When push comes to shove: Barnett Newman, abstraction, and the politics of 1968

Kelly, Patricia P.

doi:10.1080/17541320802063562

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is an anomaly, she argues, one that 'marks the extent to which social tensions had by 1968 impinged upon and infiltrated cultural production'. 83 What Kelly's argument misses, drawn as it is to the figurative connotations of barbed wire and blood, is the particular allegorical significance of Lace Curtain's abstract, gridded form: the only grid Newman ever made, in any medium. 84 He took care that it be laid out precisely, with horizontal and vertical filaments cut to identical lengths so that the knots in the wire occur more or less opposite one another.…”

Section: Darkness Visiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Writing to Barnett Newman: F. N. Souza and the End of Modernism

Nelson¹

2021

Art History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Beginning with an unsolicited letter to Barnett Newman written by the Indian modernist F. N. Souza, this essay seeks to reframe our understanding of the decline of modernism. Art‐historical consensus holds that, as the 1960s progressed, modernist art was swept aside by demands for political engagement to which it could not adapt. Souza's letter complicates this. On one hand, it criticizes Newman's latest paintings for expressing modernist values such as autonomy, transcendence, and universality, for amounting to the claim that ‘colour is ethics’. But on the other, rather than abandoning such concepts, as did most advanced art in the 1960s, Souza demands another, political modernism, one capable of grounding itself in reflection on the movement's historical complicity with colonialism and racism. This was a difficult project, and I reject the view that it was inherently progressive; indeed, I draw out the reactionary attitudes to which it could all‐too‐easily lead. Souza's desire, by 1969, to move beyond these without abandoning the historicity of modernism positions him closer to Newman than his letter suggests. Both proceeded, in ways that refuse the schematic alternatives of traditional art history, by making work that addressed political reality through the reflexive critique of modernism itself.

show abstract

Section: Darkness Visiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Writing to Barnett Newman: F. N. Souza and the End of Modernism

Nelson¹

2021

Art History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

When push comes to shove: Barnett Newman, abstraction, and the politics of 1968

Cited by 1 publication

References 6 publications

Writing to Barnett Newman: F. N. Souza and the End of Modernism

Writing to Barnett Newman: F. N. Souza and the End of Modernism

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About