by J. Edgar Bauer
A paper presented at The 2001 CESNUR International Conference, London School of Economics, U.K.

To the memory of Felice Bauer.

2. The Jewish contribution to the fine arts since the Emancipation in the 19^th century never reached the importance of cultural achievements by Jews in other areas during the same period. Besides, modern art created by Jews was seldom marked by a specific Jewish worldview. In this regard, however, the case of Barnett Newman represents a true turning point. Since abstract expressionism refuses by principle the use of anecdotical elements that could give hints to a cultural specificity in the areas of history, ritual or folklore, the Jewish component in Newman´s art is made apparent by means of words.  The intentional determination of the pictorial abstractions is conveyed by means of the titles chosen or by eventual written elucidations of their meaning.  Newman´s use of language to direct the interpretive understanding of the retinal abstraction is well exemplified by his explanations of the 14 abstract paintings he titled The Stations of the Cross, Lema Sabachtani. He reports that a peculiarly intense white line he drew in the fourth painting of the sequence brought back into his thoughts the idea that Jesus´ cry in Aramaic actually sums up the whole of his passion [6] , since it articulates paradigmatically the question of suffering. For Newman, nothing less than the problem of pain and grief would be able to establish the link between the crucified man, his own people and mankind: This question that has no answer has been with us so long - since Jesus - since Abraham - since Adam - the original question. [7] Thus, the universality of Jesus is not granted by a Christological mediation, but by its Jewish anchorage that lastly turns out to be the simply human. From Newman´s perspective, the history of the question concerning suffering is the proper Heilsgeschichte, in as much as it offers no supernatural answer to the Lema, but only explores the exclusively human meaning of suffering mankind.          

3. For Newman, the new American painting represented by Adolf Gottlieb, Mark Rothko or Milton Avery is essentially [...] a religious art, a modern mythology concerned with numinous ideas and feelings. [8]  Against the art criticism motivated by the nostaligia of a lost beauty based essentially on the Greek understanding of art, Newman underlines the advantages of the American artist in his opposition to the raffinement of non-tragic worldviews. Echoing similar arguments by Friedrich Nietzsche or Martin Heidegger, Newman points out that the sense of tragedy was blurred by the Greeks themselves as soon as their plastic artists did not just limit themselves to enable a metaphysical experience, but aimed at creating the so-called objets d´art: they succeeded in secularizing their divinities to make them things to admire rather than objects of worship. [9]  The Greeks, driven by their pride of civilization, could neither relate to the Egyptian symbols, nor understand the meaning of totemic fanatism, since their will to achieve the monumentality of the barbarian´s symbols was always frustrated by the awareness of their own effeteness. [10] Well aware of the Greek strategy to overcome the barbarian, the new American artist aims at reversing European art in order to regain the symbolic and metaphysical horizon intended not only by Greek tragedy and by the philosophy of Heraclitus, but also by the so-called primitive art. According to Newman, the tragic view of the brutality of life [and] the ferocity of nature [11] regained its essential actuality against the background of the atrocities commited during World War II. From then on, the new artist recuperated the vital sensibility that enabled him to testify that all life is full of terror [12] .  The decision to face the terror of Being is for Newman a sine qua non of salvation in the sense of a questioning struggle to realize the tragic meaning of life. From this perspective, the primitive or the Greek articulation of tragedy is not in opposition to the insights conveyed by the canonical Heilsgeschichte between Adam and Jesus. Since the tragic struggle with the lastly unanswerable question of suffering leads to a radicalized sense of self-awareness, realizing salvation becomes mankind´s most universal vocation.  

4. In spite of his high esteem of the Bible and of the New Testament, Newman does not conceal his critical stance concerning the fundamental hostility of Judaism and Christianity toward the so-called fine arts. In a passage concerning the opposition between primitive and ancient art on the one hand, and biblical religion and religiosity on the other, Newman writes: Ancient art was preoccupied with the creation of gods, with the expression of forces, with numinous beings. We realize that with the rise of Christianity this activity was removed from man by a rationalized religion and also that with the rise of Judaism, this activity was removed from man by an outright taboo. The renaissance in modern painting can be attributed to the deliberate attempt on the part of the artists to return to the artist´s prime function. [13]  The Biblical prohibition of images and the subsequent theological iconoclasm of Jews and Christians lead to consequences not unlike those resulting from the non-tragic character of Greek art, since both traditions foster the suppression of any essential treatment of man´s tragic condition.  Against this background, Newman regarded modern painting as a metaphysical answer to the provocation issuing from the theological prohibition. It is not by chance that as soon as the modern painter was free to dedicate himself to the expression of thought, of important truths [14] , he was able to liberate colour and disregard the charms of sentimental and artificial beauty.  Thus, Newman stresses: [Modernism] established the artist as a creator and a searcher rather than as a copyist or a maker of candy. [15]  In spite of his enthusiastic assessment of Modernity, Newman not only critizised abstract painters like Piet Mondrian for their exagerated dedication to pictorial language while disregarding the philosophical content of their work, but also disapproved of the surrealistic preoccupation with the oneiric world while remaining bewitched by the merely mundane. According to Newman, these modern painters perceived the disempowering of Western art since its Greek origins resulting from the neglect of the tragic perspective, but they did not succeed in actually overcoming the fundamental misconception they unequivocally rejected.  In the last analysis, the overcoming of artistic beauty must be accompanied by the essential overcoming of Jewish and Christian iconoclasm. As the bad conscience of Western painting, this iconoclasm prevented the actual discovery of the sublime and thus continued by other means the Greek suppression of tragedy.

5. In as much as the new artist aims at creating a living myth for us in our time [16] , he is a conscious maker of gods [17] transgressing against the religious prohibition of images. On this line of argument, Newman elaborates: Since the artist´s ideas are not traditional, he cannot use traditional symbols. Since the artist´s ideas are personal, since they do not resolve within any organized social pattern as do the religious symbols of a well integrated religious society, they cannot be [conveyed through ] conventional symbols or ready symbols or even realistic symbols. [18]  The new mythology advocated by Newman presupposes a reflection on the inherent deficiency of the traditional, but still prevalent symbolism to articulate the new historical situation of mankind. Thus he points out: Most of the true epics of the past have been confined to a local divinity or to a local numinal problem, but the international character of the modern mind, which encompases diverse traditions, needs a more universal theme to express universal truth than was needed heretofore. [19]  The future mythology has to reflect the world historical situation of mankind in a unification process whose origins go back to the basic insights of prophetic monotheism. The recognition of the prophetic roots of human universality does not lessen Newman´s critique of Biblical and theological iconoclasm. Then the needed reversion of art to its pre- or para-Biblical function is an indispensable condition for realizing the vision of a unique humanity as forseen by the Prophets. In view of the theology operative within the occidental history of art, the new art proves to be anti-iconoclastic. But with regard to the metaphysically undemanding aesthetics of European art, the new art demands a destruction of images by far more subtle and radical means than the one advocated by the theological worldview of the Bible. The essence of Newman´s understanding of this modern iconoclasm is adequately rendered in his phrase: painting beyond the making of pictures. [20] The new iconoclasm of the new painting subverts and radicalizes at the same time the old prohibition, since it is not against the painting of paintings as such, but against the fixation and reification of an art work as objet d´art.  The issue at stake is the realisation of the connectedness of the painting to the act of painting as expression of a metaphysical concern with the mysteries of tragedy once symbolized by the gods. Thus, the painting that dissolves the picture constitutes the subversion of the pesel / eidolon in favor of a transcending beyond imagination.

6. In one of the clue passages of his written work, Newman points out that: Man is a tragic being, and the heart of this tragedy is the metaphysical problem of part and whole. This dichotomy of our nature, from which we can never escape and which because of its nature impels us helplessly to try to resolve it, motivates our struggle for perfection and seals our inevitable doom. For man is one, he is single, he is alone; and yet he belongs, he is part of another. This conflict is the greatest of our tragedies. [21] Opposing not only the dialectic mediation that would absorb the individual in a higher totality, but also the mystical assimilation by the divine, Newman stresses the need to preserve the separation that constitutes the individual in the limits of his being. In the context of this argument, Newman sometimes uses the concept of totality in a way that comes close to the negative connotations implied by Emmanuel Lévinas´ elaborations on totalité, [22] but on other occasions Newman´s totality may be understood as wholeness and in connection with the integrity denoted by the Hebrew conception of  shelmut and shalom.  In this meaning, Newman´s totality or wholeness conveys the self-actualization of the finite individual through the encounter of An-other. Consistent with this idea, the artistic effort according to Newman bring[s] out from the nonreal [...] something that evokes a memory of the emotion of an experienced moment of total reality. [23]  Art actualizes the memory of a total reality in the sense of the whole-some shalom that not being a mere addition of quantifiable entities, indicates the intensive magnitude of an encounter. In this regard, Newman is careful to underline: with me, the wholeness has no parts. [24] Thus, this wholeness is not the opposite of separation, but its accomplished consequence, for separation is the necessary condition of the connection to others who are also separate. [25] As such, art marks the break of the natural continuum by the spirit whose separation renders connection possible. Against this background, it is not surprising that according to Newman what counts in his paintings is the stripe [26] since it is the artistic expression of his foremost metaphysical problem. The stripe, later to be called zip, is not conceived of as dividing the paintings: It does not cut the format in half or in whatever parts, but it does the exact opposite: it unites the thing. It creates a totality [...] [27] From this perspective, the zip is an indicator of the becoming whole-some through the intensity of an encounter and thereby a sign of the healing task that Judaism calls tikkun olam, the mending of the world.

7. The essence of man manifests itself according to Newman not so much in a culminating point of cultural development, but right at the beginning of history , in a time of almost total absence of the technical means enhancing societal life.  Not unlike Giambattista Vico, Newman stresses that the first expression of man as well as his first dream was an aesthetic expression that only secondarily took over a practical function: Man´s first cry was a song. Man´s first address to a neighbor was a cry of power and solemn weakness, not a request for a drink of water. [28] Clearly opposing the philosophy of American pragmatism, Newman sees in non-utility the essence of the purely human in original man: Just as man´s first speech was poetic before it became utilitarian, so man first built an idol of mud before he fashioned an ax. [29]  Thus, when considering the religiosity of the beginnings, Newman stresses that the myth came before the hunt, [30] that the totemic act of wonder in front of the tiger-ancestor came before the act of murder, [31] or that the God image, not pottery, was the first manual act. [32] These cases of non-utility hint at the properly artistic act which on account of its being free from interests proves to be essentially moral: The only moral act is the useless one, and the only useless act is the aesthetic one. The artist is the only man who performs an act for no useful purpose, he is, indeed, opposed to its usefulness. His behavior is completely, unalterably and profoundly futile. [33] This conception of artistic purposelessness determines Newman´s understanding of fine in the expression fine art as meaning end (in Latin: fines), and not merely refined or exquisite. [34] Due to their final character, the fine arts are capable of avoiding the instrumentalities and mediations that would endanger the keen perception of impending tragedy. Against this background, the finality of the original man and of the artist appears to be essentially related to the attitude of the screaming Jesus on the cross. His Lema on Calvary is an expression of his existential solidarity with the scream of the beginnings, since [o]riginal man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void. [35]  The rapprochement of primeval man, the crucified Jew and the new artist hint at a dimension of existence in which the definitive and final struggle with the Void takes place and which thereby proves to be more fundamental than that of the mere progressive succession of history.    

8. Newman points out that in our Western European culture [...] the decorative (what I wish to call the plastic elements) and the philosophic (what I wish to call the plasmic elements) overlap. [36]  The fact that in the new American painting the plastic elements of the art [= the decorative] have been converted into mental plasma [37] purports therefore a radicalization of the philosophic aspect.  By focusing on the metaphysical secrets [38] and by aiming at the penetration into the world-mystery [39] the artist leaves behind the mere artistic beauty and reaches to the actual dimension of the sublime.  Since man can be or is sublime in his relation to his sense of being aware [40] the artist turns not only against the empoverished religious symbols of tradition sanctioned by society, but also against the primacy of the sensuous element that is the forming influence of the voluptuous art [41] specific to Western Europe.  Both traditional religious symbolism and voluptuous sensuality are responsible for the waning of the attentiveness to the terrors of Being, such an attentiveness constituting a necessary condition for attaining the dimension of the sublime.  Upon the evidence of the Shoa and of World War II, Newman was convinced that modern man is his own terror [42] .  Since in this murderous Modernity the superficial consolations of Apollonian beauty become flagrantly meaningless, the creation of exquisite works of art proves to be more than ever an evasion.  With regard to his search after an adequate response to the threads of modern terror within the sphere of the sublime, Newman was especially encouraged by his readings of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant.  In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756; second edition 1759), Burke conceived the sublime as an overcoming of a menacing terror through a negative form of pleasure he termed delight. Since Burke further argued that the sublime could be expressed in poetry, but not in painting, Newman stressed that Burke´s restriction would only be valid if the subject matter of painting is equated with something imagined or represented.  Since figurative painting has no way of conveying the sublime, Newman pleads for a liberation of painting from the eidolon by means of an eidos that can only be hinted at, but not represented in the work of art. In regard to this problem, Newman found important suggestions in Kant´s Kritik der Urteilskraft.  Since according to Kant the infinite of power or the absolute of magnitude are ideas of reason that cannot be directly represented in space and time, there is only the way of a negative representation [negative Darstellung] capable of expand[ing] the soul [43] and that is explicitly associated by the philosopher with the Jewish prohibition of images. [44]  Against this philosophical background, Newman´s paintings and his concurrent self-interpretations bear witness to his struggle for a dimension where images are left behind and the evidence is realized that the sublime is now. [45]

9. In Newman´s thought, the space of external nature is determined by its opposition not only to time as personal [...] private experience [46] , but also to place, a main concept of Newman´s instrumentality that is sometimes rendered by its Hebrew equivalent makom.  Terminologically, place / makom is the locus where an individual becomes keenly aware of his own existence by consenting to be claimed by An-other.  Thus, it is not surprising, that Newman regards the synagogue as a place, Makom [47] and that in connection with the synagogal ritual he stresses the subjective experience in which one feels exalted by realizing the meaning of the Mitzwa: Know before whom you stand. [48]  Evoking the Hebraic experience of the face to face ( panim el- panim [49] or panim be-panim [50] ), Newman further points out that man experiences a total sense of his own personality before the Torah and His Name [51] . These deeper existential dimensions inspiring Newman´s thought are perceptible, when he indicates for example that his art education came from himself in front of the real thing [52] or that the primitive artist was always face-to-face with the mystery of life [53] .  Art in this essential context bears witness by means of the negative representation of the sublime to an original  makom in which the self-perception of existence is radicalized by the unprecedented immediacy of an encounter.  Furthermore, the work of art itself can become in its turn a possible makom for its contemplators, in a way comparable to the makom on a Biblical passage in which the Name of the Eternal is mentioned but not pronounced. Since makom is not God, but the place where the unconceivable Alterity happens to be, i.e. where God is [54] , the difference between a place and no place at all [55] is for Newman of paramount importance. Hence he underlines: It´s only after man knows where he is that he can ask himself Who am I? and Where am I going? [56] On account of its import and centrality, it is not surprising that Newman´s own experience of place determines to a great extent the way in which he conceives of salvation. Unequivocally, Newman asserts: I personally don´t want my soul saved. I feel this is my own job. The desire to save souls is based on another strong desire that is very prevalent today, to integrate all of us. [57]  The predominant insistence on metaphysical and sociological assimilation constitute the antipodes of Newman´s insigts concerning the encounter of An-other in which the finite individual is not suppressed, but confirmed in his separation.

10. Looking back on his life work Newman wrote in 1963: [...] one of the things that can be said is that I helped change painting from the making of pictures to the making of paintings. I never use the word picture. [58]  The fundamental opposition picture / painting can be understood as a contribution to the clarification of what painting means under the sign of the Jewish prohibition of images. At the same time, it marks Newman´s philosophic stance when he denounces the conception of pagan aestheticians [59] who first think that an object could be art, and at the end conceive of man as an object. With this in mind, Newman opposes vehemently all reification of his art: I want my painting to separate itself from every object and every art object that exists. [60]  In this connection it is highly significant that the homo politicus Barnett Newman saw a hidden complicity between the world of generals, politicians and professional patriots [61] on the one hand, and the narcissistic world of shamans and artistic producers of pictures on the other. Using Jewish-prophetic diction, Newman drew the consequence of his critical unmasking by pointing out that the fetish and the ornament, blind and mute, impress only those who cannot look at the terror of Self. [62]  Newman´s assessment that the shaman and the shamanistic artist are enslaved to their own selflove makes it sufficiently clear that he was not only reluctant to idealize non-occidental weltanschauungs, but also that he saw their inhuman aspects being continued in the assimilationist tendencies of the Western world.  Both positions finally plead for a metaphysical uniformisation that negates by principle the uniqueness of the finite individual granted by what Newman calls separation. The assimilationist, untragical attitude of the Western shamanistic artist denies the alterity of a world not liable to be absorbed by his ideology of identity. Thus, the fetish and ornaments he puts forward just serve the worship of the artist by himself and by those whom he can intimidate. [63]  The angst intended by the Western shaman is alien to the terror of Self expressed by the negative representation of non-idolatric art. Such an art is closer to a miracle than it is to a fact in nature or a fact in culture [64] , since it is basically an encounter with the always differing alterity in the pretended closure of the identical.  If one considers that both the Hebrew verb perash and the noun parush  ("Pharisee") hint at the semantic aspect of separation conveyed by Newman´s zips, the question must be allowed if his art ultimately aims at forwarding a new Phariseism. By thinking separation anew, Newman might be offering postmodern man the gift of liberation from the shamanistic and idolatric beginnings still prevailing this day.