object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not
a picture but an event. The painter no longer approached his easel
with an image in his mind; he went up to it with material in his
hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of
him. The image would be the result of this encounter.^5BARNETT NEWMAN In contrast to the aggressively ener-
getic images of the gestural abstractionists, the work of the chromatic
abstractionists exudes a quieter aesthetic, exemplified by the work of
Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. The emotional resonance of their
works derives from their eloquent use of color. In his early paintings,
Barnett Newman(1905–1970) presented organic abstractions in-
spired by his study of biology and his fascination with Native Ameri-
can art. He soon simplified his compositions so that each canvas, such
as Vir Heroicus Sublimis (FIG. 36-8)—Latin, “sublime heroic man”—
consists of a single slightly modulated color field split by narrow
bands the artist called “zips,” which run from one edge of the painting
to the other. As Newman explained it, “The streak was always going
through an atmosphere; I kept trying to create a world around it.”^6 He
did not intend the viewer to perceive the zips as specific entities, sepa-
rate from the ground, but as accents energizing the field and giving it
scale. By simplifying his compositions, Newman increased color’s
capacity to communicate and to express his feelings about the tragic
condition of modern life and the human struggle to survive. He
claimed that “the artist’s problem... [is] the idea-complex that makes
contact with mystery—of life, of men, of nature, of the hard black
chaos that is death, or the grayer, softer chaos that is tragedy.”^7 Con-
fronted by one of Newman’s monumental colored canvases, viewers
truly feel as if they are in the presence of the epic.MARK ROTHKO The work ofMark Rothko(1903–1970)
also deals with universal themes. Born in Russia, Rothko moved withhis family to the United States when he was 10. His
early paintings were figural in orientation, but he
soon arrived at the belief that references to anything
specific in the physical world conflicted with the sub-
lime idea of the universal, supernatural “spirit of
myth,” which he saw as the core of meaning in art.
In a statement cowritten with Newman and artist
Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974), Rothko expressed his
beliefs about art:
We favor the simple expression of the complex
thought. We are for the large shape because it has
the impact of the unequivocal....We assert that...
only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and
timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship
with primitive and archaic art.^8
Rothko’s paintings became compositionally sim-
ple, and he increasingly focused on color as the pri-
mary conveyor of meaning. In works such as No. 14 (FIG. 36-9),
Rothko created compelling visual experiences consisting of two or
three large rectangles of pure color with hazy, brushy edges that
seem to float on the canvas surface, hovering in front of a colored
background. These paintings appear as shimmering veils of in-
tensely luminous colors suspended in front of the canvases. Al-
though the color juxtapositions are visually captivating, Rothko in-
tended them as more than decorative. He saw color as a doorway to
another reality, and insisted that color could express “basic human
emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom....The people who weep before
my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I
painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color
relationships, then you miss the point.”^9 Like the other Abstract Ex-
pressionists, Rothko produced highly evocative, moving paintings
that relied on formal elements rather than specific representational
content to elicit emotional responses in the viewer.Post-Painterly Abstraction
Post-Painterly Abstraction,another American art movement, developed
out of Abstract Expressionism. Indeed, many of the artists associated
with Post-Painterly Abstraction produced Abstract Expressionist work
early in their careers. Yet Post-Painterly Abstraction, a term Clement
Greenberg coined, manifests a radically different sensibility from
Abstract Expressionism. Whereas Abstract Expressionism conveys a
feeling of passion and visceral intensity, a cool, detached rationality
emphasizing tighter pictorial control characterizes Post-Painterly
Abstraction. Greenberg saw this art as contrasting with “painterly” art,
characterized by loose, visible pigment application. Evidence of the
artist’s hand, so prominent in gestural abstraction, is conspicuously ab-
sent in Post-Painterly Abstraction. Greenberg championed this art
form because it seemed to embody his idea of purity in art.Painting and Sculpture, 1945 to 1970 97536-9Mark Rothko,No. 14,1960. Oil on canvas,
9 6 8 9 . San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
San Francisco (Helen Crocker Russell Fund Purchase).
Rothko’s chromatic abstractionist paintings—consisting
of hazy rectangles of pure color hovering in front of a
colored background—are compositionally simple but
compelling visual experiences.1 ft.