Mm2278

[bemoored]

I'll pass the baton with what I think is a very easy one..

[bemoored]

Two more photographs of the MM..



(not a collaboration with Lucio Fontana )

[caldwell.brobeck]

Zip and slash!

Barnett Newman
Cathedra
96x213 inches
Oil and Magna on Canvas
1951
Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); I can't find a link on the site.

Slashing done by Gerard Jan van Bladeren in 1997

[bemoored]

Well done, CB, you're up!

That's Newman with Cathedra in his studio in the black-and-white photo (on the right ).

Until recently I'd given little attention to Barnett Newman as perhaps my least favorite of the first generation of mega-famous American Abstract Expressionists. I recently discovered to my surprise that Newman was a favorite of Robert Hughes which has had me curious lately - e.g., here discussing Cathedra on ARTslanT:

In Amsterdam, two different paintings stood out for me on first seeing them. One was Barnett Newman's "Cathedra," a monumental 1951 work at the Stedelijk Museum there. It has had an unfortunate history, like another Newman work in the Stedelijk. It was slashed by a disturbed individual Gerard Jan van Bladeren (the second Newman work he tried to destroy there), who called himself an artist who opposed abstraction. When I saw "Cathedra" in the 1980s, you could go right up to it, and then pull back to contemplate. Like many of Newman's large-scale works, this painting – in a kind of slate blue with a lighter blue "zip" or line – has a majestic numinous quality, as if the painter, and the viewer, were in the presence of something greater than physical reality. Newman does that to me. Now, since the painting's restoration, it has been displayed behind plexiglass, so other self-styled and deluded artists who seek to destroy in the name of art can't get near it. Neither can we, although the painting is more powerful than any attempt to deface it. And I think of it often, a first meeting with a great American artist abroad.

[LGHumphrey]

Just goes to show that even Hughes had his weaker moments.

Come to think of it, he was probably drunk.

And who but Hughes would use a word like "numinous"?

[bemoored]

Originally Posted by LGHumphrey

Just goes to show that even Hughes had his weaker moments.

Come to think of it, he was probably drunk.

Ha! he may have been an alcoholic then, he definitely liked BN.

And who but Hughes would use a word like "numinous"?

Since you mention it, that's one of the things that really interests me about nonrepresentational painting: that, while not universal or even a majority, people will say such things, which remind me of what people have said for ages with regard to music. Is it simply the way some minds work when there's no representation of physical things to hang their focus upon? Is it some kind of connection to those experiences - like music, like certain temporal lobe seizures - that are often associated with such feelings and impressions? I'm sure I don't know but it fascinates me.