Chartres and Jericho

by Barnett Newman

Studio International, February 1970, Vol. 179, No. 919

In the spring of 1967, when the steel was being cut for the four triangles that make up the pyramidal half of my Broken Obelisk, I became intrigued – intrigued is a better word than inspired – with the triangle as a possible format for painting. It was at that moment that I ‘saw’ paintings on the huge sheets of steel. Later that year I had some stretchers made for two triangles and the challenge of the triangular format began for me.

I must explain that the triangle had no interest for me either as a shape in itself or because it has become stylish to use shaped canvas. After all, I had done the so-called ‘shaped canvases’ or what is more correct in my case, ‘no-shape’ canvases, as far back as 1950. What I wanted to do was find out whether or not the triangle could function for me pragmatically as an object and whether it could also act as a vehicle for a subject. Could I do a painting on the triangle that would overcome the format and at the same time assert it? Could it become a work of art and not a thing?

I knew that if I conformed to the triangle I would end up with either a graphic design or an ornamental image. I had to transform the shape into a new kind of totality.

In a sense this was no different a problem than the rectangle except that the triangle brings back into painting physical perspective with its three vanishing points. How to do a painting without getting trapped by its shape or by the perspective was the challenge here. It was only when I realized that the triangle is just a truncated rectangle that I was able to get away from its vanishing points. I knew that I must assert its shape, but in doing so I must make the shape invisible or shape-less. I realized that after all it is nothing more than a slice of space, a 'space vehicle', which the painter gets into and then has to get out of. It was this drama, my involvement in the existence of the triangle as an object and my need to destroy it as an object, that made it possible for me to begin painting them. After all, format as format can be a trap.

I called one painting Chartres because of the strong assertion of my inner structure in contrast with the outside format and because of the even light in the painting which has for me the evenness of Northern light – a light without shadows.

The title Jericho explains itself.