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In making Black Fire I Newman challenged
himself to create 'the living quality of colour without the
use of colour.' The raw canvas becomes a colour in itself,
its pale light counterbalancing the heavy black. The black
is also differentiated. To the left it is dense and inert,
while the black zip to the right flows down the canvas, throwing
off a splash of paint as it goes.
The two sculptures, Here II and III,
are sleek, streamlined monuments, compared to the rough, hand-made
appearance of Newman's first sculpture. During the 1960s,
a younger group of artists emerged, whose work, described
as Minimalism, eschewed the brushy, gestural techniques of
the previous generation, and instead endorsed clean lines
and industrial materials. Newman was admired by a number of
them, including Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Robert Ryman.
Paralleling the new direction in art, these sculpted zips,
like the zips in his paintings of the late 1960s are crisper
in outline and less expressive than in earlier works.
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