Here to there and back - Barnett Newman retrospective

ArtForum, March, 2002 by Yve-Alain Boise

(2.) The link between the notion that Newman is a Conceptual artist and the irresponsible way his works have been handled was never made clearer than in the immediate aftermath of the disastrous restoration of Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, which had been slashed three times along its entire width by a deranged iconoclast. Both Wim Beeren, the director of the Stedelik Museum at the time, and his soon to be successor, Rudi Fuchs, put forth this idea of a Conceptualist Newman in defense of the shoddy conservation treatment. (Noting thc "conceptual origin" of the painting, Fuchs went as far as to write: "Actually, it is a strongly non-material work that appears to the eye like a mirage. The question of the handwriting of the artist only comes up as a sentimental problem. The painting could also have been painted again from scratch. If the painter were still alive, that is what he probably would have done" ["Het rode vlak," NRC Handelablad, September 27, 1991]. This last pare of the statement is perhap s not entirely erroneous: Newman did make a second version of Be I at the very end of his life, when it had become clear that the first version, dating from 1949, was damaged beyond repair-but, on the one hand, this is exceptional, and, on the other, it does not mean in the least that Newman was indifferent to texture-on the contrary.) To be fair, Fuchs made amends when he had to deal with the restoration of Cathedra, yet another work savagely slashed by the same lunatic and in exactly the same manner. This time Fuchs gave his full financial and moral support to the team that dealt with this immensely difficult repair, headed by Irene Glanzer. The treatment of the work is finally completed, after four years of agony: It is absolutely splendid and should definitively raise the standard of conservation practice.

Yve-Alain Bois is Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University anda contributing editor of Artforum.

YVE-ALAIN BOIS is Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University and a contributing editor of Artforum. Author of the seminal Painting as Model(MIT Press, 1990) and coauthor with Rosalind E. Krauss of Formless: A User's Guide (Zone Books, 1997), Bois curated "Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry," at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, in 1999; his study Matisse & Picasso (Flammarion, 1998) served as the show's catalogue. Bois is currently at work on a major study of the oeuvre of Barnett Newman; in this issue he reflects on the work and reception of this "vastly underappreciated" artist, in anticipation of his retrospective opening this month at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. PHOTO: JASON SCHMIDT