Stations of the Cross 1966

These monumental paintings by Barnett Newman involve a limited palette, mainly off-white and black, articulated with vertical stripes, or zips as Newman liked to call them. I’m thinking about Newman in his studio making these. Imagine standing in front of these massive canvases, again and again, making these decisions. I like to imagine what it must have been like for Newman to decide where to place each zip. Like, what was he thinking? Was he considering Mondrian, or maybe even medieval icons? Probably. But he was also thinking about something else, something bigger than art history. The way he’s scraping the paint, he is asking: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to suffer? Newman wasn’t alone in this quest. He was in dialogue with Rothko and Still. They were all asking these questions. And that’s what artists do. We’re always talking to each other. It’s an ongoing conversation across time. We make our marks, they make theirs. We’re all trying to figure it out.