Canto II 1963

Barnett Newman made Canto II, a print in black and white, with a stripe of faded denim blue running down its center. It’s a reductive image, but making a reductive image ain’t simple, right? I like to imagine Newman, in his studio, contemplating the void. The off-white border acts like a frame or a stage, setting the scene for something to happen. You can almost feel the texture, the grain of the paper, the way the ink sits on the surface. And that blue stripe, or 'zip' as he calls it, seems to hover, to vibrate ever so slightly against the darkness. It's like a breath, or a pause, interrupting our field of vision. I wonder if he was thinking of Mondrian and the de Stijl artists when he made this. Painters are always riffing off each other, engaging in a visual conversation across time. It's about feeling more than knowing, right? That stripe is not just a design element, it's a gesture, a sign of his presence.