The central works of Barnett Newman's oeuvre many of which are reproduced here as full-page color plates--are the subject of an analytical study by Armin Zweite.This study not only gives a comprehensive appraisal of Newman's paintings, from his beginnings through his later works---predominantly large-format, monochromatic paintings--but also deals in detail with all of Newman's sculptures.

 Barnett Newman, one of the most significant and influential painters of the post-war years,did not find his way to his characteristic style until, in 1948, he painted "Onement r', a homogeneous color field divided by a vertical stripe, a "zip", as he called it.Whilst being a constantly recurring feature of Newman's oeuvre, these "zips" vary in format, color, and character.With their sharp or frayed edges, their even or irregular coloration, they divide and rhythmize the canvas, break up the form defined by the outer edges of the painting, and convey an impression of wholeness, of totality.

 Newman's reductionist vocabulary of form and categorical purism--as well as his theoretical writings and statements, and his pose of a "pictor doctus"--irritated the protagonists of the New York School, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Ad Reinhardt. All of them, however, sought to reflect in their works the "tragedy of existence" and the "terror of the unknowable", ideas that made "contact with mystery---of life, of men, of nature, of the hard, black chaos that is death" (Barnett Newman). In his essay "The Sublime Is Now", published in 1948, Newman advocated the kind of painting which is free of the "impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you", the kind of painting which is "self-evident", or, as Mark Rothko put it,"is an experience in itself."

 The central works of Barnett Newman's oeuvre many of which are reproduced here as full-page color plates--are the subject of an analytical study by Armin Zweite.This study not only gives a comprehensive appraisal of Newman's paintings, from his beginnings through his later works---predominantly large-format, monochromatic paintings--but also deals in detail with all of Newman's sculptures--"Here I","Here Ir', and "Here IIr',"Broken Obelisk","Lace Curtain for Mayor Daley", and "Zim Zum I" and "Zim Zum II"--as well as with Newman's Model for a Synagogue.The book affords a more differentiated insight into Newman's hermetic oeuvre than would ever be possible in separate treatises on individual parts or periods of Newman's work.

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: What to Paint?

Newman's Beginnings

On Newman's Paintings

and the Unreality of Their Own Reality

Isolation and Self-Assertion

"An artist paints so that he will have something to look at"

Barnett Newman's Sculptures

Here I

Model for a Synagogue

Here II

Here III

Broken Obelisk

Lace Curtain for Mayor Daley

Zim Zum I and Zim Zum II

Biography

Checklist

Selected Bibliography

Photograph Credits