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Barnett Newman (artist) American, 1905 - 1970 Achilles, 1952 oil and acrylic resin on canvas overall: 241.6 x 201 x 5.7 cm (95 1/8 x 79 1/8 x 2 1/4 in.) Gift of Annalee Newman, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art 1988.57.5 Not on View |
Barnett Newman is best known for the monumental paintings he began making in the late 1940s which incorporate unified fields of color that have been demarcated into zones by vertical, or occasionally, horizontal, stripes the artist called "zips." The zip was a compositional fulcrum, a source of movement, division, and measurement, as well as a carrier of often metaphysical meaning.
Achilles presents an unusual composition for Newman, for the central element has been expanded from a zip to a broad swath of brilliant red paint that sweeps down the canvas and ends in an irregular, jagged edge. The exterior straight-edged bands of blackish-brown color, which Newman painted after the red, are for the most part uniform and deeply opaque. In contrast, the red is sensuously modulated, having been deftly applied with broad sweeps of the brush that permit the white priming to remain visible throughout. Intensely radiant, the hot red tonality contrasts sharply with the dark perimeter and seems to advance optically.
It was not unusual for Newman to use titles from the Bible or Greek mythology. He likened the "red and fiery" shape in Achilles to a shield, presumably referring to the armor made for the hero of Homer's Iliad in the volcanic workshop of Hephaestus, the patron of metallurgy and god of fire.