Paul Crowther, Barnett Newman and the Sublime

Barnett Newman and the Sublime1

PAUL CROWTHER

The story of modern painting is always told as astruggle for and against space . . . .What is all theclamour over space? It is all too esoteric for me . . . .2

B. Newman

Barnett Newman's work — with its superficialaffirmation of the two-dimensionality of pictorialspace — is so often taken as an exemplar of the'modernist' tendency in art, that one wonderswhat other aspects to his work there could possiblybe. That there are, indeed, other aspects is shownby his frequent comments concerning the sublimeand by his observation that 'the self, terrible andconstant is for me the subject-matter of painting'.3

Unfortunately, no one has yet shown how thesublime and the self are linked in Newman's work,and this is true even (and perhaps especially) ofhis two most assiduous commentators, namelyThomas Hess4 and Harold Rosenberg5. In their'critical' texts, Newman's esoteric theory andpractice becomes enshrouded in an aura ofeulogistic mysticism that altogether hides thoseaspects of his praxis which make him so sus-ceptible to modernist interpretations.

In this paper, therefore, I propose to analyse indepth the relation between sublimity and the selfin Newman's theory, and the nature of thedemands which this makes on his artistic pro-duction. In Part One, accordingly, I shall outlinethe tradition of the sublime to which Newmanrelates, and in Part Two will show the ways inwhich Newman adapts this for his own theoreticalends. In Part Three I shall trace the practicalproblems into which this leads Newman, and, inconclusion, will relate his work to the question ofsublime art in general.

Part One

Although the sublime is an aesthetic concept ofancient lineage, the modern sensibility associates itmost closely with the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth century. Robert Rosenblum suggests,for example, that in Burke, Reynolds, Kant,Diderot, Delacroix and their contemporaries,

the sublime provided a flexible semantic containerfor the murky new Romantic experiences of awe,terror, boundlessness and divinity that began torupture the decorous confines of earlier aestheticsystems.6

In very general terms, Rosenblum's remarks are

apt. However, Burke and Kant require rathermore detailed consideration, not only because theirtheories are highly systematic but also becausethey hinge upon two phenomenologically distinctextremes of human experiences. Burke articulatesthe first of these in his claim that terrible oroverwhelming phenomena, when experienced froma position of safety, can give rise to

a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tingedwith terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation,is one of the strongest of all the passions.7

On these terms, the experience of the sublime isdefined by its indirect allusion to the fact of humanmortality. One might say, therefore, that for Burkethe sublime is to be understood in an 'existential'sense; Kant, however, chooses a rather differentapproach:

the sublime is to be found in an object even devoid ofform, so far as it immediately involves, or else by itspresence provokes a representation of limitlessness,yet with a super-added thought of its totality.8

The last clause of this statement is crucial. Aswith Burke, an emphasis is placed on objects of anoverwhelming or terrifying nature giving rise toexperiences of the sublime, but for Kant theunderlying structure of this experience is deter-mined not just by implicit reference to the fact ofhuman mortality, but also by the finite humansubject's capacity to affirm itself rationally in theface of such overwhelming and terrifying pheno-mena. Hence the significance of the 'super-addedthought of. . . totality'. Our rational faculties areable basically to comprehend and thereby chal-lenge that which from the viewpoint of 'sensibility'(i. e. that realm of sensation, perception, and affectwhere the human self connects with nature'scausal chain) would seem beyond all comprehen-sion. Indeed, it is the employment of just thisrational capacity rather than the overwhelmingphenomena themselves which Kant finds sublime.Through it we experience our freedom to trans-cend behaviour and phenomena that are merelycausally determined. As Kant puts it:

the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect for ourown vocation . . . this feeling renders as it wereintuitable the supremacy of our cognitive faculties onthe rational side over the greatest faculty of sen-sibility.9

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On these terms, then, Kant is construing thesublime in what I shall call its 'transcendent'sense.

Part Two

It is interesting that in his well-known paper 'TheSublime is Now'10 Barnett Newman dismissesKant summarily and suggests that it was Burkealone who articulated some essentials of thesublime. However, a complete picture of Newman'sown theory and its true affinities can only begained by a consideration of several of his earlierwritings, notably 'The First Man was an Artist'11

and 'The Ideographic Picture'12. In both thesepieces we find the single premiss that man's firstattempts to rise above nature through speech arebasically poetic outcries rather than acts ofcommunication. In polemic mood Newman asksand answers the following question:

Are we to say that the first man called the sun andthe stars God as an act of communication and onlyafter he had finished his day's labour? The mythcame before the hunt. The purpose of man's firstspeech was an address to die unknowable. Hisbehaviour had its origins in his artistic nature.13

The key passage here is the final sentence -'man's artistic nature', or, as Newman goes on tosay 'The artistic act is man's personal birthright'.Here Newman is making, in effect, the claim thatthe artistic act in its confrontation with theunknowable, is what marks us out as authenticallyhuman, and that reciprocally, it is as the bearer of'pure ideas' about death and tragedy and otheraspects of the unknown, that the artistic act findsits raison d'etre. Hence Newman is led to say of theKwakiutl Indian artist that

The abstract shape he used, his entire plasticlanguage was directed by a ritual will towardsmetaphysical understanding . . . . To him a shapewas a living thing, a vehicle for an abstract thoughtcomplex, a carrier of the awesome feelings he feltbefore the unknowable.14

It is significant that in this passage Newmandoes not simply see the artwork as arousing (asBurke puts it) 'a sort of delightful horror', butrather stresses its embodiment of the artist'stranscending of mundane reality and the pleasuresof sense towards self-understanding acquired inthe face of the unknown. This is why Newmanuses the terms 'abstract thought complex' and'pure idea' rather than the notions of 'feeling' and'emotion' alone. They serve to bring out theelement of rational self-comprehension inherent inthe artist's awesome feelings. Interestingly,Newman also suggests that non-geometric abstrac-tion alone can act as the bearer of such 'pureideas'. His overt justification for this lies in the

negative facts that, on the one hand, represen-tational work simply depicts natural form or socialrealities; and that on the other hand, geometricabstraction simply transforms nature into a sen-suously pleasing surface. But what is it about non-geometrical abstraction that makes it so suitable abearer for 'pure ideas'? Newman does not answerthis question explicitly but it is reasonable toassume that he sees non-geometrical abstraction assimply having greater connotative power. Ithovers, as it were, in the potently ambiguoussemantic space between conventional represen-tational art and pure geometrical abstraction.Characteristically the exploitation of this spacetakes the form of a combination of looselybiomorphic and geometric elements that transcendmere aesthetic value without relapsing into themundane narratives of conventional representation.Newman himself uses the term 'ideograph' to pickout symbols of this sort, and defines it specificallyas 'A character, symbol, or figure which suggeststhe idea without expressing its name'.15

It is unfortunate that Newman's use of the termideograph has not received wider currency since itquite accurately summarises the semantic founda-tion of the early phase of abstract expressionism ingeneral as well as his own work of 1945-7, whereelements of biomorphic abstraction are dominant.

Now if matters had been left here, Newman'swork would probably have remained very muchwithin the mainstream of abstract expressionism.However, there is quite emphatic tension betweenNewman's theory and his practice. On the onehand he is concerned only with a specific range ofpure ideas - namely those rooted in the self-comprehension of the artist before the unknown;on the other hand, his ideographic means ofevoking this through organic or biomorphicabstraction leads to broader naturalistic associa-tions that tend rather to mask or distract us fromthe underlying 'pure idea'. Newman, however,comes to terms with this problem in 'The Sublimeis Now' of 1948. It is to this paper I now turn.

The basis of Newman's discussion is broadlyhistorical, and (as might be expected) his view ofart history is very much that of a fall from themetaphysical grace attained by primitive art. Ashe puts it:

Man's natural desire in the arts to express hisrelation to the Absolute became identified andconfused with the absolutisms of perfect creations -with the fetish of quality . . . .'6

For Newman, this 'fetish of quality' is synony-mous with the classical tradition of ideal beauty.With Gothic art, in contrast, an authentic state ofsublime exaltation is attained through the artist'sdesire to destroy form; where indeed, 'form can beformless'. The liberating momentum of Gothic artis, however, checked by the Renaissance's re-

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statement of classical ideas. In Newman's words, it'set the artists the task of rephrasing an acceptedChrist legend in terms of absolute beauty asagainst the original Gothic ecstacy over thelegend's evocation of the absolute.'17

Michelangelo's sculpture (for reasons not ex-plained) alone transcends the classical ideal which,for Newman, remains dominant until '. . . inmodern times, the Impressionists . . . began themovement to destroy the established rhetoric ofbeauty by the . . . insistence on a surface of uglystrokes.'1^

This tendency is crucial, because whilst it is adetermining factor in the rise of modern art, itstamps that rise with a merely negative significance— a mere embodiment of the rhetorical exaltationthat arises from the destruction of the acceptedconventions of artistic style and practice. AsNewman puts it:

the elements of sublimity in the revolution weknow as modern art, exist in its effort and energy toescape the pattern rather than in the realisation of anew experience.19

On these terms, we find that, whereas forexample the exaltation of Picasso's work may berhetorically sublime in its overthrow of convention,it leads ultimately to a canvas that simply re-interprets the world in terms of highly structuredideal pictorial form. Similarly in Mondrian, natureis transformed into 'an absolute of perfect sen-sations' through canvases that exist as pureaesthetic surfaces within the real world. Indeed,even Cubist and Dadaist collage (despite theirwild inspiration) succeed only in 'elevating thesheet of paper'. Hence:

The failure of European art to achieve the sublimeis due to this blind desire to exist inside the reality ofsensation (the objective world, whether distorted orpure) and to build an art within a framework of pureplasticity (the Greek ideal of beauty, whether thatplasticity be a romantic active surface, or a classicstable one).20

Newman's grumble then, is that modern art issublime only in the external or rhetorical senses ofperfect aesthetic form, and revolutionary exalta-tion. The task that remains is to find a moreauthentic and positive sublimity grounded inman's spiritual transcendence towards theunknown. This means, essentially, the creation ofartworks with a sublime content. Hence Newman'sfinal crucial statement of his own (and perhapsRothko's) position:

We are reasserting man's natural desire for theexalted, for a concern with our relationship to theabsolute emotions. We do not need the obsoleteprops of an outmoded and antiquated legend [i. e. ofChrist]. We are creating images whose reality is self-

evident . . . . We are freeing ourselves of the impedi-ments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend,myth . . . that have been the devices of Europeanpainting. Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ,man, or 'life', we are making it out of ourselves, outof our own feelings.21

In this passage Newman comes to terms withthe inconsistency between his desire for a sublimeart embodying 'pure ideas', and the ideographicassociational means whereby he had previouslyattempted to realise it. Before relating this theoryto Newman's new pictorial means, however, Ishall briefly make some general comments on thestrength and affinities of the theory itself. First,even allowing for the level of generality at whichNewman (in a short paper) necessarily operates, itmight be thought that his theory glosses overinconvenient facts. For example, the equating ofthe Greek Ideal of Beauty and the romantic 'activesurface' seems especially incongruous given thefact that much Romantic art is essentially con-cerned with the sublime rather than the beautiful.Newman's retort would probably be that theRomantics' articulation of the sublime is toodependent on subject-matter with distractingnaturalistic associations that serve to mask the'pure idea'. But is this not also true of Baroquepainting, Gothic architecture, and Michelangelo'ssculpture - all of which Newman cites as sublime?Clearly, in this case, Newman's metaphysical tastegets the better of his historical judgement. This,however, only suggests that there is rather moresublime art than Newman is prepared to admit; itdoes not affect the overall thrust of his argumentsince it may well be that a mode of abstraction freeof overt natural associations is sublime in a moreprofound sense.

This brings me to the question of which othertheory Newman's has most affinity with. He tellsus that Kant (along with Hegel) confuses thesublime with the beautiful, and that it is Burkealone who achieves a 'clear' separation.22 Un-fortunately, despite his philosophical training,Newman is wrong on this point. Kant not onlyemphatically distinguishes the sublime from thebeautiful, but does so in a way that has strongaffinities with Newman's own theory. Both, forexample, see the sublime as residing not simply inthe evocation of emotion by overwhelmingphenomena, but rather in the sense of rational self-comprehension that arises from such a confronta-tion. Indeed, this transcendent species of thesublime is further seen as at least partiallydefinitive of the human condition - for Kant it istestimony to our ultimate 'vocation'; for Newmanthe sublimity of the pure artistic act is theauthentic 'birthright' of our 'artistic nature'. Kantand Newman do diverge, however, in at least onehighly illuminating respect. Kant suggests that thesublime is not a proper content for art because the

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artwork is necessarily restricted by 'the conditionsof an agreement with nature'.2 Now to somedegree (allowing for the inconsistencies notedabove) this parallels Newman's own worries aboutthe effect of naturalistic associations upon sublimeart. However, what is more striking aboutNewman's position is that he provides a way ofovercoming Kant's restriction by linking thepurest expression of the sublime to non-geometricabstraction. The assumption is that work foundedon form of this sort would clearly not be restrictedby having to 'agree with nature'.

We find, then, that the basic practical problemwhich arises from Newman's theoretical position isto come up with a mode of abstraction that willtranscend mundane associations and geometricbeauty, to embody the sublime in its purest form.Let us now consider how successful Newman was.

Part Three

'The Sublime is Now' was published in late1948, and its exultant final pasage in the presenttense about making cathedrals 'out of ourselves'suggests that Newman had already achieved thebreakthrough to a non-ideographic sublime art.The key work in this respect is Onement 1, apainting which Newman commenced in 1947 and'lived with' for a year before its completion. Of thiswork Newman said in 1962:

I realised that I'd made a statement that wasaffecting me and that was, I suppose, the beginningof my present life.24

Onement 1 is a canvas of some 27" x 16"consisting structurally of an inverted rectangle ofdifferentiated brownish red, bisected by a narrowband of pinkish red. The reason why this simpleformat proved so enormously significant forNewman is that it occupies the semantic spacebetween representation and geometric abstraction,but without falling into the merely hybrid mode ofbiomorphic abstraction. The means of thisachievement are twofold. First, the basic colourfield is not so differentiated as to set up naturalisticassociations, rather it exists primarily just as acoloured space. However, the fact that this space ispictorial, i. e. defined and accentuated by the limitsof the canvas, means that we approach it with adifferent set of expectations than we would, say, ifit were continuous with, or integrated within thesurrounding environment (in the way that apainted wall or brownish red wallpaper might be).Now if Newman had left matters here, theexpectations we would entertain in relation to thepictorially defined colour field would probably beof two loosely self-referential sorts. On the onehand we might look upon it as an aestheticallypleasing (or more likely displeasing) surface; on

Fig. 1: Onement 1, 1948, oil on canvas, 27 X 16".Coll. Annalee Newman, NY, New York.

the other hand, we might open ourselves out to thecanvas's brute physiognomic properties anddescribe it as 'sad', 'melancholy' or whatever.Newman's great discovery however, is that thesimple addition of the vertical band serves tosemantically activate the colour field. This is why,looking back on his oeuvre in 1962, Newmanemphasised the sense of design or 'drawing' thatarose from his placement of the bands:

I am always referred to in relation to my colour.Yet I know that if I have made a contribution, it isprimarily through my drawing . . . . Instead of usingoutlines, instead of making shapes or setting offspaces, my drawings declare the space. Instead ofworking with the remnants of space, I work with thewhole space.25

On these terms, the significance of Newman'snarrow band or (to use his own term) 'zip' of




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colour, is that it achieves self-definition within the'whole space' by its accentuation of the colour-field- thence intimating a transcendent rather thanpurely aesthetic or physiognomic level of meaning.The implied analogy is that just as the zip isproperly defined and comprehensible only throughits opposition to the colour-field, so humankindcan only define and express its own finite rationalnature in opposition to the infinite and unknown.Reciprocally, just as without its opposition to thezip the colour-field remains undeclared, so too arethe infinite and unknown only established as suchby virtue of their opposition to humankind's finiterationality. Reading Onement 1 in these termsexplains why Newman was so excited by it. Hecould express humanity's relation to the unknownnot simply by destroying form in the standardmanner of sublime art, but by creating an artifactthat embodies this relation through a subtle kindof non-representational symbolism.

It will be recalled that in 'The Sublime is Now'Newman suggests that 'we are creating imageswhose reality is self-evident'. Yet it is, of course,precisely the transcendent reality of Onement 1 andNewman's subsequent work which has provedelusive to so many observers. Apart from resortingto Newman's background theory, one superficiallyplausible means of access to his transcendentmeaning is by referring to the titles of the worksthemselves e.g. The Beginning, The Command,Abraham, Horizon Light etc.. However, there areproblems even here. First, these titles functionsuperficially as denotative expressions, namingevents, concepts, individuals, and phenomena.Whilst this might seem to import a purely personalor anecdotal significance to the paintings,Newman himself was at pains to deny this:

My subject is anti-anecdotal. An anecdote can besubjective and internal as well as of the external

world so that the expression of the biography of selfor the intoxicated moment of glowing ecstasy must inthe end also become anecdotal. All such painting isessentially episodic which means it calls for a sequel.This must happen if a painting does not give asensation of wholeness or fulfilment.26

For Newman this 'wholeness', 'fulfilment' isclearly rooted in bringing the ultimate confronta-tion between the artist and the Unknown toexpression. On these terms, we must understandhis titles not as terms which denote a particularsubject-matter or even the artist's personal ex-periences, but rather as terms which connote theultimate and universal experience of the sublime(from which all other 'glowing ecstasy' flows).However, the very fact that Newman's titles haveto be de-constructed in this way rather vitiatestheir status as interpretative aids; and onesuspects, indeed, that any resort to extraneouselements of this sort means that the content ofsuch works is far from 'self-evident'.

Newman does, however, come to terms with thisproblem in another way. After a number ofexperiments with scale he arrives by 1950 at acharacteristic canvas size in excess of about 8' x 7'.A colour-field on this scale, of course, is liable toswamp the viewer with the physiognomicemotional qualities intrinsic to it; and, in a work aslarge as Vir Heroicus Sublimis of 1951, these qualities- as set off by the zips - do tend to instilexperiences of awe and great emotional intensity inthe observer. But we must remember at this pointthat Newman is seeking to express rather morethan a Burkean sense of 'delightful horror', andseeks essentially an art that embodies self-under-standing in the face of the unknown. However, itagain seems clear that the increase in the scale ofhis works does not of itself make such transcendentsublimity self-evident. Rather we require in

Fig. 2: Vir Heroicus Sublimis, 1950-51, oil on canvas, 96 x 216". The Museum of Modern Art, NY, New York.Gift of Mr & Mrs Ben Heller.




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addition a thorough-going knowledge of Newman'stheoretical presuppositions. This is why Newman'smuch quoted remark that 'Aesthetics is for theartist as ornithology is for the birds' turns out tobe so ironic. Newman's work (as much if not moreso than any other twentieth-century artist) de-pends on a matrix of aesthetic theory in order tobe read authentically. Unfortunately the practicalapplication of Newman's theory is beset by severalother problems which I shall now consider.

First, Newman's obsessive pursuit of the tran-scendent sublime leads him, as I have shown, todevelop the colour-field/zip format, and sodifferentiate himself from mainstream abstractexpressionism. The problem is, however, thatwhilst this mode of artistic praxis enables Newmanto find his own distinct style, it ends up as self-defeating in two clear senses. First, if as Newmanholds, transcendent sublimity (with its affirmationof the self) is the only authentic subject-matter forpainting, and if (as Newman also holds) thissubject-matter can only be expressed in a certainmode of non-geometric abstraction, dien the artistis committed to a style which by its very natureadmits of no significant development beyond itsroot format. The colour-field and zip(s) forexample cannot be respectively articulated otherthan in terms of basic monochrome, for tointroduce polychromatic elements would be toinvite naturalistic associations that obscure the'pure idea'. Again, to introduce more overtlypainterly and gestural elements would be to over-emphasise the artist's personality, thus in-augurating a regress into the personal and merelyanecdotal. All that remains, therefore, (if thepurity of the 'idea' and the 'wholeness' of theimage are to be maintained) is to make endlessvariations on the basic colour-field/zip format. Inpractice, this is exactly what Newman does inalmost all his work after Onement 1. The zips aresometimes narrow, sometimes broad, sometimeshorizontal - but zips they remain. Similarly thecolour-field is sometimes slightly differentiated,sometimes pure, sometimes one colour, sometimesanother - but always fundamentally a colour-field.The only alternatives (in his painting at least)which Newman seems to have entertained are thegentle self-parody of the Who's Afraid of Red, Yellowand Blue? series of the mid-sixties and thetriangular-shaped Jericho and Chartres of 1969.Again, however, the actual internal structure ofthese works turns out to be, once more, a variationon the colour-field/zip format.

It might be claimed that even though Newmanderives his art from a theoretically determinedbasic format, the variations he makes on this (suchas the breadth, number, and positioning of zips)give adequate criteria for talking of his style'developing'27. However, all that these 'criteria'really establish is the truism that each of his workslook different from one another in some specifiable

respect. Whilst such perceptible difference mayreasonably be said to be a necessary condition ofstylistic development, it is by no means a sufficientone. We surely demand in addition that such'differences' provide both visual evidence of radicalself-reappraisals on the artist's part and bespeakalso a sense of progression and advancement. Forexample, in Jackson Pollock's painting after 1946,although the artist is still (as in his earlier work)concerned with the problem of expressing theunconscious self, his artistic means of realisationtake on a radically new aspect with the intro-duction of the drip technique. Indeed, between1946 and his death, Pollock adapts and extendsthis mode of self-expression, through a number ofstrikingly different phases, that are not onlyvisually different but also give a clear sense ofprogression - of problems encountered and solved.With Newman, in contrast, we find that almost allhis works after Onement 1 are visually different in away that does not radicalise the paradigm struc-ture of the colour-field/zip. Indeed there is noteven any real sense of a progressive and explorativeelaboration of this structure; rather we findswitches and swaps, and a multitude of mererepetitions.

This lack of stylistic development is, I think, onereason why Newman has been such easy prey forthe modernist interpretation of his work. Histheory-determined repetition of a minimal visualformat is easily misread as an insistence on thetwo-dimensionality of the canvas for its own sake,and thence as an attempt to reduce painting to itspure essence. But what (one might ask) of thetheory of the sublime? Why have the modernistinterpreters been able to shunt this aside so easily?

This brings me directly to the second majordifficulty that arises from the application ofNewman's theory. In arriving at the paradigmstructure of Onement 1 and exploiting it so exten-sively, Newman effectively reduces the expressionof the transcendent sublime to a formula. Histheory, indeed, demands this in order that theauthentic subject-matter, the 'pure idea', shouldbe absolutely paramount. However, by coming upwith a formula for sublimity Newman tends toinhibit the possibility of a complete experience ofit. For even if we have totally grounded ourselvesin the background theory, its constant repetition inan impersonal mode of abstraction deadens all butour intellectual sensitivity. We lose interest in theemotional possibilities of the sublime and see itinstead as a merely causally significant idea whichled Newman to produce works whose real andabiding interest lies not in their 'subject-matter'but rather in their status as painted surfaces. Thisattitude is entirely characteristic of the wayNewman's work has been received both by critics(such as Greenberg),28 and artists (such as DonJudd).29




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Fig. 3: First Station, 1958, Magna on canvas,78 X 60". Coll: Annalle Newman, NY, New York.

Conclusion

Having traced the self-defeating consequences ofthe application of Newman's theory, it nowremains for me to show how these consequencesstem not just from Newman's obsessive pursuit ofthe sublime, but also from a deep-seated mistake inhis theoretical articulation of it. The basic problem isthis; we apply the term 'sublime' to art in twologically different senses - descriptively andevaluatively. The descriptive sense is the oneemployed by Newman, and holds sublime art toconsist in the possession of certain characteristicphenomenal features - formlessness, form in theact of dissolution, all-encompassing voids and thelike. Whilst such properties are the basis of auseful category for describing a certain kind ofartwork, and whilst, indeed, such works may evokesublime emotions in us, the former is by no meanseither a necessary or sufficient condition of thelatter. For example, James Ward's Gordale Scar (orindeed almost the entire oeuvre ofjohn Martin) canbe justly described as 'sublime' and possess all theappropriate phenomenal characteristics. However,their capacity actually to evoke sublime emotionsis very problematic in relation to the modernsensibility. One feels that they are simply tryingtoo hard, and that this obvious sense of human

artifice rather inhibits any profounder sense ofrevelation. Curiously enough, the very fact that thework is in a characteristically 'sublime' formatconspires against it having a sublime effect.Newman is, of course, a case in point here.

The fact that the possession of descriptivelysublime properties is not even a necessary con-dition of sublime experience in art is brought outclearer by the 'evaluative' use of the term. By this,I mean our tendency to call 'sublime' those workswhich do succeed in evoking a profound realisationof the self-understanding that arises from theconfrontation between the artist and the ultimatepowers of life, death, and the unknown. In thiscategory we could place the works of artists asstylistically disparate as Watteau and Van Gogh.Indeed, it is crucial to note that the very fact thatsuch works do not have a descriptively sublimecontent makes them all the more effective. Ourexperience and awe is all the more intense by itsarising from a format where one did not expect tofind it - such as in a. fete galante, or in a still-life of apair of peasant boots. On these terms, thesuperficially anecdotal or mundane elements act asthe positive backcloth against which the artist'stranscendence emerges all the clearer into view. IfNewman had realised this, he might have taken upthe challenge of producing an art that achieved thesublime through its stylistic quality30 rather thanthrough its possession of characteristically sublime'subject-matter'.

I have argued, then, that Barnett Newman'snotion of the self as the subject-matter of paintingfinds its way into his art through a quasi-Kantiannotion of the transcendent sublime. I have furtherargued that Newman's theory on this topic rigidlydetermines the structure of his art and accounts forits lack of stylistic development. If Newman hadnot construed the sublime in a purely descriptivesense, he might well have discovered that repre-sentational art, or even geometric abstraction,could embody authentic sublimity by its capacityto transcend mundane associations. As it is,Newman's persistence with an art rigidly deter-mined by a flawed theory leads in the end to akind of self-negation. The theory seems obscure orirrelevant, and the art world thus assimilatesNewman's work within the prevailing ideology ofmodernism. Ironically, Newman becomes a crucialinfluence on the theory and practice of post-warart only insofar as those features which defined hisown sense of artistic personality are denied.

Notes

1. This is a revised and extended version of a paper originallyread to the Staff/Postgraduate Art History Seminar, in the Universityof St Andrews. I am indebted to participants in that seminar for theircomments, and in particular to Professor Martin Kemp, MostynBramley-Moore, and Louise Durning.

2. Barnett Newman, quoted in Thomas Hess: Barnett Newman,




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Tate Gallery Publications, London 1972, p. 47.3. Birnett Newman, quoted in Harold Rosenberg: Banutt

Ntwman, Abrami, New York 1978, p. 21.4. Hess op. cit.5. Rosenberg op. cit.6. Robert Rosemblum: 'The Abstract Sublime', Art News,

February 1961, pp. 38-41, 56-57.7. Edmund Burke: A Philosophical Inquiry into tht Origin of OUT Idtas

of tht Sublime and tht Beautiful, ed. John Boulton, Routledge t KeganPaul, London 1958, p. 136.

8. Immanuel Kant: Tht Critiqiu of Judgment trans., J. C.Meredith, Oxford University Press 1973, p. 90.

9. ibid p. 106.10. Barnett Newman: 'The Sublime is Now', Tigtr's Eyt, October

1948, pp. 51-53.11. Barnett Newman: 'The First Man was an Artist' included in

Thtorits of Modtrn Art, ed. Herschel B. Chipp, London 1968,pp. 551-552.

12. Barnett Newman: introduction to 'The Ideographic Picture'exhibition catalogue; included in Chipp ibid. pp. 550-551.

13. The First Man was an Artist' in Chipp ibid. pp. 551.14. 'The Ideographic Picture' in Chipp ibid. p. 550.15. ibid. p. 550.

16. 'The Sublime is Now' p. 51.17. ibid. p. 52.18. ibid. p. 52.19. ibid. p. 52.20. ibid. p. 52-53.21. ibid. p. 53.22. See ibid. p. 51.23. Kant op. cit. p. 91.24. Bamett Newman: interview with David Sylvester included in

Rosenberg op. cit. p. 245-246.25. Bamett Newman: interview with Dorothy Seckler included in

Tht Ntw York School ed. Maurice Tuchman, Thames and Hudson,London 1970, p. 112.

26. ibid. p. 112.27. This approach is the one implied by Franz Kline's comments

quoted in Rosenberg op. cit. p. 64.28. See, for example, Clement Greenberg: 'After Abstract Ex-

pressionism', included in Atsthetics: A Critical Anthology, ed. GeorgeDickie, St Martin's Press, New York, 1977.

29. See, for example, Judd's essay on Newman in Modtrmsatien andModtrn Art: A Critical Anthology ed. Francis Franstina and CharlesHarrison, Harper and Row, London 1982.




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Paul Crowther, Barnett Newman and the Sublime

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Transcript of Paul Crowther, Barnett Newman and the Sublime