Barnett Newman

The Promise
1949

Not on view

Date
1949

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Oil on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 51 1/2 × 68 1/8in. (130.8 × 173 cm)

Accession number
2000.338

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Adriana and Robert Mnuchin

Rights and reproductions
© Barnett Newman Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York

API
artworks/12937

The Promise was one of Newman’s earliest “zip” paintings. Begun in 1949, these works were radically abstract, with subtly inflected monochromatic backgrounds partitioned by narrow vertical bands—or zips, as the artist called them—of contrasting colors. To make The Promise, Newman laid down two strips of masking tape to demarcate the zips, and painted the ground black. He then removed the tape and painted the blue-gray stripe at the right with a palette knife, producing a textured and irregular effect. When the black paint was dry, he filled in the stripe at the left, taping off the edges to create a precisely defined zip in off-white. The juxtaposition of the two zips causes visual tension, activating the surface of the canvas. Newman believed strongly in the power of abstraction to communicate the most dramatic and elemental aspects of human existence—the sense of alienation and vulnerability that followed in the wake of World War II, as well as an abiding faith in creation and new beginnings, as suggested by the title and composition of The Promise.

Audio

Barnett Newman, The Promise, 1949

From Where We Are

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Barnett Newman, The Promise, 1949

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Narrator: This painting by Barnett Newman, The Promise, consists of a black field, one vertical line brushily painted in light gray-blue, and another vertical that is the color of raw canvas. Newman called these vertical lines “zips,” a name that suggests they’re more like actions than things. And in fact, Newman was primarily interested in the way the zips divide the canvas and reorient its centers of gravity. He was less interested in the appearance of the lines themselves.
Newman once said “If we could describe the art of this, the first half of the twentieth century, in a sentence, it would read as the search for something to paint.” The zip paintings were his solution to this problem, and he continued making them from 1948 until his death. His intention was that they would not be pictures or interpretations of anything outside of themselves. Instead, they would create a completely new perceptual experience every time a viewer looked at the painting.
This idea—that painting could be an origin of experience—was extremely important to Newman. He was obsessed with ideas of genesis and original creation. His ambition for each painting was that it be like a world created entirely anew.