Onement
Onement I-VI is a series of six paintings by the American painter Barnett Newman , which were created between 1948 and 1953. The pictures differ in their dimensions and colors, but what they have in common is the single-colored surface, over which a narrow, different-colored stripe runs from top to bottom, the so-called zip , which divides the picture into two parts.
Four of the six paintings are in American museums, the other two are in private hands.
With Onement I, Newman completely changed his painting style. He turned away from surrealism , which had dominated his work until then, and turned to meditative color field painting, to which he remained faithful until the end of his life. Together with Adolph Gottlieb , Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko , he represents the way modern American art deals with the problem of the sublime . Since Onement I, large, monochrome surfaces and vertical stripes have dominated his paintings. The strip Newman called Zip became the leitmotif of his work.
Barnett Newmann himself said in an interview
“I feel that my zip doesn't share my paintings… it does exactly the opposite: it unites the thing. He creates a whole. "
The name
Onement is a word that is no longer used in English and was first recorded around 1505–1515. It means unity , union or harmony . It is probably an adaptation of the medieval Latin adunamentum (= unit).
In the Old Testament , at-one-ment is a common term and means the state of oneness or reconciliation. In Christian theology it means the reconciliation of God with humanity through Jesus Christ. Onement also refers to the Jewish Day of At-onement , Yom Kippur .
Onement I (1948)
- Data
- 69.2 × 41.2 cm, oil on canvas
- Museum of Modern Art , New York, USA
- Link to the picture
- Provenance
Newman painted the picture on January 29, 1948, on his 43rd birthday. It belonged to Annalee Newman's collection, which it donated to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
- description
In Onement I, Newman uses the so-called zip in a picture for the first time . The vertical zip divides the area and is at the same time a connecting link between the two halves.
A rich chestnut brown in a rather thin liquid color is regularly painted over the entire surface of the picture, whereby the coarse texture of the canvas and the finer texture of the vertical tape - not exactly in the center of the picture - can be clearly distinguished. On the brown tape, a thick, pasty color mass of light orange is applied irregularly with a spatula and pressed on in individual places with the spatula or the thumb. Irregular border lines are created and the dark, monochrome background shines through in several places.
Onement I has the smallest format in the series. The Census I was later added by Newman.
Onement II (1948)
- Data
- 152.4 × 91.4 cm, oil on canvas
- Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art , Hartford, Connecticut
- Link to the picture
- Provenance
In 1967 the architect and sculptor Tony Smith donated seven paintings from his collection of American Abstract Expressionism painters to the Wadsworth Atheneum, including paintings by Jackson Pollock , Clyfford Still , Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman's Onement II.
- description
The narrow and vertical format image in red-orange is divided by a narrow zip made of reddish and thin ocher color, which allows the orange background to shine through in many places along its entire length, so that the zip barely stands out from the intensely colored base.
Onement III (1949)
- Data
- 182.5 × 84.9 cm, oil on canvas
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Link to the picture
- Provenance
From the Joseph Slifka collection
- description
The portrait format is longer than an average man. The color field in a rich and dark brown-red runs through a zip with irregular edges in a strong and high-contrast orange, the brown basic color can still be seen in several places.
Onement IV (1952)
- Data
- 84 × 97 cm, oil and casein on canvas
- Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin , Ohio
- Link to the picture
- Provenance
Acquired from an unknown donor, financed by the Fonds für Contemporary Art with endowments from the National Endowments for the Arts Museum Purchase.
- description
The smallest picture in the series Onement I has an almost square format. The black color is only applied in thin layers so that the irregularities of the linen fabric remain visible, the zip is opaque white. The image is signed and dated Barnett Newman 1952 in red ink on the reverse .
Onement V (1952)
- Data
- 152.4 × 96.5 cm, oil on canvas
- Privately owned
- Link to the picture
- Provenance
- Barnett Newman Collection
- Mr. and Mrs. Stephen D. Paine, Boston, 1962
- Harold and Hester Diamond, New York
- Annalee Newman, New York
- in the Pincus Collection since 1988
- auctioned on May 8, 2012 at Chriestie's to an unknown bidder
- description
At the top of the picture you can clearly see that the picture was primed in the blue-green color of the zip. In the two subsequent color fields, the thin, azure blue paint was applied fairly regularly, with streaks of color and cloudy darkening here and there, especially in the upper right part. By connecting the blue color to the zip, a dark contour line is formed almost continuously on both sides . A last weak application by the brush with the same blue can clearly be seen along the entire length of the zip. The picture is signed and dated Barnett Newman 1952 on the reverse .
Onement VI (1953)
- Data
- 259.1 × 304.8 cm, oil on canvas
- Privately owned
- Link to the picture
- Provenance
- Gift of Barnett Newman to Annalee Newman in New York in December 1953
- acquired in 1961 by Frederick R. Weisman, Beverly Hills, California
- acquired by the Weisman Family Collection, Richard L. Weisman, New York
- then in private collections
- Acquired in 2000 from an unnamed collector
- put up for auction by a private collector, presumably by art dealers probably by Paul Allen
- description
Onement VI is the last and largest painting in the Onement series. It is painted in a bright lapis lazuli blue, individual lighter spots appear here and there in the picture. The light, greenish-blue zip has irregular edges. They were probably caused by the fact that the blue paint was still wet when the tape that covered the already finished zip was peeled off, which allowed the blue paint to penetrate the zip.
When the picture was exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York, Newman pinned a note on the wall saying, “There is a tendency to look at large pictures from a distance. The large pictures in this exhibition are made to be viewed from a short distance. "
Onement in the art market
Abstract Expressionism images represent a narrow, closed market segment, as the number of artists and objects involved remains limited. These pictures enjoy the confidence of the buyers in steadily increasing prices and are therefore popular objects of speculation, as one can hope for high profits.
Barnett Newman himself was only able to gradually establish himself in the art market in the late 1950s, when the prices for his paintings began to rise continuously. Today his paintings, which are traded on the market, occupy top positions at auctions. In 2012, Onement V sold at Christie's for $ 22,482,500, with an estimate of $ 10 to 15 million. Onement VI was auctioned in 2013 by a previously unknown bidder at Sotheby’s for $ 43.8 million.
literature
- Barnett Newman: The first man was an artist . 1947. Excerpt
- Ellyn Childs Allison [Ed.]: Barnett Newman. A catalog raisonné. Eds. Richard Shiff, Carol C. Mancusi-Ungaro, Heidi Colsman-Freyberger. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press 2004.
- Maria Bußmann: Mysticism in non-representational painting using the example of Kasimir Malewitsch, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko . Vienna: Praesens Verl. (Applied cultural studies Vienna. 9.)
- M. Godfre: At Onement: Jewish Approaches to the Art of Barnett Newman. In: The Jewish Quarterly. Winter 2002. p. 19.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ I feel that my zip does not divide my paintings… it does the exact opposite ,: it unites the thing. It creates a totality. " Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews. Univ. of California Press 1992.
- ↑ atonement ; atonement , Oxford Dictionaries
- ↑ Atonement. In: Jewish Encyclopedia. ; [1] ; [2]
- ^ MoMA - The collection
- ↑ Susan Hodara: Wadsworth Atheneum's New Spaces for Contemporary Art in: The New York Times, January 30, 2015, accessed May 7, 2019
- ↑ Christie's, Sale 2557, Lot 24
- ↑ Bloomberg.com May 15, 2013 ; Auction catalog, Sotheby's 2013 .; [3]
- ↑ Quoted from Carol Vogel: Outsize Barnett Newman, with his Signature Zip. In: The New York Times. April 18, 2012.
- ↑ Christie's
- ^ Barnett Newman's Onement VI sets records at Sotheby’s