In Defense of Barnett Newman

His work is the kind that people stand in front of and ask "Is this really art?"

I know this because a friend of mine laughed incredulously in front of Newman's works at The Whitney over the weekend while I stood in awe.

"Somewhere," my friend theorized, "I envision a room full of artists who are in on the joke, laughing at what a bunch of suckers the art world is to buy this and display it in a museum."

I laughed. His comment was humorous, and the visual, even better. I am an artist and I know artists- he's not wrong that that's ultimately the kind of people that we are.

“Barnett Newman is a genius of art.”

But he's incorrect about Newman.

Barnett Newman is a genius of art. He compares a person meeting a painting to a person meeting another person. When you first see another person, your reaction to their presence is immediate. It's visceral.

It doesn't have anything to do with their religion, or politics, or their character. You know none of that yet. You have only just seen them, but yet, you have a reaction.

Standing in front of Newman's "Day One" over the weekend, I experienced a strange sensation. As the red paint loomed over me, I felt an odd mix of physical and emotional vibration happening inside of me. It was almost as if the painting was pulsing into me. (Sidenote: A "pulsing" sensation is also the feeling many people experience with Rothko paintings.)

I felt its presence. It was as if the painting were another person in the room. But a big person. A giant. The painting was a giant living being in the room which made me forget all of the normal-sized people in the room, except for a few fleeting thoughts wondering if I've been standing in front of this painting for too long and if my friend was ready to move on already.

(Note to reader: Sharing in art is great, but try to go view art alone more often than not or, at the very least, with people who will leave you alone if that's what you want at a certain point.)

Thankfully, my friend did that. He continued to meander through the exhibit and waited until the ungodly amount of time I spent in front of the Newmans had expired. True to form, too much time in front of these paintings was still not enough, which if you recall, is the mark of great art.

“It was as if the painting were another person in the room. But a big person. A giant. ”

The painting had an aliveness I don't often see. There was a life about it that I see in great works. A presence. A purpose. A message. A voice.

Without hearing a thing, it spoke to me and told me its importance. And I felt it. Vibrating. Looming. Towering. Bellowing.

It was ominous, but seductive. Powerful, but funny... because I knew that most people look at a painting such as this and see a color. But it's so much more.

And I'm not saying this to sound pretentious, or bougie, or contrarian. I get it- it looks absurd in a museum. It looks funny. But it's not the paint that makes paintings like those...

It's the intense energy the artist poured into its creation that is now vibrating its way into me, here, all of these years later.

It's great art.

It's why I immerse myself as deeply as possible in the vibrational energy that I possess while painting. It's meditative.

“It’s not the paint that makes paintings like those. It’s the intense energy the artist poured into its creation that is now vibrating its way into me, here, all of these years later.”

Newman's is the kind of art that photos flatten and kill.

A photo of his work is far worse than never seeing his work at all. Honestly.

Photos can't translate the vibration. They can't recall the pulsing. They're unable to replicate the aliveness of his works.

I moved on to "The Promise" of Newman's. And again, felt struck. Felt in awe. Felt sucked in, in a way that was positive, but also a little scary. Felt pulled apart and conflicted, but also somehow unified.

His paintings affected me with their presence, like a person who walks into a room with that X Factor. That je ne sais quoi.

And in that way, when taken into account with how Newman views how a painting should affect a person wordlessly, without introduction and immediately, it makes sense.

His paintings make sense.

He's a genius.

No matter how many memes people make of his work.

TRISHA WILES