simple, yet complicated
Museums are never really my thing. I’ve been to a few, but I never liked any of them and I don’t even recall the names. Anyways, I went to MOMA this past weekend. I met up with my friend, and he took me directly to the abstract section, which we are supposed to look at. The first thing I saw was by Barnett Newman, and it’s called “The Voice” (1950). It’s basically a white canvas with a light yellow line. It is like one of those pieces that “regular” people would say, “oh really? That’s art?” To me it looked like just an empty canvas that happened to have a light yellow line or one of those old handkerchiefs. So, I went closer to read the label text. It says, the medium is egg tempera and enamel on canvas. I thought maybe the white that I see is egg white and the light yellow is the yolk since there is nothing on the canvas, except the light yellow line, that was described as an off center “zip”. There was no action, not even any traceable signs of the artist hand. It was titled as “The Voice”. Is he trying to say that it is silent and mute?
As I was still wondering about it, I saw another work by the same artist. It is titled as “Vir Heroicus Sublimis”, which can be translated as “Man, heroic and sublime”. It is about twice as big as the first one and it is oil on canvas. Similarly, there are “zips” as well, but this time the background is red. The size and the bright color caught everybody’s eyes as well as mine. I stared at it for a while, and went up to take a closer look.
The Latin title of this painting can be translated as “Man, heroic and sublime.” It refers to Newman’s essay “The Sublime is Now,” in which he asks, “If we are living in a time without a legend that can be called sublime, how can we be creating sublime art?” His response is embodied in part by this painting—his largest ever at that time. Newman hoped that the viewer would stand close to this expansive work, and he likened the experience to a human encounter: “It’s no different, really, from meeting another person. One has a reaction to the person physically. Also, there’s a metaphysical thing, and if a meeting of people is meaningful, it affects both their lives.” (MoMA)
It looks real simple, but at the same time very complicated. I felt like I have absolutely no connection with it. But, it is really interesting how certain artists express themselves in such a way that looks very simple with a deep, complicated message.
Posted: September 19th, 2012 under MoMA.
