“The new painter owes the abstract artist a debt for giving him his language, but the new painting is concerned with a new type of abstract thought... He [the new painter] is declaring that the art of Western Europe is voluptuous art first, an intellectual art by accident. He is reversing the situation by declaring that art is an expression of the mind first and whatever sensuous elements are involved are incidental to that expression. The new painter is therefore the true revolutionary, the real leader who is placing the artist's function on its rightful plane of the philosopher and the pure scientist who is exploring the world of ideas, not the world of the senses.... so the artist is today giving us a vision of the world of truth in terms of visual symbols.”

—  Barnett Newman

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 2. 1943-1945, p. 127

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Barnett Newman25
American artist 1905–1970

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