Day One
Barnett Newman
BARNETT NEWMAN, 1951. OIL ON CANVAS.
Forms, shapes, discernible meaning: all of these got in the way of Barnett Newman’s mission. He wanted to create art that so engulfed the viewer, was so inescapable in scale and drama that, without distraction, it tapped into a universal understanding. It was only in this way, he thought, that art could approach the sublime, and the aesthetic could elevate the human spirit to a place of purity. Day One is monumental in size while being close to as simple as possible. Save for the two thin lines of slightly contrasting hues, the work is a color-field painting of orange that seems to burst into your brain with abandon. It is, in fact, those two lines of contrasting hue that give the work its power. Newman called them zips, and their purpose is to animate and elevate the central colour - they are not their for beauty but for utility, to uplift and embolden the reach of a single colour towards that final goal of sublimity.