Bridging the Generation Gaps in Barnett Newman'sWho's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?

Barnett Newman’s fourWho’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Bluepaintings, produced from 1966 to 1970, developed in a complex intergenerational relationship with the work of Newman’s younger contemporaries. The composition of the works engaged issues of symmetry and balance that attempt a rebuttal to the a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:American art 2005-09, Vol.19 (3), p.16-39
Main Author: Rich, Sarah K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abstract art
Abstract expressionism
Art exhibitions
Colors
Expressionism
Feature Article
High rise buildings
Modern art
Primary colors
Social generations
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Barnett Newman’s fourWho’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Bluepaintings, produced from 1966 to 1970, developed in a complex intergenerational relationship with the work of Newman’s younger contemporaries. The composition of the works engaged issues of symmetry and balance that attempt a rebuttal to the anti‐compositional techniques of artists like Frank Stella, while their nuanced distribution of primary colors operated in opposition to the readymade aspects of color as they were developed by Ellsworth Kelly. Social and contextual issues surrounding Newman’s production of the paintings served to further enrich the discourse of intergenerational conflict in the paintings. Newman and critic Thomas Hess referred to the architectural “renovations” of lower Manhattan in the late 1960s as a means of allegorizing issues of age and youthfulness in the four paintings, for example. And Newman’s choice of the interrogative title for this series linked the paintings to violent interactions between generations as they were represented in Edward Albee’sWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
ISSN:1073-9300
1549-6503
DOI:10.1086/500230