Saturday, February 21, 2009

"Black Fire I" by Barnett Newman at the Philadelphia Museum of Art



All right, this blog is called "Contemporary Art Revealed," and I have posted about Impressionist, post-Impressionist, and Modern paintings over the past 10 days. So here's something from 1961, Black Fire I by Barnett Newman. Newman was known for his vertical stripes he called "zips" and for his large vertical blocks of color (often black). This painting is usually on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where I saw it again a week ago.


You can view some of my 3-D paintings on my website at www.jayrolfe.com/.


The wall label at PMA describes the painting as follows: "Black Fire I conveys a dark grandeur through simple means: the tensions between edge and field, opacity and transparency, order and spontaneity, black pigment and raw textured canvas." Wow. Sometimes a picture IS worth a thousand words.


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