Obraz jako sytuacja. Tragizm, podmiotowość i malarstwo według Barnetta Newmana
Image as a Situation: Tragedy, Subjectivity and Painting According to Barnett Newman

Summary/Abstract: In modern art history Barnett Newman is often regarded as a representative of American Abstract Expressionism or “Post-Painterly Abstraction”. However, in his own view any such classification would seem highly problematic, because – as he said – his paintings remained “too abstract for the abstract expressionists and too expressive for the abstract purists”. In his large body of writing on art – numerous statements and essays he wrote as a critic and curator – Newman declared a definitely anti-aesthetic, anti-formalist stance, based on the iconoclastic rejection of sensual beauty and formal purity as an end in itself. The article concerns the historical and conceptual background of Newman’s conception of art, which for him should not be an aesthetic object, but an active “vehicle of abstract idea”, a life embodiment of emotions – something that affects the viewer and places him in a specific situation.

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