The Stations of the Cross - Lema Sabachthani

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The Stations of the Cross - Lema Sabachthani, National Gallery of Art

The Stations of the Cross - Lema Sabachthani is a cycle of 14 paintings by the American painter Barnett Newman , which were created between 1958 and 1966.

The cycle was first exhibited in New York's Guggenheim Museum in 1966 , which was also Barnett Newman's first solo exhibition in a museum. Today the pictures are on loan from Robert and Jane Meyerhoff in a separate room at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Another painting with the title Be II has always been shown together with the cycle since the Guggenheim exhibition.

Data

Be II
Barnett Newman
Link to the picture
(Please note copyrights )

14 pictures, 1958 - 1966,
198 × 152 cm, oil paint, magna or acrylic paint on canvas
Be II, 198 × 152 cm, 1961
National Gallery of Art , Washington DC, Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection

history

In 1958, Newman suffered a heart attack. In February 1958, soon after his release from the hospital, he created an image that he later station I called. It was the first of a cycle conceived by Newman, but not fixed from the outset to 14 pictures. With the dimensions 198 × 152 cm, the picture is about the size of a grown man. It is painted on rough, unprimed canvas . A black-spotted stripe runs vertically in the right third of the white paint surface, which was painted monochrome with oil paint - the zip typical of Newman's work since 1948 , the left side of the picture is closed off by a zip in pure black. This picture was followed in quick succession by two more pictures in the same format, also with the reduced palette of white and black, which differ only in the type, width and arrangement of the respective zips. Only with the fourth picture did the series get its name The Stations of the Cross - Lema Sabachthani . Newman worked on the series for about eight years, with longer breaks.

In 1966, the cycle was first publicly exhibited in a separate room in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was supplemented by another picture with the title B II . In this picture, the white color field is closed off by a narrow red-orange and a black zip at its two outer edges. This picture has been an integral part of the Stations of the Cross cycle since the exhibition in 1966. From June 7 to October 12, 2014, the de Young Museum in San Francisco is showing the cycle within the exhibition Modernism from the National Gallery of Art: The Robert & Jane Meyerhoff Collection in a separate room, just as Barnett Newman requested. who has always considered these fifteen pictures as one work.

Interpretations

Newman himself has repeatedly expressed himself orally in interviews and in writing, which apparently so obviously relates to the Christian Way of the Cross with its fourteen stations and the words of Jesus on the cross - the Aramaic Lema Sabachthani .

In a text for the American art magazine ARTnews from May 1966, however, he emphasized that the work was not commissioned by any church and that it was not about church art in the conventional sense. Rather, the pictures are about passion, the question of human suffering. "Why did you leave me? Why leave me [...] This question, which does not ask for an answer, is very old - it has existed since Jesus - since Abraham - since Adam - it is the original question in general. ”Just as the Passion of Christ is not a series of anecdotes, but comprises a single event, so The 14 paintings together formed a complete statement on a single theme, even if each individual stands for itself and is unique in its immediacy. “The cry Lema - the why - that is the passion, and that is what I am in these paintings tried to pull out. "

Barnett Newman's writings

  • Barnett Newman: Writings and Interviews. 1925-1970 . From the americ. by Taracisius Schebert. Bern, Berlin: Gachnang & Springer 1990. ISBN 3-906127-47-8 . In this:
The Stations of the Cross, Lema Sabachthani . In: Newsweek . May 9, 1966. p. 100.
The Fourteen Stations of The Cross. 1958-1966. In: ARTnews. 66. No. April 2, 1967. p. 29.
A conversation: Barnett Newman and Thomas B. Hess . 1966.

literature

  • Barnett Newman: The Stations of the Cross: Lema sabachtani . Exhibition catalog. With contributions by Lawrence Alloway and Barnett Newman. New York: Guggenheim Museum 1966.
Inside: Lawrence Alloway : "The Stations of the Cross and the Subjects of the Artist." Pp. 11-16.
  • Franz Meyer : Barnett Newman: The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachthani. Richter & Fey 2004. ISBN 978-3-93380769-4
  • Gabriele Schor : Barnett Newman. The print. 1961-1969 . Stuttgart: Hatje 1996. ISBN 3-7757-0609-7 . In it: The Stations of the Cross, Lema Sabachtani. Pp. 294-295
  • Martin Roman Deppner: The stations of the cross - a Judeo-Christian dialogue in art. Marc Chagall and Barnett Newman . In: The Image of God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. 2009.
  • Barnett Newman: a catalog raisonné. Eds. Richard Shiff, Barnett Newman, et al. a. New York: Yale Univ. Press. 2006.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Stations of the Cross = engl. Way of the Cross ; Lema Sabachthani = Aramaic Why did you leave me?
  2. ^ De Young - Modernism from the National Gallery of Art: The Robert & Jane Meyerhoff Collection
  3. ↑ Mk 15.34  EU ; Mt 27.46  EU
  4. ↑ ARTnews 65. No. 3, May 1966. pp. 26-28.
  5. ^ Barnett Newman: The Stations of the Cross, Lema Sabachthami . In: Newsweek . May 9, 1966, p. 100.
  6. ↑ Newman in ArtNews, May 3, 1966. S. 27th
  7. ↑ Newman 65th in artnews no. 3 May 1966. P. 27.