Barnett Newman's Writings Finally Published in French

More than twenty years after the American edition, Barnett Newman's collected essays, articles, statements, and interviews have been published in French by Éditions Macula, translated by Jean-Louis Houdebine. The volume includes a massive critical apparatus by editor Jean Clay, adding some 250 pages of notes, as well as a dossier on Newman's sculpture and republications of texts by Yve-Alain Bois, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Suzanne Penn, and Pierre Schneider. The book follows the structure and introductions of John P. O'Neill, who prepared the American edition with the help of Newman's widow. Newman, who died in 1970, was a key figure in American abstraction, known for his concept of the 'zip' and his emphasis on the sublime. The writings reveal his anarchist politics, his critique of the American Scene movement, and his reflections on art after Hiroshima. The publication was long delayed, but now offers French readers access to Newman's lucid and paradoxical thinking.