Barnett Newman Quotes & Sayings

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves. — Barnett Newman

A painter is a choreographer of space. — Barnett Newman

It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way. — Barnett Newman

Painting, like passion, is a living voice, which, when I hear it, I must let it speak, unfettered. — Barnett Newman

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'. — Barnett Newman

Man's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void. — Barnett Newman

We have lost contact with man's natural desire for the exalted, for a concern with our relation to absolute emotions. — Barnett Newman

Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting. — Barnett Newman

From the very beginning I felt that I would do a series, — Barnett Newman

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 mans fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men. — Barnett Newman

I know that it is impossible to talk about my work. And since it's impossible for me or anybody else to talk about my work, I feel I might as well talk about it. — Barnett Newman

I hope that my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality. — Barnett Newman

We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image. — Barnett Newman

Aesthetics is for the artist like ornithology is for the birds. — Barnett Newman

When painters feel the need to make a shift toward self-discovery, they turn to black and white for a time. — Barnett Newman

The impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy beauty. — Barnett Newman

Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds. — Barnett Newman

The problem of a painting is physical and metaphysical, the same as I think life is physical and metaphysical. — Barnett Newman