Of course they have. It’s worth so much because someone is willing to pay that much. That’s what “being worth” something means.
By what sane standard is this “innovative”? You are aware that people have been painting rectangles of solid colour for a long fucking time, yes?
Yep, folks sure are interested in having an open minded discussion. Uh-huh.
At the time of responding, I had one answer. Which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I still think a blue wall in a museum would evoke a response much more based on the fact that it had been thought worthy of being put up in a museum, not because of any intrinsic worth. Since so many people since then say seeing it in person is important, I happily concede that seeing paintings in person is important. You seem to have seen reproductions of this particular painting that affected you. Would you care to tell me why you thought a blue rectangle with a white stripe across the center is beautiful and thought-provoking?
To provide an example of what I’m saying, I’ve seen classical art that I liked, but I can tell you what impressed me about it. There may be an unusually well captured expression, a hue of the sky, a crazy good still life. Any number of things that speak about the talent and creative drive that went into the painting. Visible IN the painting. This painting - its sort of like a book which is blank except for one word in the middle. And that word is “The”.
You don’t seem to be interested in having a discussion at all, only in pointing out that other people aren’t. Do step up.
Hey, 44 million dollars is cheap for the reassurance that your fine new robes are, in fact, covering up Grand Imperial Majesty Junior.
Yeah…no shit. I think we all understand the definition of “worth”.
The question is what makes people believe this painting is worth millions when to the untrained observer, it just appears to be a big blue square with a white racing stripe.
What’s a long time? As I pointed out, a lot of these big blocks of color paintings are from 60 years ago.
I mean I don’t really get it either. But I suppose because this particular piece represents an important artist from a particular artistic movement, I guess there is a lot of hype around it.
Sure - color field paintings are big and kinda hypnotic. When you are in the same room and looking at the painting, you can…“lose yourself” in one in a pretty cool way.
It really is that simple - at the time these paintings were created, paintings were expected to be “of something” more than they were supposed to trigger your eyes and brain in hypnotic ways. Abstract Expressionism was controversial then and now because it was trying to show that painting could try to achieve something different.
As for $44 million, value, etc. - please acknowledge that this is an extreme example. With art and collectibles at the far end of price ranges, someone with money and passion clearly feels it is worth it…
It is easy to, I don’t know, “get offended” - but this is just an extreme example of choices each of us make every day where we pay a premium for some things and go for the cheapest example for others. Welcome to capitalism and the human condition.
No, this guy was one of the first. You’re quite welcome to dislike this painting, or this whole style, but saying it’s worthless because you don’t understand it is the worst kind of wilful ignorance.
Because it’s important, and it’s unique, and the purchaser expects it to hold it’s value.
The middle one - the fact that, like all paintings, it’s a one-off - is the reason paintings are, in general, more valuable than other works of art. Music and literature are designed to be duplicated, paintings aren’t.
$44 million dollars for that. It makes me feel…incredible sadness, even despair.
Yeah, I’m not going to play this game where we pretend “I think this sucks. Prove me wrong” isn’t a dishonest premise.
I’m not going to prove you wrong. Art appreciation is subjective. There’s no proving that one person’s response is right and another is wrong. So, I’m not going to invest any meaningful effort into proving that the work has artistic merit. Why is it meaningful to me? I’ve never seen it. I’m not about to expound upon the deeply felt effect I’ve experienced from a piece of art I’ve never seen, that would just be bullshit posturing the likes of which the “Art should look like stuff” contingent want to insist amounts to the sum total of any “appreciation” of abstract art.
I’ve stood in front of paintings that have evoked a strong emotional response from me while the painting hanging right next to it stirs absolutely nothing in me. The emotion may have nothing to do with the artist’s intent whatsoever. The person standing next to me is probably connecting to the piece in a completely different way. The abstract opens up a broad range of experiences that far surpass “the artist wanted me to experience a puppy, so he painted a puppy.”
A person’s emotional response to a painting can lead to self reflection, stir up powerful memories, challenge beliefs, raise questions. One person can at age 20 view a painting and experience a challenge or an insight into a truth, then that same person can view the same painting at age 40 and be stirred to something completely different, then view it at age 60 and experience yet another response.
Some paintings will do this for one or two people while everyone else passes by without taking notice. Other paintings will evoke a strong response from 100 or 1,000 or 10,000,000 different people. These paintings will gain recognition for such wide reaching impact precisely because such an impact is rare. For one person to create multiple works that each achieve such impact is something most artists can only ever dream of.
“Why is this worth $44M?” is also a meaningless question. It’s not. There is nothing of any intrinsic monetary value about the layering of paint upon this or any other canvass.
Despite all your insistence that the value be attributed only to what is in the painting, fact of the matter is that the artist himself as well as the historic context of the work is extremely significant. Barnett Newman’s work has touched millions of people and the reason why will never be tabulated in a checklist of “Why Painting A is better than Painting B”. He put his own emotion, perspective, truth, and sense of self into his work. He put all that into mixing his colors to the precise hue that spoke to him (or did you think he just opened a can or Behr blue from Home Depot?), he put his own unique sensibilities into the rhythms of his brushstrokes, the texture to which he built the layers of paint, the balance of the composition- why doesn’t the line through the blue field go through the center? Why isn’t the line straight edged on either side like the borders of the blue field?
Nothing about any of this makes the painting good- it all just makes the painting uniquely his. And his paintings are recognized as important because his paintings have evoked an emotional response from multitudes of people from all walks of life in a way that has transcended decades whereas the paintings of a million artists whose names will never be remembered have not made any comparable impact.
So, you can insist that any validation of this work prove that a value of $44M can be found in the painting itself but I will continue to dismiss your opinion as nonsense. The fact that it is a work by Barnett Newman will forever be the primary criterion for its monetary value. Newman’s work has had a profound effect on so many who have experienced it and the only way to experience the work is to actually experience the physical work. Publishers can print off a million copies of Huckleberry Finn every year for a millions years- that is not something that can be done with a painting. The number of Barnett Newman paintings that exist is finite, and each one is unique.
The $44M is for the privilege of stewardship. It’s a vision, owing to the number of people who have been moved by Newman’s work over the decades, that 100 years from now there may be a young person who will stand in front of this painting and experience something, be touched, recognize something about herself, and say “Jesus Christ! I am fucking feeling something, ergo sum!”
Or, it’s just “a painting of two rectangles”, since we all know that anyone who appreciates an abstract work of art is just feebly trying to project a façade that will convince people they are smart.
Serious(ish) question from me. Just above halfway down the painting it looks like the artist fucked up a bit and didn’t keep his colour within the lines. On both sides, too, with more wobbles towards the top. Was that deliberate, or was he just so slapdash he didn’t give a shit?
My own take is that the worth of art like this is almost wholly about “who you know”. If you, as an artist, manage to get yourself into the right social circles and have a rich collector buy some of your work, then your work suddenly becomes “important” and so the snowball effect can begin. Soon you won’t even have to create your work yourself: you can just employ “assistants” to do variations on a theme and sit in a back room counting the cash, like Damien Hirst with his dots, very few of which were ever done by him personally.
Don’t get me wrong: I quite like it aesthetically. It’s a nice colour. But I don’t call anything I could create a pretty exact copy of myself “art”, because I know I am rubbish at art. If I can do it, it’s not worth money.
Edit: amusingly, either Wikipaintings or the guys in the OP have got that painting upside down. That link shows the wobbly bits towards the bottom of the canvas; on the NY Times picture they’re to the top.
I missed bienville’s post addressing the fact that the edges of the white line are not straight. I still reckon I could come up with a similarly wobbly edge, though. 
Newman was not really appreciated in his time, so if he sought to paint plain rectangles for beaucoup bucks, you’d think he’d have moved on to something more lucrative instead.
You actually believe this? That the art of painting solid rectangles of colour with household paints wasn’t discovered until the 20th century? Hell, even if you do, Dulux has been doing it since Pollock was six.
Understand which one, the painting, or the sycophants?
I have been a fine art appraiser for over 14 years. I have appraised a number of abstract art works, including color field art, and including Barnett Newman’s work.
A little bit of background:
Onement 1 is considered Newman’s breakthrough work. He finished it on his birthday in 1948. It’s currently in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Like this work it has two fields of the same color interrupted by a “zip” (Newman’s term) down the middle. The original zip was ragged and not nearly as pristine as this one. It doesn’t matter if it’s pristine: Newman’s a color field artist not a hard-edge artist.
This is the sixth in the series. These are considered his most valuable works. Most of Newman’s work sells in the range of $20,000-$100,000. Onement 5 sold at Christie’s in New York on May 8, 2012 for $22.5 Million. The color fields were a darker blue, and the zip was a different shade and intensity of blue. The zip in Onement 6 is white, giving more contrast, thus, believe it or not, upping the value.
The idea he’s presenting here (and it works better with a bigger painting than a smaller one), is that you are the zip and the fields represent life and the world trying to wear you down, assimilate you, make you less than you are. And that can fray you at times (which is why the line’s not perfect). Kurt Vonnegut explains Barnett Newman’s art in a similar fashion in a couple of his books (but I don’t recall which ones right now). In the late 1940’s through the 1960’s the alienation this represents was a major theme in art.
Still don’t like it? Fine. Part of the deal with the Modern Art crowd is that the everyday masses aren’t supposed to like it. You have to be one of the cognoscenti, the in-crowd, and possess superior aesthetic sense to like it. Anybody can like a painting of mountains at sunset, but those in the know will like a white line on a blue background even more. The Nouveau Riche, who want to appear as if they have this aesthetic even when they don’t, will let themselves be led by art buyers who are supposed to understand this.
Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes the emperor has no clothes.
I hope this helps.
Awesome summation, Professor.
When does one know which is which?
This is a lovely and proper post.
Art is by its very nature subjective. I like the piece in the article. Certainly not enough to pay $44 million even if I had a spare $44 million to spare, but I think it’s a nice enough piece.
I very much have this view on art, though: if it makes you react, it’s done its job*. Even if your reaction is to say WTF is that and who would pay $44 million for it? Perhaps if you consider the entire transaction as part of the art it might help.
*Which definitely opens my mind to many different genres of art.
ETA: The Professor’s post was pretty darn good, too.
Study art history. Find out who is important because he contributed to the expansion of the visual medium, and who is merely talented and apeing the styles and manners of others. Newman’s zip counts as a contribution, but it’s not enought to make him as big a name as Ellsworth Kelly or Piet Mondrian.
Oh, and works done earlier in the artist’s ouevre are usually more desirable than later: Picasso, at the end of his life, was paid by art dealers just to sign his name on blank pages, and other artists would come in and fill them in with Picasso-esque imagery.