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Modernisms 1900-1980
Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 9
Lesson 1: Abstract Expressionism- Abstract Expressionism, an introduction
- Finding meaning in abstraction
- Norman Lewis, Untitled
- de Kooning, Woman I
- How to paint like Willem de Kooning
- How to paint like Willem de Kooning - Part 2
- Willem de Kooning, Woman, I (from MoMA)
- Barnett Newman
- Newman's Onement I, 1948
- The Painting Techniques of Barnett Newman
- Restoring Rothko
- Why is that important? Looking at Jackson Pollock
- Representation and abstraction: Millais's Ophelia and Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis
- The Case For Mark Rothko
- Rothko, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange)
- Mark Rothko's No. 3/No. 13
- The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko
- The Painting Techniques of Jackson Pollock
- The Case for Jackson Pollock
- Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
- Jackson Pollock, Mural
- Paint Application Studies of Jackson Pollock's Mural
- "One: Number 31, 1950" by Jackson Pollock, 1950 | MoMA Education
- Lee Krasner, Untitled
- Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57
- Franz Kline
- The Painting Techniques of Franz Kline
- Hedda Sterne, Number 3—1957
- "Low Water” by Joan Mitchell
- Beauford Delaney's portrait of Marian Anderson
- Abstract Expressionism
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Barnett Newman
Set aside the everyday and enter the profound, even spiritual space of Barnett Newman's paintings. To experiment on your own, take our online studio course Materials and Techniques of Postwar Abstract Painting. Created by The Museum of Modern Art.
Want to join the conversation?
- I find much more interest and fascination with interpretations to, and reactions of, ab.ex. art than the art itself. Is this part of the intent of this genre?(15 votes)
- Like she says at, Barnett Newman was taking art to a logical conclusion, boiling art down to the core elements of any artwork: color, line, shape, etc. Can these fundamental elements of art—used alone without representing a specific figurative object—express emotions or inspire deep thought? I would strongly argue yes. Not everybody needs to like these paintings, but for many of us there is real and legitimate value here, giving the viewer a place to surrender, reflect, or internalize ( 0:06) as a quick departure from the trappings of ordinary daily life ( 2:30). In many ways, that is more valuable, interesting, and important than a gorgeously painted still-life of some objects on a table. 4:02(8 votes)
- What was his method for making his lines so straight, especially for the one behind her (also at)? 3:31(3 votes)
- The secret behind the construction of these straight lines is not revealed until we get to this video: http://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/MoMA/moma-abstract-expressionism/v/moma-painting-technique-newman. Focus in onand 1:56of the given link. 2:06(4 votes)
- Did Barnett Newman not sign many of his works? I saw one that had a signature, but many more that seem to not have one. I ask this because I feel that the deliberate choice to not sign his work would play in to the selfless idealism that this curator mentions Abstract Expressionist painters would have had.(4 votes)
Video transcript
Ann: Barnett Newman's
paintings are those which among the abstract expressionists
themselves caused the greatest amount of
skepticism and doubt. Newman epitomized the common sense
of many abstract expressionists painters works that anybody can do that. I think Newman's paintings pushed
that to its furthest extreme. Not so much in that they looked
like something a child could do, because it's pretty hard to
make those straight lines, but something that a house-painter
could do and in fact one of the critics of one of his early shows
at the Betty Parsons Gallery wrote that when you went
into the gallery, you thought you were looking at the wall
but then you realized oh no, you were looking at the paintings. So our question is, what really
does separate these paintings? Well for one thing, the layers
of color on a Newman painting are not the one or two that
a house-painter might make but in fact countless layers to
achieve the saturation and the subtlety of tone that Newman was looking
for in the surface of his painting. Also he's not dealing
with a predetermined area, for the feeling of a Newman
that's smaller than you as opposed to one that occupies
the whole length of a room, communicate very different feelings. So of all the decisions
that Newman is making to get the effect that we see today,
none of them is actually that simple. Instead what Newman is doing is
trying to communicate a mood, a profound feeling, one might
call it a spiritual feeling. At that time he would have, today that
would be quite unfashionable to use. But there's no doubt in my mind that
for Newman, what he was expressing in a rather secular medium,
painting, was the kind of thing that in previous times would
have been called religious. The idea behind a Newman painting
is not that you look at it and understand it or get it. I think that's one of the things
that has bothered people about Newman ever since these paintings
first were shown 60 years ago. With a Newman you have to set
aside all expectations of that and surrender yourself to
the physical experience and the psychic experience of
being in the space of this picture. In fact if you look through New Yorker
magazines of the 1950's and 1960's, you'll find many many
cartoons filling its pages of perplexed viewers standing in front
of abstract expressionist paintings, probably right here at
the Museum of Modern Art. But instead really what they're trying
to convey is that it wasn't easy for them as painters to make
the art that they were making, nor should it be easy for the
viewers to experience what they made. For all of these artists it was essential
that they form a signature style and much as Pollock is somebody
we associate with his drips, Newman is somebody we associate
with what we now call his zips. This was something new in modern
art and yet at the same time as they were concerned with
making Rothko's or Newman's, with these very clearly
identifiable styles, at the same time they maintained that
these pictures were not about them, that they were not about their mood
or their story they wanted to tell, certainly not about any biographical
detail and instead they were about the much larger issues of
values and ideals of humankind. This is something that should
take you above your daily routine. Out of your ordinary work, out
of your ordinary family life. When you're with these paintings
you're going somewhere else and you're bringing your soul,
you're bringing your brain, you're bringing your physical
body into a different realm.