Uriel 1955

Barnett Newman made "Uriel" with oil on canvas, and it is currently hanging at the Kunsthalle Hamburg. When you look at the pale blue next to the purple-grey, what do you see? I mean really *see*. Look at the texture in the paint. Newman was interested in the sublime, and for him, that translated into these expanses of color, interrupted by what he called "zips." This piece has a wide band of color on the right, separated from the pale field with two thin, vertical stripes. Take a look at how these stripes aren’t perfectly straight. They waver a little. When I look at that thin, slightly wobbly, line, I feel like I’m seeing a whole body in it. It's like a breath being taken, imperfect, but full of life. Newman might have looked to Mondrian, but where Mondrian is all about the grid, Newman’s zips offer a more human element, a kind of vulnerability. It reminds me that, in painting, sometimes it's the smallest gesture that speaks the loudest.