Fortunately for is andience, Newman evolved his ideas on paper the intellectual development underlying the laconic simplicity of his break: ‘through painting, Onement I, can he traced through half a dozen writ ings dated to the years 1945-48. Like his pictorial explorations of the same period, Newman's musings vary widely in coherence and intel Tigibility, ranging from the dense tangle of "The Plasmie Image” to the grandeur and crystalline conciseness of “The Sublime Ts Now.” But through the prolonged effort to distinguish and to articulate the sub ject of is art, Newman attained level of understanding that enabled im to recognite and embrace the equivalence between hs aspirations and the extremely reductive, revolutionary form of Onement I and its progeny. The Plasmic Image lea diay, "The Panne Image” records the progres of Newan’s haking ‘the worked through the dlls confronting the apcig abstract alter in America ithe mid1940s, This muiparitecompasiion sere to have heen writen over a relatively short pri of time in the spring of 1945: by art? Nenman has already seen the retropertive exhibition of Piet Mondrian the Maseam of Modern Art (March 21-May 13 i part 11 he i tll ‘onicrplatng Howard Paaesshow "A Problem for Cie” athe 67 Gal ery (ay-Jume). fc, the ies raed by thoe two exhibitions, ofthe ature of abstract at and ofthe Heaity ofthe new movement in pining, ‘read thoughout the tex along wth sich themes of logtanding concer tu Newman a the dangers af ajetiveatitade toward ar the bankrupt ete Yl ces be bated ea Fe ts to ars meaning and purpose. Inthe proces of appraising his {nbertance, in this plate paper Newnan sets ont te coneaditions and ontraits the assumpeons tat he perceives in existing ant an aot the "forthe new at that he and is colleagues were hap of inventing PART 1 ‘The subject matter of cretion is chaos, The present feeling teems to bethatthe artis in concerned with form, color, and spatial arrangement ‘This objective approach to art reduces it to 4 kindof ornament, The hole atitude of abstract painting has been such that it has reduced Painting to an ornamental art whereby the picture surface i broken in geometrical fashion ato anew kindof desiga-image. It is a decorative tart built on a slogan of purism where the attempt is made for an ‘unworldly statement. "The filare of abstract painting i due tthe confusion that exists in the understanding of primitive art as well as that) concerning the ature of abstraction, I is now a widespread motion that primitive art is abstract, and that the strength in the primitive statement arises from this tendency toward abstraction. An examination of primitive caltures, however, shows that many traditions were realistic. Whatever the tradition, there always existed in the majority of primi- tive cultures even from prehistoric times a stvet division between the i abstraction used inthe decorative arts and the att of that ict geometry was the province of the tribes, who use these Wevces in their ing. pottery, ete No case of any primitive ealture shows the use ‘of geometric form for religious expression. The men, in most tribes the practicing arss, always employed a symbolic, even a realistic, form of expression In primitive tribes distortion was used as a device whereby the artist ‘ould create symbol. Clarity wil he ined if we define abstraction in tet terms ofthe abstract painter, asa eld of painting concerned with geometric forms, and if we separate this concept from distortion (One of the serious mivtakes made hy artists andar critics has ben the ‘confusion ver the nature of distortion, the ey assumption that say Aistortio from the realistic form isan abstraction ofthat form All artists, whether primitive oe sophisticated, hae been involved the handling of chaos. The painter of the new movement clearly under- stands the separation between abseaction and the art of the abstract. He is therefore not concerned with geometric forms per xe but increating forms that by their abstract nature carsy some abstract intllec tual content Ther i an attempt being maul wo assign a surrealist explanation to the use these painters make of abstract form. The attempt says that inasmuch as these ar smpting to create a supereaity they ¢ therefore offshoots of the surrealist movement, I is not ettough, because these painters are working in the real of imagination, to insist fon a linking of two diverse tendencies, Surrealism i interested in a dream world that wil penetrate the man payche. To that extent i is 1 mundane expression. Its sill concerned with the human world it never becomes transcendental, The present painter is concerned not with his own feelings or wth the mystery of his own personality but with the penetration into the world-mystery. His imagination is therefore attempting to dig into metaphysical secrets. To that extent his art ix ‘concerned withthe sublime, It ia religious art which thoough symbols il atc the base tat ‘whichis is sense of tragedy. ‘The present painter can be said to work with chaos not ony in the ‘sense that he is handling the chaos of blank picture plane but also in that he is handling chaos of form, In trying to go beyond the visible and known world he is working with forms that are unknown even to him. He is therefore engaged ina true act of discovery inthe ereation ‘of new forms and symbols that will hae the living quality of creation [No matter what the psychologists say these forms arise from, that they are the inevitable expression ofthe unconscious, the present painter it not concerned with the proces. Herein les the difference between him and the surreaists. At the same time, in his deste, in his wil to set love the oeered truth that the expression of his attitude toward the mystery of life and death, ican be aid tat the ats like a tre eeator i delving into chaos. I is precisely this that makes him an artist, for the Creator in creating the world began with the same material—for the tit tried to wrest truth from the voi, PART 2 ‘There is a diference between a purist art and an at form used purely Inthe former, the result sa formal pattem whic, separated from the ‘emotional excitement that accompanies insight or revelation, is abjee- tive, cold, impersonal, and consequently incapable of giving complete satisfaction othe intensity generated by man spiritual need. The best, that eam be sid for this typeof at is that it is decorative that it satisfies man's taste for “beauty.” "There has been a great to-do lately over Mondrian’s genius His point of view, his fanatic prism, isthe matey of the abstract aesthetic. His oneept, however is founded on bad piloophy and on faulty loge “Mondrian claims that should we reduce the world tits basic aap, we ‘would see that it is made up of horizontal and vertical ines, the horizon {al tabledine ofthe earth, the vertial lines ofthe things that stand and row on it, Were this oversimplifeaion true, what logical process i it ‘hat ater that since the word is made up of horiontal and vertical lines, therefore picture made up of suc lines isthe word or tre picture of i? "The insistence of the abstract artists that subject matter be elimi rated, that art be maul pre, has served to eeate # result simile ln Mohammedan art, which insisted on eliminating anthropomorphic shapes. Both fanatciams, which strive toward an abstract purity, force the art to become a mere arabesque ‘On the other hand, the poiat of view maintained by the new painter, that an artform must be ted purely has the virwe of .« making it ‘tool forthe refined expression of concepts that cannot be handled by lesser methods, othe end, paradoxically, that i is able to express the rmostabsteact thought. Just as mathematic, which i absteact, has limited beauty in ite nature when used to express an important concept that we see its convolutions just as mathematics isa language that fives shape to thought, so the mew painter fel that abstract ati not omething to love for itself, but is language to he used to project important visual ideas. In this way, abstract art can become personal ‘charged with emotion and eapable of giving shape tothe highest human insights instead of erating plastic object, objective shapen which can be contemplated ony for themselves because they exist between narrow limits of extension. "The new painter fecls that these shapes must contain the plasmic ‘entity that wil carry his thought, the nucleus that wll give ie to the abstract, even abstruse ideas he is projecting. I therefore wish to call, the new painting “plasmic,” because the plastic elements ofthe art have heen converted into mental plasma, The effect ofthese new pictures isthatthe shapes and colors act as symbols to [elicit sympathetic part pation onthe part ofthe beholder inthe artist's vision Since the at's ideas are not traditional, he cannot use traditional symbols. Since the artist's ideas are personal, since they do not revolve within any on nized social pattern as do the religious symbols of wellintegrated religions society, they cannot be [conveyed through] conventional sym hols or ready symbols or even realistic symbols [The artist] must of necessity [us] abstract symbols, symbols that he creates ot ofthe pare language that is painting today. Their plasmic natute consists the fat that when a personal symbol is integrated withthe abstract ea, thas the living element within it that wll ary the living thought, a against ‘conventional abstaet painting, which reduces the symbolic idea into nonreaistic shapes. The world cannot he embodied inthe mathematical symbols af x and y, but and y can be used to give ws greater “understanding, isin of the world. The new painter wes the abstract anist 2 debt forgiving him his language, but the new painting is concerned with a new type of abstract thought PART 3 By “plastic” it is sually meant that it has some other “quality.” Whatever it isthe implication is tht ‘there is some objective ait to the pigment, tht i st jst a ed color onthe canvas, aeolor that canbe easily pat on by somebody ele since [al colors} come out of paint tubes, bat that there is something in adition. lieth inability to clarify what tht something is that has created so much confusion in modern painting. For, unable to clarify this imangible factor, most artists and erties in onder to avoid the problem have decided to take it for granted. It has become sort of tunderstood, lke a missing verb in a sentence s0 that every artist i expected to hate this quality. The result has been an objective approach to a subjective truth, It is this mistake in paychology oF logic that i the root of abstract painting. ‘The feeling of objectivity toward these subjective factors has been transfered tothe painting itself 0 that thas become a gadget fancy ‘objet, with the result that beauty has become a similar objective fact to the end that painting hasbeen reduced oa kind of manufacture. The the color is “goo” or “Heh oe result, of cours, inline with its objective hase, has been to ereate an abject that has beauty. But the beauty here is nothing more tha manifest of taste, forthe manipulation of god color, pare shapes, good ‘composition can only aflect the sensuous nature of man. Is a typeof ‘virtuoso painting, andthe Iogval outcome of such an aesthetic must be ‘8 irwoso art where men of skill and taste, lke skill velnsts, play ‘vith coor fine, and shape asf they were the elements of an instumes The analogy thatthe abstract painters dote on the analogy with musi, hears this out. In their desire to handle painting a if t were music instead of erating an expression that is abstract inthe sense that it + makes articulate an abstruse concept that can be expressed inno other ‘v8}—that is the abstract thought ofthe ereator—fthe abstract painters} have reduced painting to an interpretive art where the elements of printing are, virtuoso fashion, played on. The new painting is «rebellion against this vulgarzaton of art, against the distortion of iin terms of another at. To the new painter fs nota instrument for playing music. Artis aralm of thought shat is pat down on paper or canvas, possibly in the way a musician puts symbols down om his paper, to express an idea, a concept that will {pita the mind ofthe rater. Tothe new painter, {qualities of plastic in the colo, the form, are the real isue. Color, line shape, space are the tools whereby his thoughts made articulate. They are not pleasure elements thatthe artist should dote oer. To him, the, i is wot the plastic element that is-importan; its nt] the voluptuous quality in the tols that i his foal, but what they do. Is thei plasmic nature that i important. It I the subjective element in them that will in turn sir a subjective reaction in the reader ofthe language that is important Here is he real, ference between the traditional abstract painter and the new painter. ‘Whereas the alteact punter is concerned with his language, the new painter is concerned with his subject matter, with his thought . PART 4 lsmie™ cam est be seen inthe cended ‘The diference between “plastic” and" acts ofthe primitive peoples, There the concept of beauty the surace qualities of color and stone. [nthe sculpture ofthe MexiValley we find examples of high finish whenever the stone perited, inthe jade jadeite, and green stone pies, particularly in the Olmec and Guerrero cultures: but the predominant quality of the prevailing sculpture isthe rough, unappealing surface of the volcanic stones these ancient sculptors found at hand. In Negro sculpture there isan atten at high nish in the wood carvings, particularly of the Pabouin style, but the appeal of Neyo surfaces is at» minimum. More characteristic [of the primitive concept of beauty] are the wood carvings, the totem- pole sculpture of the Northwest Coast Indian, where the mark of the ‘uae is evident. Ian be safely sid thatthe high Snish, the polished surface of Negro sculpture reduces it heroic charter. kn the at of the Oceanic tribes, « similar lack of preoccupation with our Western Euro pean conception of plasticity prevails, There the color is raw, stark, ‘rude. There is litle attempt to tile the eye ‘The primitive ats’ preoccupation is with the idea he wishes ta teanamat. With him the cements ofthe medium have plasie function The intention i for the color, the sone to carry within itself that