DOCSLIB.ORG

On Two Paintings by Barnett Newman*

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
On Two Paintings by Barnett Newman* On Two Paintings by Barnett Newman* Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/016228704774115690/1751109/016228704774115690.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 YVE-ALAIN BOIS The two texts that follow are part of a project that some might consider an impossible challenge—that of writing an independent essay, not your usual catalog entry, on every single painting by Barnett Newman. This self-imposed challenge—much more exacting than I expected at first—is not as absurd as it may seem. Newman’s oeuvre may be extraordinarily small by twentieth-century standards—he painted only 120 works on canvas and his overall output, all media included, consists of fewer than 300 works—but this restraint was intentional. This last point was often stressed by his widow, Annalee Newman, during the multiple conversations I had with her throughout the second half of the 1990s. Whenever the issue of the exceptionally poor productivity of Newman would come up—when she was making comparisons between his career and that of his fellow abstract expressionists or when she was protesting, still vehemently so long after the fact, against Clement Greenberg’s pestering request that “Barney” churn out more can- vases—Annalee would always insist that her husband hated redundancy, that he wanted above all to avoid repeating himself and that each painting had to be for him like a person, a unicum. My long familiarity with the art of Piet Mondrian, on which I spent a considerable amount of time and energy, taught me that nothing better enhances the perception of differences than having to deal with a deliberately reduced pictorial vocabulary. But Mondrian’s program was teleological (each of his canvases was conceived as a sublation of the preceding one), and within this evolutionary framework his serial practice, though less pervasive or consistent than one tends to think, had almost a pedagogical, demonstrative function. Newman was fundamen- tally opposed to all forms of teleological thinking. (Darwin, Hegel, and Marx were anathema to him.) In fact, his intuitive distrust of any kind of utopia helped him keep Mondrian safely at bay * The essays on Abraham and Galaxy are copyrighted by The Barnett Newman Foundation, 2004, and are printed here by permission of The Barnett Newman Foundation. Every quotation that is not referenced is from a document kept in the archives of The Barnett Newman Foundation. My work was made possible by the Foundation. Thanks to its continuing support I was able to explore its vast archives and to see every single painting made by Newman. Within the Foundation two people in particular were essential to my task: Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, researcher at the Foundation, who guided me through the mountain of documents and never failed to answer my innumerable queries; and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, conservator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and director of the Center for Technical Studies of Modern Art at Harvard University. Whenever possible, Carol and I have examined Newman’s canvases together; all discussions of Newman’s processes (far more diverse and significant than one tends to imagine) result from our dialogue. Finally, I greatly benefited from the patient and sharp editorial advice of Harry Cooper and Paul Galvez. OCTOBER 108, Spring 2004, pp. 3–27. © 2004 The Barnett Newman Foundation. 4 OCTOBER from an early age on—even if he realized only late in life that such had been the chief motive of his wariness of the Dutch artist. His attitude with regard to series was more complex. He did toy twice with the serial habits of his contemporaries, once in Stations of the Cross, a group of fourteen works of the same size Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/016228704774115690/1751109/016228704774115690.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 painted over the course of eight years (1958–66), and the second time in direct response to Mondrian, with the four Who Is Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue canvases (1966–70). But he was a phenomenologist, obsessed with the “hic et nunc” and with identity and plenitude, not with variables within a set of structural oppositions. In some sense, one could say that his tenta- tive involvement with seriality was intended as a stealth attack against it. At some point between the furious debate engaged in the press about the Stations at the occasion of their exhibition at the Guggenheim in 1966, and his engagement with the Who Is Afraid paintings, which lasted until his death, Newman jotted down this thought: “Serial painting is a story, a narrative sequence, without a subject and without any events—as much a story as any illustration, but illustrating only itself. A narrative structure that is mute and because it is mute it is an orna- mental art not much different than basket-weaving.” “Each painting to me, [each] new painting, is as if I had never painted before,” Newman declared one day to Emile de Antonio, adding: “It’s of no real interest to me personally to go into the studio, say tomorrow, and knock out another Newman, I might as well make shoes. And in that sense, I’m no better off than any young painter today going into his studio and starting on the blank canvas. I do have the weight of my work on top of me, so I’m in a worse position than a young painter in that I have to some extent to force myself to begin anew.” This very pointedly encapsulates Newman’s dilemma: refusing the serial attitude that he deemed “formalist” (“basket-weaving”), striving to begin each time anew (and many writers, myself included, have stressed the importance of a thematics of origin in his work), he was all the more crushed under the weight of his own work. This may explain why his production was small. The less he painted, the more pregnant was his existing work, and—such is the dialectic of rarefaction—the less he could add to his corpus. Not only did every work count, but each new one was adding to the pres- sure. Newman’s ethical abhorrence of pleonasm had produced this paradox: wanting to think of each of his paintings as singular, he could not but conclude that this singular identity was dif- ferential. A work could only be unique if it were radically different from any other in the corpus. The “wholeness” to which he aspired in his paintings was strictly antithetic to the decomposition into discrete units and the combinatory procedures that constitute the core of structuralist activity, and in many ways his aesthetics could be termed radically anti-structural. Yet he is per- haps the only painter of this century who thought of his pictorial corpus as a structural totality. My contention is that Newman’s pictorial oeuvre should be considered as something like a deck of cards. (I am only speaking here of his post–Onement I production, for the eleven can- vases that precede this inaugural work, a limited corpus in itself, partake of a different conception of art.) In such a deck, each card has a distinct role to play while forming specific links with various other cards—the King of Hearts is directly connected to all the cards of the same color though perhaps more closely to the figures (Jack, Queen), as well as to the three other kings: such is my working model. Newman might not be the only artist for whom such a model proves valid, but, thanks to his limited corpus, he might be the only one for whom it can be tested. I promised to myself—and to Annalee Newman—that I would try doing so. Those two entries—neither the longest nor the shortest—provide an example of the manner in which I attend to this task. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/octo/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/016228704774115690/1751109/016228704774115690.pdf by guest on 02 October 2021 Abraham YVE-ALAIN BOIS Newman considered Abraham one of his most significant works. Included in his first solo show at Betty Parsons in 1950, the painting was absent from his 1958 (Bennington College) and 1959 (French & Co.) exhibitions only because it was then touring Europe for the landmark 1958–59 traveling exhibition, The New American Painting, organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.1 In fact, in the note where Newman jotted down his choice of four works for that exhibition, Abraham fig- ures at the top of the list, followed by Horizon Light, Adam, and Concord, which will all be included. Further proof of the importance of this canvas for the artist is given by his selecting it, together with Onement III and Vir Heroicus Sublimis, for the exhibition American Paintings 1945–1957. Organized by Stanton L. Catlin at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (June 18–September 1, 1957), this show marks both the first serious recognition of Newman’s art by an American museum and the artist’s reentry into the public arena.2 In short, Newman deemed Abraham a chief ambassador of his art. After more than a year of travel when it was exhibited in Basel, Milan, Madrid, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and London (it was used for the invitation in England, to Newman’s delight), the painting landed in New York for the final venue 1. There is no 1950 installation shot showing Abraham, but at Lawrence Alloway’s request while he was writing a long review of Newman’s exhibition at Knoedler in 1969 (published as “Notes on Barnett Newman,” in Art International 13, no.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Barnett Newman's
    Trinity University Digital Commons @ Trinity Art and Art History Faculty Research Art and Art History Department 2013 Barnett ewN man's “Sense of Space”: A Noncontextualist Account of Its Perception and Meaning Michael Schreyach Trinity University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/art_faculty Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Repository Citation Schreyach, M. (2013). Barnett eN wman's “Sense of Space”: A Noncontextualist Account of Its Perception and Meaning. Common Knowledge, 19(2), 351-379. doi:10.1215/0961754X-2073367 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Art and Art History Department at Digital Commons @ Trinity. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art and Art History Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Trinity. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ARTICLES BARNETT NEWMAN’S “SENSE OF SPACE” A Noncontextualist Account of Its Perception and Meaning Michael Schreyach Dorothy Seckler: How would you define your sense of space? Barnett Newman: . Is space where the orifices are in the faces of people talking to each other, or is it not [also] between the glance of their eyes as they respond to each other? Anyone standing in front of my paint- ings must feel the vertical domelike vaults encompass him [in order] to awaken an awareness of his being alive in the sensation of complete space. This is the opposite of creating an environment. This is the only real sensation of space.1 Some of the titles that Barnett Newman gave to his paintings are deceptively sim- ple: Here and Now, Right Here, Not There — Here.
    [Show full text]
  • The Face of NGA to Change with Barnett Newman Sculpture
    MEDIA RELEASE 15 FEBRUARY 2018 THE FACE OF THE NGA TO CHANGE WITH BARNETT NEWMAN SCULPTURE The National Gallery of Australia is celebrating the installation of Barnett Newman’s ground- breaking sculpture, Broken Obelisk, outside the Gallery’s main entrance in Canberra. The display of this well-known, gravity-defying work reflects the dynamic and evolving face of Australia’s iconic national art institution and foreshadows American Masters, the NGA’s upcoming major exhibition of its unrivalled collection of 20th century American masterpieces, opening 24 August. ‘Barnett Newman is one of the most prominent figures in Abstract Expressionism’, said Gerard Vaughan, NGA Director. ‘We are thrilled by the generosity of the Barnett Newman Foundation in lending this extraordinary sculpture to the heart of Canberra. The NGA is world-famous for its collection of 20th century American art, and it is fitting that this iconic sculpture has transformed the entrance to the Gallery as a signpost to the great treasures of the New York school installed inside.’ With the installation of Broken Obelisk, the NGA aligns itself with its international counterparts in displaying one of the most significant works of modern sculpture. Broken Obelisk is one of four versions in existence. The first two sculptures, conceived in 1963 and produced in 1966–67, are on display at the Rothko Chapel, Houston and the University of Washington’s Red Square; the third version, made in 1969, takes pride of place in the open courtyard of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. A monumental sculpture created with rough weathering steel, Broken Obelisk represents the American artist at his best.
    [Show full text]
  • Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-To-Reel Collection Barnett Newman and Thomas Hess in Conversation, 1966
    Guggenheim Museum Archives Reel-to-Reel collection Barnett Newman and Thomas Hess in Conversation, 1966 MALE 1 ...these lectures. Before announcing today’s program, I would like to inform you that two weeks from today, the last program will consist of a lecture delivered by Professor William Rubin on the subject of color in modern American painting. One further announcement: I think many of you came here today fully expecting to find Harold Rosenberg as the other participant with Barnett Newman in the conversation. Unfortunately, Mr. Rosenberg was unable to come; he is teaching in the Midwest and was making a special trip to New York for this program, but at the very last moment something arose which made it impossible for him to be here. And so we were very grateful that Thomas Hess volunteered to take Harold Rosenberg’s place. And so [00:01:00] our subject today has been retitled, “Conversation with Hess and Newman.” Thomas Hess, writer and editor of Art News, is very well known to all of us. He has held this position on that important publication since 1949, having joined the staff of Art News just a few years before. He has always been considered a leading spokesman for and about the movement of new American painting which emerged after the war. He is an author of two very popular, well- known books on American art, one entitled Abstract Painting and the other a monograph on the work of Willem de Kooning. Aside from his editorial work on Art News, he is a frequent contributor to the New York [00:02:00] Times, the Saturday Review, Encounter, and numerous other publications.
    [Show full text]
  • Tony Smith/81 More at the Museum of Modern Art
    ^y? The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019 Tel. 956-6100 Cable: Modernart NO. 139 FOR RELEASE: DECEMBER 1, 1971 TONY SMITH/81 MORE AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 81 More, the first large Indoor environmental piece to be construc­ ted in New York by the distinguished sculptor Tony Smith will be on view at The Museum of Modern Art from November 30 through January 31. 81 More consists of tetrahedral modules of four feet forming a triangle with nine units on a side, or a total of 81 triangles. It is painted a dark red, a symbolic choice, the artist says, based on the color of Orozco's frescoes. In its geometric austerity 81 More seems to allude to the mythic. The director is Kynaston McShine, Asso­ ciate Curator of Painting and Sculpture. Tony Smith was born in 1912 in South Orange, New Jersey, where he lives. As a young man he studied architecture and design as well as painting, for the past 25 years he has taught at various schools and colleges and is now a professor at Hunter College. Although well known to many artists, particularly of the Abstract Expressionist genre, his work was not shown publicly until 1964 when he was 52. His sculpture was (more) 4o|| NO. 139 -2- included in an exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, where his first one-man show was held two years later. That same year, 1966, his work was included in a show called "Primary Structures" I at the Jewish Museum.
    [Show full text]
  • Abstract Expressionism 101
    ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 101 WHAT IS ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM? Abstract Expressionism refers to an American art movement that emerged after World War II during the 1950s. The artists who are generally considered Abstract Expressionists experimented with new approaches to painting in a number of unique ways. They “broke free” from traditional painting methods (like keeping the canvas on an easel, or painting with traditional tools like brushes). Although Abstract Expressionist artists’ paintings look very different, their work tends to share several key characteristics. W H A T M A K E S A P A I NT I N G Abs T R A C T Ex PRE ssio N is T ? IMAGERY Abstract Expressionist artwork does not generally contain realistic looking images of objects or figures. Instead, in Abstract Expressionist artwork, shapes, colors, and lines combine to create the “image.” Many Abstract Expressionists wanted people to be able to react to the artwork without the interference of associations with recognizable imagery. Clyfford Still, PH-1123, 1954. SCALE Many Abstract Expressionist artists wanted to immerse the viewer in a total experience of their art. Making art that was very large in scale helped Abstract Expressionist artists draw the viewer’s focus into the artwork to achieve this goal. Creating art that could be experienced, not just seen, was important. Barnett Newman, Cathedra, 1958. A L L - O V E R Co MP osi T io N Abstract Expressionist artists commonly covered the entire surface of their paintings. They “broke the boundaries” of the canvas by stretching the paint all the way to, and sometimes over, the edge of the canvas.
    [Show full text]
  • Color Field Painting Is a Tendency Within Abstract Expressionism, Distinct from Gestural Abstraction, Or Action Painting
    QUICK VIEW: Synopsis Color field painting is a tendency within Abstract Expressionism, distinct from gestural abstraction, or action painting. It was pioneered in the late 1940s by Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still, who were all independently searching for a style of abstraction which might provide a modern, mythic art, and express a yearning for transcendence and the infinite. To achieve this they abandoned all suggestions of figuration and instead exploited the expressive power of color by deploying it in large fields which might envelope the viewer when seen at close quarters. Their work inspired much Post-painterly abstraction, particularly that of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski, though for later color field painters, matters of form tended to be more important that mythic content. Key Ideas / Information • Color field painting emerged out of the attempts of several artists in the late 1940s to devise a modern, mythic art. Seeking to connect with the primordial emotions locked in ancient myths, rather than the symbols themselves, they sought a new style which would do away with any suggestion of illustration. • The style was championed most enthusiastically by critic Clement Greenberg, who acclaimed the advances it achieved in the realm of form and composition. Bemoaning what he saw as the increasingly imitative, academic qualities of some action painters, he argued that color field painting represented the way forward. His advocacy of the style proved highly influential. • Color field painting marks a major development in abstract painting, since it was the first style to resolutely avoid the suggestion of a form or mass standing out against a background.
    [Show full text]
  • Moma Judd PREVIEW.Pdf
    JUDD EDITED BY ANN TEMKIN With contributions by Erica Cooke, Tamar Margalit, Christine Mehring, James Meyer, Annie Ochmanek, Yasmil Raymond, Ann Temkin, and Jeffrey Weiss THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK CONTENTS 8 FOREWORD Glenn D. Lowry 10 INTRODUCTION: THE ORIGINALITY OF DONALD JUDD Ann Temkin 16–57 PLATES 58 “THE STUDENT OF PAINTING” Erica Cooke 78 HOW JUDD BECAME JUDD James Meyer 92–149 PLATES 150 BERNSTEIN BROTHERS SHEET METAL SPECIALTIES, INC. Annie Ochmanek 170 JUDD AND THE MUSEUM Ann Temkin 188 SENSE OF SITE Jeffrey Weiss 206–51 PLATES 252 ON THE JUDD SCALE: . FURNITURE, ARCHITECTURE . Christine Mehring 272 SWISS MADE: JUDD’S LATE WORK Yasmil Raymond 286 AROUND THE STUDIO: IN CONVERSATION WITH DUDLEY DEL BALSO, JAMIE DEARING, AND ELLIE MEYER Tamar Margalit 295 Exhibition Checklist 298 Acknowledgments 304 Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art Hyundai Card is proud to support this long-awaited retro- spective of the work of Donald Judd, whose revolutionary ideas transformed the language of modern art. Judd’s radical approach to form, materials, working methods, and display established him as one of the pivotal figures of the twentieth century. Bringing together a selection of Judd’s objects, paint- ings, prints, and drawings, the exhibition explores the artist’s provocative use of industrial materials and his bold investigation of form and space. Judd broke open the boundaries of tradi- tional approaches to painting and sculpture through a remark- able spirit of creativity and innovation—values that Hyundai The Henry Luce Foundation seeks to enrich public discourse Card always seeks to pursue.
    [Show full text]
  • Comparing and Contrasting Expressionism, Abstract, and Pop Art William Johnson
    University of South Florida Scholar Commons Outstanding Honors Theses Honors College 5-2-2011 Comparing and Contrasting Expressionism, Abstract, and Pop Art William Johnson Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/honors_et Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Johnson, William, "Comparing and Contrasting Expressionism, Abstract, and Pop Art" (2011). Outstanding Honors Theses. Paper 86. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/honors_et/86 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Outstanding Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Johnson & Mostajabian 1 William Johnson and Kiana Mostajabian IDH 5975 Wallace Wilson March 29, 2011 From Mondrian to Warhol: Creating Abstract, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art Introduction: This is not your typical art history thesis. We have written this thesis to educate not only ourselves, but to give other non art and art history majors, an idea of where to start if you were thinking about exploring the subject. With little background in art and art history, we didn’t know where to start looking, but quickly found three art movements that interested us the most: Abstract, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. With our topics in mind we decided to paint six paintings, two in each movement, and yet it seemed that the six paintings by themselves were not enough. We wanted to learn more. To supplement those six paintings we wrote this paper to give some background information on each movement and how we incorporated the styles of each movement into our paintings.
    [Show full text]
  • Frank Stella: Experiment and Change
    Stella 6 x 9 ALTERNATE:Layout 1 11/3/17 9:03 AM Page 1 Frank Stella: Experiment and Change NSU ART MUSEUM FORT LAUDERDALE November 12, 2017 to July 8, 2018 Gallery Guide Stella 6 x 9 ALTERNATE:Layout 1 11/3/17 9:03 AM Page 2 Exhibition N Floor Plans 2 3 W E 1 4 6 5 S Ground Level 14 12 13 11 15 10 7 9 C 8 U R V E Second Level Stella 6 x 9 ALTERNATE:Layout 1 11/3/17 9:03 AM Page 3 Frank Stella: Experiment and Change text by Bonnie Clearwater Frank Stella: Experiment and Change spans Frank Stella's sixty-year career from the late 1950s to the present. Com- prising approximately three hundred works, including paint- ings, relief sculptures, and drawings, the exhibition offers new insight into the trajectory of his work from the early minimalist geometric paintings to increasingly complex con- structions and large sculptures. The exhibition juxtaposes works from various periods of Stella's career illuminating his recurring aesthetic interests over time. It includes items from his “working archive" that have never been exhibited, such as notes, sketches, and mod- els, offering new perspectives to his work and his path as an artist. Stella's diverse interests include art history, philosophy, literature, music, architecture, new materials (fluorescent pig- ment, carbon fiber, titanium, et al.), and computer-aided modeling for rapid prototyping, all represented in this exhi- bition. Born in 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, to a physician father and artistic mother, Stella belongs to a generation of artists excited, driven, and challenged by the art of the abstract ex- pressionists, especially Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Barnett Newman (1905-1970), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), and Franz Kline (1919-1962).
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking Seriality in Minimalist Art Practices
    ISSN 1712-8056[Print] Canadian Social Science ISSN 1923-6697[Online] Vol. 11, No. 7, 2015, pp. 148-154 www.cscanada.net DOI: 10.3968/7277 www.cscanada.org Rethinking Seriality in Minimalist Art Practices ZHOU Yanhua[a],* [a]School of Chinese Literature, Southwest University, Chongqing, China. and Rouen Cathedral paintings, which are often cited * Corresponding author. as modernist prototypes, are painted in series. In fact, Received 2 April 2015; accepted 14 June 2015 artists paint in series, because this approach serves to Published online 26 July 2015 clarify the individual works of art. In modernist paintings, seriality is also an artistic strategy and is popular among Abstract a great number of abstract painters, such as Mark Rothko, Kenneth Noland and Barnett Newman. They paint in Seriality in one of the characterist of Minimalist works. hierarchic series in order to clarify the meanings of these It shows a visual order of “one thing after another”. paintings and encourage the viewers to contemplate their However, we never think about issues related Minimalist meanings. Working in a hierarchic and compositional seriality, such as the difference between modernism and serial mode was not reversed until the mid-1960s, when Minimalism when thinking in series, the theoretical logic Minimalist artists produced works in non-hierarchic and behind it, whether seriality is equal to repetition, and its non-compositional series. Minimalist artists emphasize aesthetic and social meanings. This essay rethinks the working in a non-hierarchic mode to dismantle the meaning of seriality in Minimalist art practices. It aims individuality of each element in a series and structure to reexamine the term “seriality” in both modernist and various repetitive forms.
    [Show full text]
  • Born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Russian-Jewish Immigrants, Barnett Newman (1905-1970) Lived His Entire Life in New York City
    ABOUT BARNETT NEWMAN Barnett Newman suffered years of neglect and rejection before his art became influential. The artist’s wry response to his many opponents among critics and art historians was reflected in his famous remark on aesthetics: “Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds.” It wasn’t until the 1960s, when Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and other artists began to articulate the meaning that Newman’s work provided for their generation, that he finally won wide acceptance as one of the 20th century’s leading modernists. Born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Barnett Newman (1905-1970) lived his entire life in New York City. He studied at the Art Students League and majored in philosophy at the City College of New York. After graduation he spent many years helping to manage his father’s clothing business and teaching in public schools. In the 1930s he painted little, but stayed involved in art and even ran unsuccessfully for mayor against Fiorello LaGuardia on a program advocating better arts education and more cultural resources in New York. By the mid-1940s his wife Annalee’s teaching salary and steadfast support freed him from his business obligations and enabled him to devote his energies entirely to art. While Newman’s earliest extant works are abstract renderings on the theme of creation, in the aftermath of World War II the look of his paintings changed. Jeremy Lewison, Tate Director of Collections and contributing curator to the exhibition, calls this departure “a search for a way in which to express the human predicament in a post-Holocaust era.” In 1950, at the age of 45, Newman received his first solo exhibition, which opened to mixed reviews at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York.
    [Show full text]
  • Frank Stella
    Frank Stella MEDIUM Painting, sculpture NATIONALITY American LIFE DATES Malden, Massachusetts 1936 - Born in 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, Stella was the eldest son of first generation Italian- Americans. He attended the Phillips Academy in Andover, studying painting with Patrick Morgan, and graduated from Princeton University in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. Although Princeton did not offer a degree in studio art, Stella found guidance with painter Stephen Greene and the art historian William Seitz. Stella moved to New York in the late 1950s. He rented a former jeweler’s shop in the Lower East Side on Eldridge Street and found employment as a house painter. Influenced by the paintings of post- war Abstract Expressionists such as Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, he began using ordinary house paint on canvas to create symmetrical black shapes delineated by pinstripes. These paintings, known as the Black Paintings, are often credited with paving the way for the minimal art movement of the 1960s. Art Dealer Leo Castelli invited 23-year-old Stella to join his gallery’s roster of cutting-edge artists, which included Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. By the fall of 1959, Stella participated in his first important group show,Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art. From 1960, Stella created paintings in aluminum and copper paint and began using shaped canvases, often in L, N, U, or T shapes. These later developed into more elaborate designs, as seen in the Irregular Polygon series of the mid-1960s. Stella also employed a wider range of colors, typically arranged in straight or curved lines (exemplified in hisProtractor Series of 1967).
    [Show full text]