Untitled 1945

Barnett Newman made this untitled artwork with ink on paper. It’s a playground of textures and forms, where abstraction meets something almost recognizable, but not quite. The ink, thick in some places and diluted in others, creates a dynamic surface. Look at the upper right corner, the way Newman layers strokes and dots to conjure a sense of depth, like peering into a dense forest. Then there’s that looping shape at the top, like a dark sun or moon, a focal point that draws the eye and anchors the composition. It’s the kind of mark that feels both spontaneous and deliberate, as if Newman was thinking through the act of making. Newman's exploration of line and form reminds me of some of the automatic drawings by surrealist artists like André Masson, who were also interested in tapping into the subconscious. But Newman takes it somewhere else, into a realm of pure sensation and feeling. It's more like an internal weather system than a landscape.