Barnett Newman

Barnett Newman was a man of grand ideas and even grander canvases, an artist so serious he ran for mayor of New York City on a cultural platform. He didn't just paint; he philosophized in color, creating vast fields of it bisected by his signature "zips." These weren't just stripes; they were profound statements on existence. A late bloomer, he destroyed his early work, deciding to "paint as if painting never existed before." Rumor has it that his self-mythologizing was so strong that when a fact-checker questioned a story he told, a friend advised, "If that's the way Barney remembers it, then that's the way to write it." He was a man about town, so much so that Andy Warhol quipped, "Barney would attend the opening of an envelope." Newman's work could provoke visceral reactions, sometimes even vandalism, but he remained a pivotal figure of Abstract Expressionism.