AH439MIDTERM - Newman/Onement II

Artist: Newman, Barnett
Title: Onement II
Date: 1948
Nationality: American
Context: post WWII, NY School
Movement: Color Field
Materials: oil paint on canvas
Subject: the title indicates oneness, a wholistic vision; the heroic, monumental scale indicates the "Sublime" (the boundless, the infinite)

Style: monochromatic color field with a "zip" of contrasting color or value tone cutting across; the opening up; foreshadows Bleckner's stripe"zip" line is less a stripe than a color space paintings; not just a grid on the surface (like a Mondrian); the "zip" suggests a space beyond the surface; not about mark-making; more about color, light, andindividual gesture or space.

Context: post-war existentialism (alienation in the void); more than mere formalism; reductive abstraction as heroic search for essence and the "Sublime."












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