NOTES FROM ART HISTORY: ( • open document*
Carter Ratcliff. “Newman’s Perennial Now.” Art in America, 2002.
Prepared by Katy Crocker for Parenthesis on 13 AUGUST 2026
*This document is considered an “open document,” because its construction is a research notetaking format, which allows for follow-up and changes. Below, I’m working from the 2006 version of the book, though there are references to earlier publications. Footnotes appear at the end of the page with external links and are highlighted throughout in purple.
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Selected Words and Phrases:
“zips” (98)
“proto-Minimalist” (99)
“world of selves” (99)
“self-reliance” (99)
“freedom” (99)
“terror in selfhood” (99)
“thrust and counterthrust” (101)
“suprahuman absolute” (102)
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Quotations, annotated:
1.
“Newman ushers us into a perennial now” (96).
Perennial reminds of plants and flowers, which may register as an appropriate metaphor given Newman’s collection of books on botany.[*] But the “perennial now” speaks of time, recurrent in its presence. Perennials recur and maybe Newman wanted his paintings to exist in a state of continuous re-emergence, transcendent perhaps, everlasting in their importance and ability to give the viewer a fresh experience. Or, as Ratcliff was getting at, Newman’s desire to continuously place the viewer in present moment and there’s something New Age about that idea. Also, Ratcliff used this phrase (echoing title of the article) to indicate that the exhibition presented itself asynchronously (as in, not chronologically, or with a clear storyline and intermittently between older galleries of 19th century French masters). (The exhibition review was for the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s retrospective of Newman in 2002, curated by Ann Temkin.)
Returning the individual to the painting in front of him, in this case Ratcliff, and also to the present moment, or his own body in spacetime probably also relates to the proto-Minimalist label that Ratcliff mentions while wanting to temper Newman’s associations with the Abstract Expressionists. Preferring to provoke the viewer toward an embodied experience rather than paintings that ask to be read like a story with subjects represented in a narrative way and that stimulate the mind per se, allows for the Minimalist reference. Ratcliff also wants to upset the “proto-Minimalist” label a bit, too, because that leaves out Newman’s social and political ambitions, which is where the words: “world of selves” (“citizens”), “self-reliance,” “freedom,” and “equality” are mentioned.
This is precisely the sort of criticism that Elkins surveys in his book What Happened to Art Criticism?, published a year after Ratcliff’s review, also archived on this website. “Carter Ratcliff,” as a type of critic, is mentioned under Elkins’s heading “poetic art criticism,” because Ratcliff is also a poet and as Elkins describes it (among other critics mentioned like Ratcliff) aim for “writing that is interesting in and for itself,” which he calls “an admirable goal,” however ultimately inadequate as the total goal of art criticism (50).[†] (Lynne Tillman is coming to mind, who isn’t mentioned in Elkins’s book. I think to say that, in this case, something literary, or poetic has the potential to be taken further in this particular piece by Ratcliff, and maybe within the concept of poetic art criticism in general. In other words, in this article, I find Ratcliff sticks closely with the style of art reviews that are mostly journalistic in nature.)
It’s also worth noting that Ratcliff revisited this article recently in a Substack entry, called “‘The Self, Terrible and Constant’” A Note on the Art of Barnett Newman.”[‡]
2.
“[Newman] believed that, properly understood, his art would be a force for social good” (98).
It isn’t made explicitly clear how Newman thought his work could accomplish this task, except that Ratcliff mentions the 1968 police riot in Chicago during the Democratic Convention that prompted him to make Lace Curtain for Mayor Daley, which was apparently an “outright political” piece, whereas his others are “implicitly political” (99). If references to his political writings determine the political message of his works, then perhaps the writings might have to be read alongside his paintings.[§] (Aside from the 1990 collected writings of Newman, the Smithsonian has an archive of his papers, as well, from 1943-1971, which must be accessed on site).[**] Otherwise, the idea of inferred political messages falls to looser notions of American ideals of “freedom,” and “equality,” which Ratcliff mentions, also Newman’s concept of the individuated self as a political ideal of freedom, using phrases like “self-created individuality,” “self-reliance,” and “self-sufficiency,” all somewhat belonging to the larger American myth of rugged individualism as opposed to freedom being generated through belonging to a group in a uniform manner (understanding these aspects of Newman’s ideas would require a deeper investigation into his writings, which apparently are numerous, as per the Smithsonian’s archives, and O’Neill’s book, footnotes below). But, again, I wouldn’t say Ratcliff clarifies these sorts of nuances, leaving it rather open-ended. He does mention that Newman sees the end result of the ultimate individuated (American-style) freedom as terrifying to some degree—referencing Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” as “tragic” to Newman, and leaves me a wondering how to reconcile clearly Newman’s ideas of selfhood.
3.
“The viewer is to come close, so close that the field of color reaches past the limits of vision” (98).
Helpful, straightforward viewing instructions for Newman’s paintings. Then, the question of an immersive experience of color emerges. Concepts of immersion in general, and I find Newman’s famous “zips,” then, may standout more as refrains in a song, or otherwise jarring transitions, taking the color out of its all-over effect during the “zip” intervals. Music was a passion for Newman (based on his foundation’s website, footnote below). Ratcliff makes sure to mention this when referring to his “Cantos,” in which Newman himself writes about “‘each canto add[ing] its song to the full chorus’” (98). This gets at his notions of individuality and society also.
4.
“Thus I find my way to the subject of Newman’s art, which he described as ‘the self, terrible and constant’” (98).
Back to the idea of terror and the self: elsewhere was captured as “terror in selfhood” (99), which Ratcliff says Newman feels because, “Though freedom was crucial to everything he valued, Newman understood that it often leads the individual into isolation, or worse” (99). Hm. It stands out that there’s a difference between individuality and freedom and those concepts aren’t worked through here, so I’m reticent to imagine how Newman would’ve thought of them, but the difference seems important (and, maybe, also to Newman’s work it is important). I wonder what is “worse” than “isolation” for Newman; no ideas are given, just that isolation, and whatever may be worse than that, are aspects of the terrifying journey into freedom, which relates to the rest of the selfhood concepts mentioned in the article, (which I’ll repeat): “self-created individuality,” “self-reliance,” and “self-sufficiency,” and I’ll add, which wasn’t mentioned in the article (but seems fitting for the time): self-actualization.
If the subject of the work is the terrible self, maybe it is worth a deeper investigation into the differences regarding Newman’s handling of those ideas and terms relative to his social and political notions of freedom.
5.
“…Newman in his esthetic maturity painted the same painting over and over” (98).
“For Newman, the promised land was America, though he was frank in acknowledging that many of its promises had not been kept. Still, he accepted the American idea—Jacksonian or Emersonian, as you wish—that freedom is not for nations or peoples, not for social classes or interest groups, but for individuals conceived apart from those larger entities” (99).
Mostly (besides also reminding me of the Albers’s escaping Nazism, and as immigrants instilling renewed meaning to the best of American ideas), this quote also stands tall as a fundamentally Modernist priority. The monolithic, sort of disruptive, radical power of ultimate individuality—the overall excitement that originality could sincerely breakthrough old paradigms and free us.
I chose this quote to highlight “promised land.” The phrase can relate to the American Dream, of course, a bloody and unjust concept in historical terms (and, violence and intolerance which persists throughout the history of migration in the US), but also leans into some of the spiritual undertones of Newman’s work that Ratcliff mentions, too, because, in this specific instance, it refers directly to Newman’s parents, who were Zionists; but for Newman, he relocated this Judeo-Christian concept of refuge to the United States as a committed first-generation Polish New Yorker.
Ratcliff sees Newman as *not* making spiritual statements with his work despite his religious and mythological titles, which, as stated, reference his Jewish upbringing among other things. (I’m imaging that Ratcliff arrives at this conclusion from reading Newman’s writings, which he mentions throughout the article, and I have no reason to find this inaccurate, regardless of the sort of experience a viewer may have when viewing them, which may be spiritual. Although the titles do confuse the notion of intent from the artist.)
I also wanted to bring up important social notions of increasing individualism as it relates to the way that Habermas interprets Modernism. I’m specifically thinking of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Habermas, originally published in German in 1962.[††]
6.
“American painters, [Newman] declared, must reinvent the very premises of their medium” (99-100).
This, again, references the Modern American painters of the New York School—Modernism in America, of which Newman was part at its height (1940s and 50s), living and working in New York. (This is a good, short video of Newman speaking on his art.)[‡‡] Most of what I’d note about that, related to this article, I’ve mentioned above. But briefly, the emphasis on complete reinvention echoes the Modernist impulse and does do some conceptual work to counteract Ratcliff’s idea that Newman doesn’t fit well with the Abstract Expressionists. (But, these are notes, not arguments—so I’ll avoid deepening a position here, though one could be made that Newman fits unwaveringly within the Abstract Expressionist cohort.)
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FOOTNOTES
[*] The Barnett Newman Foundation website: http://www.barnettnewman.org/archives/library
[†] Elkins, James. What Happened to Art Criticism? Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.
[‡] Ratcliff, Carter. “‘The Self, Terrible and Constant’” A Note on the Art of Barnett Newman,” Substack. March 4, 2025. https://carterratcliff.substack.com/p/the-self-terrible-and-constant-a.
[§] O’Neill, John P., ed. Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews. University of California Press, 1990.
[**] Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Barnett Newman papers, 1943-1971. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/barnett-newman-papers-5720.
[††] Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. MIT, 1989 (in English).
[‡‡] “Barnett Newman speaks about his Art.” KunstSpektrum. March 5, 2014. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2c0h1wnxf0.