Achilles

1952

Barnett Newman

Artist, American, 1905 - 1970

A broad swath of brilliant, crimson-red paint sweeps down from the top edge of this canvas to fill most of this abstract, vertical composition. The sides of the red field are straight, and the bottom edge is irregular. The red is mottled and streaked. The areas to each side of the red field and along the bottom of the canvas are coffee brown. A slender drip of the brown has fallen down the red area, near the right bottom corner. The artist signed and dated the painting near the lower right corner of the red field: “Barnett Newman 1952.”
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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.

On View

NGA, East Building, EU-407-B, S

Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Annalee Newman; gift 1988 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1971

  • Barnett Newman, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Grand Palais, Paris, 1971-1972, no. 37 (New York catalogue), no. 31 (European catalogues), repro. in European catalogues.

1981

  • American Abstract Expressionists, Edinburgh International Festival, 1981, no. 30, repro.

1991

  • Art for the Nation: Gifts in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1991, unnumbered catalogue, color repro.

1996

  • Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996, no. 127, repro.

1997

  • Barnett Newman: Bilder - Skulpturen - Graphik, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 1997, no. 10, fig. 53.

2002

  • Barnett Newman, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Tate Modern, London, 2002-2003, pl. 55.

2007

  • Declaring Space: Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2007-2008, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2014

  • Make it New: Abstract Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, 1950-1975, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 2014, no. 3, repro.

Bibliography

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 243, repro.

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 267, repro.

1997

  • Zweite, Armin. Barnett Newman: Bilder, Skulpturen, Graphik, Exh. cat. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein - Westfalen Düsseldorf, 1997, no. 53, repro.

Inscriptions

lower right: Barnett Newman 1952

Wikidata ID

Q20194498

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