Peeling Back Robert W. Newmann: Narrative Portfolio
<p>Unpacking Robert W. Newmann’s portfolio requires a layered approach with equal attention paid to biography, aesthetics, and the larger art market of the 1970s to the present. These diverse methodologies intertwine to reveal the artist’s surprising rejection of the Washington Color School tradition of ethereal stained canvases in favor of the real space of large-scale installations. Literal layers—taking the form of pigment added to the canvas or inches of substrate sandblasted away—separate Newmann’s art from that of his teachers and serve as a common thread, tying together enormous shifts in practice and medium. Although each period of the artist’s oeuvre reinforces his strong attraction to the experiential, the unexpected challenges of wedding an artwork to the space around it ultimately drove Newmann to accept and embrace the unavoidable nature of the immaterial.</p>
Authors: Antonia Dapena-Tretter
Subject: Robert W. Newmann
Part of: Droste Effect Bulletins