p. 127
“

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

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "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." in the context of "p. 127" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "Barnett Newman" (1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 2. 1943-1945: Quotes of Barnett Newman, from 'The Plasmic Image' 1943-1945; as cited in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Barnett Newman

About Barnett Newman

Barnett Newman (29 January 1905 – 4 July 1970) was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the Color Field painters.