NEW YORK, NY.- Barnett Newman (1905–1970), a founding member of the abstract expressionist movement, was a contemporary of such figures as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. He left behind only 118 finished paintings, six sculptures, and 83 acknowledged drawings, yet is often regarded as the greatest painter to have emerged after the Second World War. Barnett Newman is the definitive biography of a charismatic New Yorker who defied the rules and created an art of the sublime.
This landmark book features original research conducted over decades, using scores of interviews, oral histories, and previously unseen correspondence to paint a richly textured portrait of a creative sage who became an exemplar of the artist-citizen. Born in New York to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, he grandly aspired to involve himself in every detail of the city’s life. He was a crusader for the civil service, ran against La Guardia for mayor, worked as a teacher, wrote poetry, criticism, and manifestos, produced political plays, and promoted other artists—all before painting a mature work of his own in his early forties. Newman began with none of the qualities once considered indispensable for a master artist, such as training, apprenticeship, or natural facility. But he possessed a galvanizing intellect and a conviction that aesthetic expression is an ecstatic declaration of existence and an assertion of human dignity.
Drawing on previously unpublished sources gleaned from full access to Newman’s archives, Amy Newman presents a portrait of a maverick whose works are among the most enduring of the twentieth century and whose influence continues to this day.
"[Barnett Newman: Here] skillfully charts the artist’s improbable path to success. Especially welcome are [Amy Newman's] efforts to distinguish the true chronology of Newman’s career from his retrospective tendencies toward self-mythologizing. Thoroughly explored too are the ways the painter’s Judaism informed his self-understanding as an artist and influenced his choices of titles and themes.... essential reading for those interested in understanding both the man and his work." –Library Journal
"A comprehensive biography of abstract expressionist Barnett Newman (1905-1970): educator, poet, political activist, New York mayoral candidate...and, for the last 25 years of his life, a groundbreaking artist.... [Amy] Newman reveals the genesis, details, and reception of [his] paintings and sculptures... grounding the work not only in [his] life, but in the energetic postwar art world. An impressive, nuanced study." — Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews
Amy Newman is an art historian and journalist. She is the author of Challenging Art: “Artforum” 1962– 1974 and the editor (with Irving Sandler) of Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. She is not related to Barnett Newman.
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