PHILOSOPHY OF ART

CONTRA FORMALIS
‣ Newman opposes all kinds of formalism in
art.
‣ So he says the following about his famous
Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue
(1967/1968): “Just as I had confronted other
dogmatic positions of the purists, neoplasticists
and other formalists, I was now in
confrontation with their dogma, which had
reduced red, yellow and blue into an ideadidact,
or at best had made them
pittoresque. Why give in to these purists and
formalists who have put a mortgage on red,
yellow and blue, transforming these colors
into an idea that destroys them as colors? I
had therefore, the double incentive of using
these colors to express what I wanted to do
of making these colors expressive rather
than didactic, and of freeing them form the
mortgage. Why should anybody be afraid of
red, yellow and blue? www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QnrXJghoU