‘Vir Heroicus Sublimus’ (Man, Heroic and Sublime) by Barnett Newman.
Birth of a new sublime?
“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt”
― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason‘What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against man’s fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.’’
— Barnett Newman
Before I begin my deconstruction and then a reconstruction of this work by the abstract expressionist Barnett Newman I must confess. It seems very appropriate in front of this image. I have never seen this painting in situ.
My analysis is based upon the reproduced image and my assertions upon comments made by those who have seen it up close, and personal. There is of course a difference, for a mediated image does not have the same effect and affect as the immediacy and authenticity of the unmediated in whatever medium.
But, as I will argue, much of this effect and affect of Vir Heroicus Sublimus is not necessarily a product directly of sensation but of pure cognition and…
