924
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:
Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:

VIEW ARCHIVE


Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
Notes on video lecture:
Barnett Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
wall, vision, value, lead, Latin, postwar, Irvin, flickers, start, opaque, brush, environmental, gravity, hung, museum, evenly, acrylic, brush, zips, void, optical, incur, loss, viewer, palette, prominent, glossier, chroma, 1970, plumb, receding, mimetic, screams, oil, translucent, dominated, canvas
title is            for heroic and sublime man
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Barnett Newman (1905-        )
wrote about what an author and theorist could do in the                era
what an artist should do with abstraction is to            the void
to try to get somewhere in terms of perception and experience, both that of the painter and the              that was not possible before
abstraction should be able to do something the figurative,                painting, something about something, couldn't do
Newman's paintings are about the experience of the         
daring to paint in a way that had never been seen before
daring to            experiences in paint which had never been experienced before
the formal mechanism through which these experiences are had
Vir Heroicus Sublimis
you eye doesn't know where to           , it just begins roaming and doesn't know where to stop
it has multiple centers of               
different          which are dispersed throughout the painting
your eye wants to play ping-pong back and forth between them
certain ones grabbing your attention, others                  away from you
consider which zip demands you attention
one really                for you
others are maybe the fourth or the fifth that your eye finally lands on and returns to the more                    zips
the ground
a lot of oil paint, cadmium red, opaque and incredibly              painted
something that                paint is engineered to do
if you think Barnett Newman is not a painter's painter, not a technician of paint, then try this at home with        colors
to paint this evenly in oils without a roller, this was all done with a           , is a feat of painting
zips, left to right
first zip
much                  than the ground
the hue is related, but the            is lighter
there has been some white added to this paint
the lighter color                  in and out of existence, but doesn't scream
masking tape and                knife
but with fairly large skips
allows the zip to be weak
second zip
a very clean, light, cool white
it's quite              since it has actually been put in twice
first with a pallet knife, the second with a brush
second application missed some areas
by far the highest value color of any zip
leaps out into your field of vision first
third zip
a dark, deep, cool plum color
contrasting the flickering of the other zips, you have here an                pulling-away
lowest value color on the             
color is the cooler than the field itself
thus appears to be optically behind the ground of the painting
fourth zip
another flickering, low-            , high-value versions of the cadmium red color
fifth zip
another white, but a warm,                        one
probably a calcium containing white
in contrast, the bright white zip is probably a          white
looking closely, you see it has been applied in two passes
both appear to have been done with a           
the red behind the white co-mingles in your eye
a warm, tending-toward-yellow color
has a weaker character
figure-ground relationships
we have these zip competing for prominence in our field of             
                           viewing of painting
the installation space that a painting is          in
when we are very close to the painting, almost enveloped in it
their are certain positions when you don't see any          space anymore
your field of vision is completely                    by the painting
something that can be experienced first-hand in the             
you have a feeling of         
it's the process of using paint to manipulate your experience, which transitions into the work of light artists such as Albert            (1922-2015) and James Turrell (1943-)

Ideas and Concepts:

On the function of abstract art, via tonight's Postwar Abstract Painting class:

"The abstract painter Barnett Newman was also an author and theorist who wrote about what one could do in the discipline of art in the the postwar era. In his view, a new aspect of art was abstraction, and what one can and should do with abstraction is to plumb the void, so to speak, to try to get somewhere in terms of perception and experience, both that of the painter and the viewer, that was not possible before.

Abstraction should be able to do something that figurative, mimetic painting, i.e. something about something, couldn't do before.

Newman's paintings are about the experience and exploration of this void, daring to paint in a way that had never been seen before, daring to incur experiences in paint which had never been experienced before, an adventure into an unknown world which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks."
Barnett Newman's Onement, I (1948)
Barnett Newman's The Wild (1950)
Barnett Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950)