of the reasons they donated the painting to MoMA in 1969 was because they had themselves been given it as a gift by Newman, although they had also worked a great deal with the museum and benefited from the business relationship. Moreover, as a business practice they avoided taking payment in kind from artists. 32 There remain, there - fore, various perspectives surrounding the renaming of the painting as well as the date and manner of its transference to the Kulickes’ collection. There is a period photograph of six of the tall and narrow paintings of 1950 that shows four of them, excepting The Wild and Untitled 4 , framed with wooden

possibility: “The title The Wild may have been inspired by Newman’s 1949 visit to Native American earthworks in Ohio. After seeing the Serpent Mound, Newman wrote to , ‘Talk about art for the wild and in the wild—It is overwhelming.’ But it took several years for Newman to choose a name for this painting.” See Ann Temkin, Suzanne Penn, and Melissa Ho, “Catalogue,” Barnett Newman (2002), p. 88. Barbara Kulicke’s suggestion is significant because of her contemporaneous relationship with the painting, Robert Kulicke, and Newman. However, it must be noted that when Heidi Colsman- Freyberger spoke to Robert Kulicke about The Wild , he did not mention that the painting had been named after him. Yet a further possibility for the title’s origin is as a reference to Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking,” which he had considered entitling “The Wild.” Thoreau employs fifty-three variants of “wild” and touches on subjects that are illuminating in terms of Newman’s artwork and writing. 29 . Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, “The Paintings of Barnett Newman ‘Involved Intuition on the Highest Level,’” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , p. 141, n. 136. 30 . Allan Stone, Newman/De Kooning , unpaginated. 31 . Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, e-mail message to the author, February 2, 2012. 32 . Barbara Kulicke, interview with the author, December 17, 2008.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 80 OCTOBER

strips fixed around the outer edges (page 97). Three of the frames were apparently made by . 33 These paintings are shorter and broader than The Wild , providing them with interiors that could be conventionally surrounded with frames. Because such lathe frames are both inexpensive and straightforward to make, the lack of a frame on The Wild for its first twelve years was likely due to aesthetic rather than economic reasons. Apart from the significance of the painted sides, a lathe frame immediately border - ing the edges of this extremely narrow painting would have confused the visuals of the 4.1 centime - ters –wide frontal plane. But by the early 1960s, Newman had decided that the paint - ing could be framed with the innovative model that Kulicke Frames had devel - oped. Because the painted sides of The Wild had been presented to view when exhibited earlier (being therefore integral parts of the painting), and given its extraordinary dimensions, this would not be an ordi - nary framing job in which the insignificant sides of a canvas would be covered over in order to accentuate the front surface. The fram - ing would instead be a new compositional decision resulting in a further pro - duction of the work beyond its initial creation. This painting-frame The six “small” paintings of 1950 by transaction between New - Barnett Newman. From left to right, man and one of the most Untitled 2 , Untitled 4 , Untitled 5 , innovative frame designers The Wild , Untitled 3 , Untitled 1 . Photograph by Eric Pollitzer.

33 . Mancusi-Ungaro, “The Paintings of Barnett Newman ‘Involved Intuition on the Highest Level,’” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , p. 122.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 81

of the day no doubt involved a challenge of some sort because of the painting’s almost unframable nature. The difficulty in framing The Wild arises from how little of an interior there is to this painting. The work even resembles a single length of frame in its dimensions. (Some early Kulicke frame designs presented a dark wooden band on the sides with a single gilded strip on the front edge.) Newman and Kulicke maintained their friendship for several years afterwards. That would have been unlikely had Kulicke damaged the integrity of the painting by altering or framing it in such a way that ran counter to Newman’s wishes. In later inter - views of the 1960s, Newman speaks favorably of The Wild and never disparages its framing. Floating frames use minimal means to create striking effects. Beyond the dark space separating the painting’s sides from the frame, the aluminum frame itself would have been less than 1 centimeter wide, with a glossy front edge and satin finish on the sides. It is L-shaped, meaning that it is backed by an extension that reaches behind the painting support to which it is attached by screws. A con - ventional white-walled display would allow the aluminum frame to blend with the surround while being also somewhat visually resistant and distinctive owing to its reflective metallic qualities. At the same time, the painting’s dark-gray ground would be enhanced by the gray tonal qualities of the aluminum, and the red stripe would gain additional resonance by contrasting with the lighter gray metal. The dark space between the painting and frame lent clarity to the painting’s front surface by creating an illusion of separateness. Newman’s decision to suppress two thirds of The Wild ’s painted surface (from the sides) now directed the viewer’s attention to the immediate frontal view, denying access to its prior aestheticized, three-dimensional character. It is clear that a radical reconceptualization of the painting had taken place. Carol Mancusi-Ungaro writes that Newman used L-shaped wooden traveling frames to temporarily protect his paintings when shipped. Some museums dis - played the paintings with these frames, but Newman objected, saying that “they bring, unfortunately, additional elements into the painting and therefore reduce or distort my meaning.” Newman disapproved of a black frame on (1949) because he felt “it brings a third black element into the painting, which I do not intend.” Annalee Newman reportedly said that he preferred his paintings to have tape covering their sides rather than frames. Depending on the colors present in the paintings, the tape should be of either black cloth or white archival material. 34 This information would complicate the more recent decision by MoMA to exhibit The Wild without its aluminum frame (and with its painted sides exposed), given the distant possibility that the sides may have been initially taped when first exhib - ited. Because of the aesthetic expectations that are linked to materials, dark tape serving as a skin-like frame on the sides would prompt a quite different response than would a fully integrated and continuously painted ground. However, I have

34 . Mancusi-Ungaro, “The Paintings of Barnett Newman ‘Involved Intuition on the Highest Level,’” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , pp. 134 –5.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 82 OCTOBER

come across no photographic or written evidence indicating that The Wild was ever taped on its already dark sides until it was framed by Robert Kulicke in the early 1960s, when it then required the application of black tape. Despite Annalee Newman’s statement regarding taping, exhibition-installation photographs from the 1950s clearly show bare tacking edges (with lines of tacks visible and no tape present) on the sides of many Newman paintings. Furthermore, Namuth’s black- and-white installation photographs of The Wild from the Betty Parsons Gallery exhibition of 1951, when taken at an angle, do not in my view provide sufficient visual detail of the painting’s sides to allow one to discern the presence of any dark tape laid over the work’s already dark paint. I therefore hold that the paint - ing’s sides were not initially taped over, and that Newman’s continuous painting of the front and sides was deliberately exposed to view in its first decade so as to pro - duce the work’s innovative spatial effects. When the Kulickes donated the framed painting to MoMA in 1969, the interior surface of the frame was painted black, and masking tape covered the painting’s edges. 35 Mancusi-Ungaro notes that this tape was replaced with black tape by conservators at MoMA at the time of acquisition. 36 I assume that the replaced tape was also black because of the way floating frames function opti - cally. According to Michael Kulicke (son of Robert and Barbara and also a frame-maker), floating frames require both the inside of the frame and the outer edge of the painting to be painted the same matte black, umber, or gray in order to produce a floating illusion. The paint could have been egg tempera, casein, or latex, each of which is vulnerable to fungal growth and damage, 37 which occurred once with The Wild .38 The current norm for this purpose is acrylic or enamel paint. Tape on the side of the canvas was used when artists did not want the painting’s sides to be painted the necessary matching color. The framers would then either apply a dark tinted tape or paint over the tape. Michael Kulicke (who recalls exchanges of visits with the Newmans) writes: “This could have been the case with Newman if he originally painted the sides and later decided to frame the piece and cover the sides with dark paint.” 39 Applying the tape would allow for a later reversal of the framing so that the painting could be presented with its painted sides exposed, should there be a wish to once again change its manner of presentation. There is an installation photograph showing The Wild in its frame, taken dur -

35 . Ann Temkin, e-mail message to the author, October 24, 2008. 36 . Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, e-mail message to the author, February 16, 2009. 37 . Michael Kulicke, e-mail message to the author, November 11, 2008. 38 . The Wild had fungus damage acquired on the return to New York by boat from the São Paulo Bienal of September 4 to November 28, 1965. It was treated by conservators at the Guggenheim Museum. The fungus grew around the canvas in the gap between painting and frame, hosted by a black layer of paint that may have been egg tempera on the inside of the frame. Barbara Kulicke, e- mail message to the author, November 8, 2008. 39 . Michael Kulicke, e-mail message to the author, November 11, 2008.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 83

ing the Barnett Newman Memorial Exhibition at MoMA in 1970. 40 The Here II is directly opposite, and the painting Abraham hangs to the left. When framed, the sides of The Wild are largely covered over and so lose their potential to shape the viewer’s understanding of the painting. Despite the floating illusion, The Wild seems more compressed in appearance than when unframed. The frame sig - nals to viewers that the sides are not to be attended to in a concentrated manner. Frames separate the internal area of paintings from the walls around them (includ - ing what is understood to be extraneous visual information), and so one pretends not to see (or is under the illusion of not noticing) what is outside the frame, as that space fades into the background of attention. The separation promotes a more intensive examination of the frontal surface that lies within the frame. Perhaps a sense of discomfort with the manner in which The Wild performed during encounters with it led to Newman’s decision to have the painting framed by Robert Kulicke so as to separate it off from its surroundings and provide it with a degree of autonomy that it otherwise avoids. The framing took place during a period in which an object-based, formalist interpretation of art was influential, not long after began lending his critical support to Newman by writing an essay for his Bennington College exhibition of 1958 and organizing his exhibition at French and Company in 1959, which led to a resurgence of Newman’s career. The framing of The Wild alters its relation to the space around it by essentially reining in the painting. If Newman had intuited that The Wild visu - ally incorporated and activated its surroundings, he may have felt that framing the painting would minimize its external activation of space and allow it to hover as a relatively autonomous two-dimensional plane within a more restricted area. In its original, unframed state, The Wild does not reveal itself with the immediacy often associated with Newman’s paintings, because one cannot see all three painted sides simultaneously. The near deletion of dark bluish-gray fields to the left and right of the complex red vertical line results in a painting so nar - row and elongated that it becomes visually inseparable from its spatial context. Consequently, with The Wild one cannot maintain the common illusion of paint - ing’s fullness or self-sufficiency, because it cannot be attended to alone. One’s attention necessarily dwells on the space around the work because of the diffi - culty of separating the long vertical object from the broader field of vision. The wall and surrounding architectural elements become part of Newman’s “declara - tion of space,” the space that he elsewhere declares with additional broad coherent fields of color that are integrated into the material of the rectangular canvases, although these paintings too are situated. Because Newman’s work, and the interpretation associated with it, has been so strictly tied to a “late-modernist” framework, many commentators (perhaps overly

40. Thomas Hess was guest director for the exhibition, and sculptor Tony Smith assisted with the thoughtful hanging of the installation.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 84 OCTOBER

identifying particular interpretive theories with individual artists and artworks) find it difficult to conceive of The Wild as being anything other than an autonomous art object disconnected from its surroundings, even when the experience of looking demonstrates otherwise. Considering some works that broach related perceptual problems 41 —by Robert Barry, Richard Long, and Daniel Buren—may assist in adding to the range of interpretive possibilities. 42 Robert Barry’s Four Squares of 1967 incorporates the room’s architecture in its functioning and in its significance. Made seventeen years after Newman’s The Wild , Barry’s four-painting ensemble likewise activates the surrounding space, which becomes a compositional element of the work even though the surroundings may differ with each exhibition installation. One simply can - not attend exclusively to the four painted squares and not be equally conscious of the architectural space in which they are located. John Paoletti writes about this artwork: “The Four Squares de-centers pictorial space and radically reconfigures the viewer’s spatial rela - tionship to the work of art that had been so carefully and elaborately structured through the perspective systems of Western art.” 43 Because Newman’s The Wild is a single object with a much greater degree of internal com - plexity, it operates in a somewhat different manner from Barry’s work. But like Four Squares , The Wild , when unframed, simultane - Robert Barry. Four Squares. 1967. ously attracts attention to itself and deflects attention around itself in all directions by activating the aestheticized awareness of the viewer, who is unable to concentrate solely on the painted object.

41. I should note that I am not claiming that Newman was a Minimalist, or a Conceptual artist, or an Earth artist. But when one is considering these works, there are some parallel interpretative problems and solutions that can assist in better understanding the object characteristics of The Wild , as well as the manner in which one engages with it as a phenomenal object and spatial intervention. 42. In addition to the three artists that I discuss, Jeffrey Weiss has written about the work of Dan Flavin in the context of The Wild . See Jeffrey Weiss, “Blunt in Bright Repose,” Dan Flavin: New Light , ed. Jeffrey Weiss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 67 –9. Weiss also provides a fine formal reading of Newman’s painting: “ The Wild is no wider than it needs to be, allowing enough margin to give the taped reserve its place in pictorial space, while its height is the mean eight-foot extension of a typical Newman canvas. It thereby remains painting even as it represents a compression, not just of ‘act and form symbol,’ but of gesture, medium, device, and scale. The Wild does not just satisfy the minimum means required to achieve a viable work; it is, in its way, the fullest expression of the viability of the oeuvre.” Despite the useful connection he makes to Flavin, whose own presentation of phenomena extends well beyond the material light fixture, Weiss suggests that The Wild still functions as a discrete object. However, I think a fundamen - tal consequence of the painting’s drastic compression is that The Wild necessarily enters into an active dia - logue with the space around it. 43 . John T. Paoletti, “Spaces Liberated for Thought,” Robert Barry: Some Places to Which We Can Come, 1963 to 1975 (Bielefeld: Kerber Verlag; Nürnberg: Kunsthalle Nürnberg, 2003), p. 25.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 85

Richard Long’s Walking a Line in Peru of 1972 involved him walking and drag - ging his boots across a flat dusty plain in a straight line until a clear but temporary mark was made in the landscape. The line dramatically interrupts the surround - ings, making the visible landscape and sky necessary phenomenal components of the work. Like Newman’s paintings, Long’s landscape interventions are resonant markers of place and declarations of space. 44 As with The Wild , Long’s interven - tion cannot be properly understood by attending only to the line while pretending to exclude the landscape that is marked and activated by the line. It would be impossible to insist upon the autonomous nature of Long’s created line because, like The Wild , it cannot be viewed or experi - enced in isolation from its surroundings. This charac - teristic of Long’s work flows from its “site-specific” classi - fication, as well as from the relation between the inter - vention’s dimensions and the viewer’s field of vision. The Wild ’s potential to direct attention away from itself while also attracting attention to itself calls to mind the early work of Daniel Buren. 45 Newman Richard Long. Walking a Line in Peru . 1972. contrasted the red stripe and dark-gray ground of The Wild , but Buren was careful to always alternate only one set of single-colored stripes with white stripes so as to avoid creating optically fascinating effects. His early interventions (in the form of posters, banners, maga - zine projects, and so on) were not pictorial objects to be attended to in and of themselves, although their being in the field of vision makes it inevitable that they be seen and engaged with as curious manifestations, as with his Affichages sauvages

44 . Jeff Wall makes a similar point when he writes about Long’s walked landscape lines: “It is a gesture akin to Barnett Newman’s notion of the establishment of a ‘Here’ in the void of a primeval ter - rain.” Jeff Wall, “‘Marks of Indifference’: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art,” Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews (New York: , 2007), p. 151. 45 . Benjamin Buchloh discusses some parallels between Buren’s and Newman’s work in relation to an instance in which a component of a Buren project at the Stedelijk Museum was placed under Newman’s painting The Gate : “As it happened, the very strategy of Buren, to conceal the visual appear - ance of the work itself, pointed to one of Newman’s essential pictorial and plastic procedures: the principle to establish compositional order by means of hidden symmetry and the actual concealment of negative space.” Buchloh subsequently discusses the figure/ground reversal of work and place. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “The Museum and the Monument,” Daniel Buren: Les Couleurs: Sculptures; Les Formes: Peintures (Halifax: the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1981), pp. 18 –20.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 86 OCTOBER

of 1968. Typically placed in parts of town frequented by members of the art commu - nity, Buren’s stripes indi - cated “con tem p orary art” to suitably attuned viewers who had been alerted to his pro - ject, thereby setting off a near-Pavlovian aesthetic response. As with Pavlov’s conditioned respondents, Buren’s contemporary-art viewers would ready them - selves with heightened Daniel Buren. Photos-souvenirs: Affichage sauvage attention for an aestheticized (detail). April 1968, Paris. © D.B. –ADAGP Paris. experience upon encounter - ing the stripes. The deliberate lack of optical vibrancy among the stripes caused a failure to produce sufficient fascination with the object itself, however, which in turn resulted in a calculated deflection of the viewer’s attention outwards to sur - rounding circumstances: to streets, publications, cultural settings, etc. Buren wrote in 1969 that “one of the characteristics of the proposition is to reveal the ‘container’ in which it is sheltered” and that it involves a “revelation of the loca - tion itself as a new space to be deciphered.” 46 Buren reversed the figure-ground relationship of art object and environment. His works activated individuals’ aware - ness of their own situations and therefore promoted a sense of criticality and responsibility through encounters with the negative presentations of abstraction. The Wild had earlier demonstrated the potential for abstract paintings to direct viewers’ attention to their surroundings, although there is understood to be less of a social factor in Newman’s work. But consider Newman’s otherwise preposter - ous statement (one that he repeated on at least three occasions) that “if my work were properly understood, it would be the end of state capitalism and totalitarian - ism.” 47 This statement of Newman’s is generally taken as being a delightful manifestation of his personal eccentricity but otherwise completely irrelevant to a consideration of his artwork. If one insists upon a frame of reference for Newman that is exclusively formalist and object-based, then indeed the state - ment makes little sense. However, it becomes a fascinating insight of Newman’s if one understands the claim in light of Buren’s later architectural and social defamiliarization involving the signs of abstraction. Newman, with his “declara -

46 . Daniel Buren, “Beware,” Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology , trans. Charles Harrison and Peter Townsend, ed. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), p. 154. 47 . Barnett Newman, “Interview with Emile de Antonio,” Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews , ed. John P. O’Neill (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 308.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 87

tions of space,” may have intuited the potential effects of an on individuals’ relationships to their surroundings and social situations by means of a spatial revelation. The Wild ’s tall and narrow dimensions do not allow for an impression of autonomy and self-sufficiency to emerge. As with Buren’s work (although for dif - ferent perceptual reasons), we are prompted by the appearance of a seemingly “modernist” object to direct our attention, in an aestheticizing and critical man - ner, toward the context of the situated painting. Like the line walked into the landscape by Richard Long or the Four Squares by Robert Barry, The Wild func - tions as an intervention in a larger area, with the surrounding phenomena linked to the painting’s presentation and the viewer’s conscious experience of the work as a declaration of space. Because the surroundings cannot be entirely controlled by the artist, they become open-ended components of the work. The space immediately around The Wild is not the painting’s new ground: that space has been activated through the object’s intervention. Newman’s own acknowledgement of the role of settings in allowing his work to perform is demonstrated by his attempted withdrawal from circulation and public viewing in 1953 of one of his tall and narrow paintings (which he referred to as his “small” paintings). Newman wrote a letter to artist and collector Alfonso Ossorio requesting that Ossorio sell back to Newman one of these works, his Untitled 1 of 1950 (with dimensions of 91.5 x 15.2 cm). Newman writes: The conditions do not yet exist for me, either physically or in the realm of ideas, that can make possible a direct, innocent attitude toward an isolated piece of my work, particularly one of my “small” ones. Without the proper context, the larger issues in my work are lost or, what is worse, become distorted to be just tours de force —from the tiny to the immense. 48 The problem was not the painting’s inadequacy but rather the architectural con - text in which the work was being displayed. In order for his paintings to “declare space,” an enactment of creation that Newman proclaimed as their function, they required an appropriate spatial setting. If these paintings were truly self- sufficient, such architectural considerations would not be as critical to their success as Newman indicates is the case by his request. This stress on context seems to contradict his own later statements emphasizing his lack of interest in environments and his characterization of his paintings as being “hostile to the environment.” 49 However, much depends on what Newman meant by the phrase

48 . Barnett Newman, “Letter to Alfonso Ossorio,” Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews , p. 198. 49 . Barnett Newman, “‘Frontiers of Space’ Interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler,” Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews , p. 250.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 88 OCTOBER

“hostile to the environment.” 50 The Wild does, in practice, activate the space beyond the painting’s edge. Could Newman’s largely undefined hostility toward the environment be another way of describing the activation of space beyond the object, with the event of the painting imposing itself on the space-chaos of the environment and declaring order? Newman begins the first part of his essay “The Plasmic Image” by writing: “The subject matter of creation is chaos.” 51 In Newman’s declaration of space with his painting, he furthers an ordering of chaos. As a spatial intervention, The Wild organizes the site and surroundings where it is placed, functioning as an immediate structuring device. During an interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler in 1962, Newman proposes that a “space-dome” encompasses the viewers of his paintings. This curious architectural formulation, with its cosmic associations, suggests an experience of spatial and exis - tential revelation that ideally results from a perceptual engagement with his paintings. The “space-dome” is not a constituent element of the works but rather the sense of what exists spatially in extension from and around them and their viewers. It is noteworthy, however, that Newman proposed the “space-dome” formulation in the same year that (in a retreat of sorts) he restricted The Wild ’s activation of its sur - roundings by encircling it with a frame. In a related statement that is illuminating if applied to The Wild , Newman says, “Drawing is central to my whole concept . . . . Instead of using outlines, instead of making shapes or setting off spaces, my drawing declares the space. Instead of working with the remnants of space, I work with the whole space.” 52 The Wild activates its context like a drawing declaration within the room while also calling attention to its own internal complexities. In 1951, Thomas Hess described The Wild as being “a red line surrounded by nothing at all.” 53 The Wild as a red line surrounded by nothing, seemingly independent of space, differs greatly from my understanding of its functioning partly as an architectural intervention. In terms of visual perception, it does not seem possible to concentrate only on an extremely long, thin vertical line without being overly conscious of what is around it—the “nothing at all.” The Wild is a painting in which the operative elements of the artwork are not entirely equivalent to the material art object. Given the three-dimensional aspect of The Wild when unframed, some might be tempted to consider it in terms of sculpture, but that would be problematic. Newman’s sculpture Here I of 1950 is a likely candidate for comparison. The original

50. Newman stated in an interview: “A painter friend, [Gerome] Kamrowski, said it well: he said my paintings are hostile to the environment.” See Barnett Newman, “‘Frontiers of Space’ Interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler,” Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews , p. 250. Kamrowski may have adapted this notion from another source. Writing on a different topic, Beatriz Colomina mentions a passage in Robert Musil’s novel The Man Without Qualities , first available in English translation in 1953. She writes: “‘After all,’ says Musil’s character, ‘each thing exists only by virtue of its limits, in other words, by virtue of a more or less hostile act against its environment.’ City life is a battle for limits rather than a life within limits.” See Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p. 21. 51 . Barnett Newman, “The Plasmic Image,” Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews , p. 139. 52 . Newman, “‘Frontiers of Space’ Interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler,” Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews , p. 251. 53 . Thomas Hess, “Newman,” Artnews 50, no. 4 (Summer 1951), p. 47.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 89

Newman. Here I , 1950, and The Wild . Installation view at Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1951. Photograph by Hans Namuth. Courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate.

(later cast in bronze) was a wood-and-plaster freestanding sculpture in which the main point of focus are two zips emerging out of a molten plaster base that rests on top of an overturned wooden milk crate. Gabriele Schor considers the possibility that The Wild led to the sculpture Here I but ultimately rejects the notion: For Newman, a zip was not a rigid line, a concept he explained thusly: “A straight line is an organic thing that can contain feeling.” A zip, then, is an expression of direct liveliness; it possesses the power to exist

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 90 OCTOBER

as an autonomous element. This is the proper message of The Wild ; it was meant to show only that the zip itself has substance as surface and color. Therefore, The Wild was not a prelude to something new but rather a consequence, a conclusion . By no means does it refer beyond the painterly discourse. The Wild has an essential moment of self-reference, and it manifests painterly autonomy. 54 But (given Newman’s biomorphic reference) one must consider how the painting behaves in a perceptual encounter, which is precisely not as an autonomous object. It is true that The Wild deals with space and spatial expectations quite differently than a conventional sculpture, despite its being perceived as a three-dimensional object when unframed. Yet it also does not function like a conventional painting. The com - plications partly result from viewers’ expectations of the respective mediums. One is told that The Wild is a painting, and therefore it is expected to behave like a painting. But The Wild confounds the conventions of painterly autonomy by functioning instead as a spatial intervention. A choice emerges between grappling with the observable perceptual consequences of The Wild and insisting upon retaining an interpretive framework that fails to account for the perceptual experience. The sur - roundings of sculptures are active in creating the space within which sculptures perform. With most paintings, that relation is missing because their frames or edges separate their frontal surface planes from the places they inhabit, both intellectually and perceptually. There is an understood need to create a space for illusions. These are both the perceptual illusions produced within the bounds of the paintings and the conceptual illusions held by viewers about paintings and their relations to space. The Wild undermines each of these illusions. In his essay “Perceiving Newman,” Yve-Alain Bois makes a useful distinction between the pictorial and visual (or perceptual) field. He writes that Newman in his work paradoxically laid bare one of the most traditional conventions of painting, a convention that lies at the base of the narrative tradition of this art, namely, the dissociation of the perceptual field (which is radi - cally transformed when we pay attention to and try to fix one of its ele - ments) and the pictorial field (whose elements solicit our attention). 55 Later, Bois considers the six narrow paintings of 1950, concentrating on Untitled 4 (with dimensions of 188 x 15.2 cm), a painting both substantially shorter and wider than The Wild . It was framed in 1951 for the Betty Parsons Gallery exhibi - tion, where it hung in the receptionist’s area. Bois writes that “the visual field far exceeds the pictorial field, but as there is virtually no ground against which any zip

54 . Gabriele Schor, “Barnett Newman’s ‘Here’ Series: A Meditation on Sense of Place, or How Can a Sculpture Say ‘I’?,” Reconsidering Barnett Newman , pp. 150 –52. 55 . Yve-Alain Bois, “Perceiving Newman,” Painting as Model (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), p. 203.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 91

might be claimed as a figure, we return to the type of wholeness invented in Onement 1 (albeit differently), that of the pure adequation of the image to the field.” 56 This would be the pictorial field that is referred to. Bois’ interpretation seems to resist the consequences of the paintings’ unique dimensions and their relations to the outside, which are already suggested in his noting of the gap between the visual and pictorial fields as well as the figure-ground problems that arise in some of these works. Because Untitled 4 (like some of the other narrow paintings) possesses a viable interior and was initially framed, a contained reading is perhaps workable for it. But for the more extreme of these paintings, like The Wild , we might conclude not that there is a return to wholeness, but that the paint - ings may order and structure their immediate contexts as spatial interventions by means of their “hostility to the environment.” Though one can suggest a reflective identification between The Wild ’s image and its pictorial field, a further conse - quence of its unusual dimensions is that the visual field is transformed into a species of freely activated pictorial field because (through its functioning as an architectural intervention) The Wild interrupts, declares, and therefore organizes its surroundings. The perceptual effect of the work is that it partly exceeds its material bounds, a claim that Newman himself makes about his paintings (regard - ing the “space-dome” sensation) in his interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler. Following its framing in 1962, The Wild was once again exhibited unframed at the request of curator Ann Temkin for Newman’s 2002 retrospective in Philadelphia. She writes: I was aware of Newman’s relationship with Kulicke and his approval of that frame when I decided to unframe it for presentation. I do not believe, in general, that we need to abide strictly with the historical framing of works of art—frame choices have so much to do with the thinking and environment particular to a given moment. 57 Temkin’s statement suggests an interest in a historical recovery of sorts: the unframed painting would be displayed in something like its original manner. But it would be a recovery that involved a fairly drastic revision of the artist’s embodied intention as it evolved over the years. Prior to the retrospective, Jean Volkmer, the head of the conservation department at MoMA at the time of acquisition, was con - sulted regarding the nature of the framing. 58 Robert Kulicke does not appear to have been consulted, despite the considerable alteration to the artwork that results from removing the frame in this instance, in that two thirds of the painting reemerges into view. Barbara Kulicke is critical of the frame’s removal, feeling that it does not prop - erly acknowledge Newman’s earlier framing decision. 59 The appearance of the sides of The Wild requires some discussion, as they

56 . Bois, “Perceiving Newman,” Painting as Model , p. 206. 57 . Ann Temkin, e-mail message to the author, December 8, 2008. 58 . Ann Temkin, e-mail message to the author, October 24, 2008. 59 . Barbara Kulicke, e-mail message to the author, January 2, 2009.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 92 OCTOBER

are integral to the paint - ing’s composition when the work is unframed. The canvas is attached on the sides to the wooden support by staples approxi - mately 4 centimeters apart and 1 centimeter from the back edge. The staples have no trace of gray paint on them because the painting was remounted during its restoration fol - lowing damage suffered when shipped back from the São Paulo Bienal in 1965. Carol Mancusi- Ungaro notes that it was Orrin Riley who worked on the painting and who constructed a new support made out of a solid piece of wood with circu lar cutouts removed from the reverse side to pre - vent warping. 60 When examining the sides of Newman. The Wild (detail). 1950. The Wild in its current state, one notices that the upper and lower extremities give the appearance of cursory paint application. The cream-colored canvas and its weave show through in places, dramatically so toward the bottom, where the paint has an almost scraped-down appearance. There is about half a centimeter or less of continuous frayed canvas along the back edge. It is not a clean edge at the back, and the can - vas does not wrap around the back side of the support, as I would have expected if it were to be shown with the sides exposed. The canvas may have been cut to line up with the back edge so that The Wild would hang flush to the wall, without the small gap between back edge and wall that would normally have been produced by the canvas folds stapled at the top and bottom of the back of the stretcher. For approximately 40 centimeters on the lower left side of The Wild , the canvas does not stretch to the back edge of the support. Instead the wood is visible, with a depth of just less than a centimeter along that back edge.

60 . Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, e-mail message to the author, February 16, 2009.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 Painting as Spatial Intervention 93

Because of Newman’s known attention to detail, the condition of the sides is initially troubling because one would expect better craftsmanship. However, as mentioned earlier, in the Betty Parsons Gallery exhi - bition, The Wild was placed next to the original plaster version of Here I . The base of this sculpture partly con - sisted of an overturned wooden milk crate. The plain wood was exposed, with plaster dripped and smeared on its sides. The base was crudely functional, almost slovenly in appear - ance, a rebuke to an insistence on precious - ness. 61 Here I ’s example and close proximity to The Wild in its original exhibition provides further support to the view that Newman did Newman. The Wild (detail). 1950. not at this stage require the neat and constrained edges that a taping of the sides of The Wild would have provided. Therefore, the current MoMA display approach may indeed restore the original presentation style of the painting, although doing so disregards Newman’s later compositional-framing deci - sion that restricted visual access to the isolated frontal surface plane.

61 . Richard Shiff notes that Tundra , also from 1950, has areas of variable paint coverage, with some spots of canvas exposed that may appear careless but which are actually programmatic in nature. See Shiff, “To Create Oneself,” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , p. 54. On the other hand, Thomas Hess writes about Newman’s close attention to detail: “A further elaboration of compli - cations comes from his passion for nuances and distinctions; it is, in a sense, the key to his art. He is obsessed with precision, in language as well as in painting.” See Thomas B. Hess, Barnett Newman (New York: Walker and Company, 1969), p. 68. In contrast to Hess, who links Newman with precision, Shiff refers to Alexander Lieberman, who often discussed materials and techniques with Newman and who suggested that Newman’s seemingly casual paint handling was the result of his wish to make it appear that there had been no effort involved in the manufacturing of the work, that the paint handling should be “factual.” See Shiff, “To Create Oneself,” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , p. 55. Hence the almost scraped surface quality in some areas on the sides of The Wild may have been part of a rhetoric of straightforwardness.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 94 OCTOBER

With The Wild , one might question whether it is largely the painting’s inter - nal distinctions that constitute Newman’s “declaration of space” or if it is primarily the object’s relation to its surroundings that produces its dominant perceptual effect. Commentaries on the painting inevitably focus on its long and narrow dimensions as being its most notable characteristic, rather than its fascinating internal relationships. Although the painting is frequently men - tioned in writings on Newman, I have come across little in the way of extended close readings of the painting, and have never read an accurate description of the painting’s sides. Therefore, despite many commentators’ suggestions that The Wild is self-sufficient and autonomous in nature, their own emphasis on its remarkable dimensions (and their comparative neglect of its internal complexi - ties) suggests to me that it is the painting’s engagement with (and intervention in) its surroundings that is the more compelling factor in its success. Barnett Newman’s The Wild both attracts attention and sends attention beyond itself. A decade after the creation of this almost unframable painting, Robert Kulicke did frame the vertical edge-like object. 62 Perhaps this eased a sense of discomfort on Newman’s part, stemming from the perceptual consequences of the painting as it had been originally created and exhibited. However, the frame wrapped around The Wild radically reconfigured its aesthetic possibilities. Rather than being a work that is activated partly in the round and that engages with the space around it, the painting suspended in its floating frame became frontal and more sequestered from its sur - roundings. The decision to remove the frame in 2002 can be understood as a further compositional development (though not necessarily a permanent one) because it reversed Newman’s own later decision to remove two thirds of the painted surface from view. There may be some problematic aspects to the frame’s removal. Yet removing the frame also restored The Wild ’s potential to act as a spatial intervention by means of its “hostility to the environment.” In addition to its fascinating internal complexities, this is one of its most significant accomplishments as a painting.

62. The tall narrow paintings Untitled 4 and Untitled 5 of 1950 are both in the collection of the architect I.M. Pei. They were purchased in 1976 and 1975, respectively. See Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, “Catalogue Raisonné,” Barnett Newman: A Catalogue Raisonné , p. 223. Pei would no doubt be interested in the narrow vertical paintings’ relation to place and space architecturally. Both the Kulickes and Peis came to own Newman paintings that were suggestive of their own practice and professional interests.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/OCTO_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021