Claude Minière's Poetic Essay on Barnett Newman's Edenic Return

In the essay-fiction 'Claude Minière, Barnett Newman, retour vers l'Éden,' published by Tarabuste, poet Claude Minière approaches the life and work of American painter Barnett Newman (1905-1970) not as an art theorist but as a poet lending his voice and thought to Newman's oeuvre. The narrative is meant to be read as a fertile alliance between poetry and painting, orienting Newman's work—and implicitly Minière's own—toward 'the path the artist invented, what is most important and most difficult to grasp,' i.e., a metaphysics of art. Minière highlights Newman's journey from painting to painting as a return to Eden, where the painter asserts that the first man is an artist. Against a jealous god, the painting declares space as present, sensitive, and open, challenging concepts of interiority and exteriority. Works such as 'Day before One,' 'Day One,' 'Ulysses,' and 'Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue IV' are presented concretely. Color-space reveals a plane without background, opening onto 'the beating heart of space,' pure time of presence. Newman's painting projects a new apprehension of Being, of the here and now, restoring the individual's link to self and the divine. Minière's account illuminates the secret of Newman's painting, recalling that art brings to light a deep, inner chaos and elevates it to a luminous order. The review is written by Brigitte Donat.