VIR HEROICUS SUBLIMIS
BARNETT NEWMAN, 1950
Holy shit. Look how big this thing is. That’s not a joke. That’s the point. You don’t ease into this painting. It takes over your vision before your brain has time to decide how it feels. So here’s your first job. Step closer. Closer than feels right. When Newman showed this in 1951, he put a note on the gallery wall. It basically said: people have a tendency to look at big paintings from far away. Don’t. These are meant to be seen up close. Which is a wild instruction for a painting almost eight feet tall and eighteen feet wide. But he meant it. He wanted the red to keep going past the edges of your vision. Then there are the lines. Newman called them zips. They give your body something to measure itself against. Almost like doorways. Without them, the red might just keep going. Which sounds peaceful until you’re standing in it. A couple of years earlier, he’d written an essay called The Sublime Is Now. Forget pretty, basically. He wanted the big stuff. Awe. Terror. The cliff. The storm. That feeling where, for one second, your regular little personality is no longer running the meeting. And the title is Latin. Vir Heroicus Sublimis. Man, heroic and sublime. Not heroic like a statue on a horse. More like one person standing in front of something enormous with absolutely nothing to hide behind. Now, his first solo show opened in January 1950. Critics tore it apart. Somebody vandalized one of the paintings right there in the gallery. Only one painting sold. After the gallery took its cut, Newman cleared eighty-four dollars and fourteen cents. He was six days from turning forty-five. Not some art-school kid trying to upset his parents. Then he came back the next year with this. Eighteen feet of red. Man, heroic and sublime. Hard not to wonder if he meant himself. Then again, he’s the one who told you to stand this close. So stay there. See how long it takes before you start looking for a way out.