
|
arrived at a place in his art-making at which all of what he knows about producing meaningful marks can be conveyed by and embodied in the squiggles, dashes, curlicues, sputtering dots and wisps of color that combine to make up his sometimes dense, sometimes spare compositions.
Freshly out of the U.S. Navy, where he had served in the Pacific, in the 1960s Newman studied at the legendary, now-closed Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco. Schaeffer (1886-1988) was a visionary educator and aesthete who developed a theory of “prismatic color.” Through his teaching, he aspired to unite technology, science and lifestyle in harmony with nature. Newman lived nearly three decades in Japan and Taiwan, and traveled widely in eastern and southeastern Asia. His experiences and study in those parts of the world and with artists whom he befriended there have deeply informed his art-making. His most recent works are some of his most reductivist — and energized — ever. Of them, he says, “This work seems to reflect what I’ve always done since the beginning of my career, using the basic elements of the medium as a conveyance — putting the fundamentals of life together in them in the simplest rhythmic expressions. In effect, this was the motivation I went to Asia for back in the ’70s.”
Right now I’m working on an essay about Newman’s career and the development of his techniques and ideas. Later, on this website, I’ll announce when and where that essay will be available in print and/or electronic form.
Posted by E.M.G.
Black-and-white work, top, left: Opulent Conversation (2014), pencil on Magnani paper, 21.125 x 23.75 inches. Above, left: The Prophet (2013), watercolor and pencil on Fabriano paper, 8.5 x 11 inches. Below, left to right: Abode by the River (2013), watercolor and pencil on Fabriano paper, 8.5 x 11 inches; Tosca (2007), bolted/galvanized sheet metal, approximately 9.5 x 10 x 5 inches; The Card Party (2012), pencil on paper, 11 inches x 8.5 inches. |
|