THE WHOLE SPACE

Can you think about space without thinking about form?  That is to ask, can space be defined without enclosure and boundaries?

Barnett Newman, an important abstract expressionist artist working in the mid 50’s, gave us this to ponder per that question:

“…Instead of using outlines, instead of making shapes or setting off space, my drawing declares the space. Instead of working with the remnants of space, I work with the whole space.”  1.

The whole space. The declaration of space.  Newman’s focus was not form making. It was instead a focus on implied space making.  Via drawings on pieces of paper.

Barnett Newman considered drawings as crucial to his working method.  And given his penchant for a single straight line to shape space, (what has been dubbed the “zip,”) it is unclear if the space he is talking about is the space on the two dimensional piece of paper, or a more three dimensional space.  Or he might have been thinking about the space that his drawings imply.  Or he might have been talking about simply the area, or space, on a piece of paper.

Whatever he was thinking about, it was not about problem solving enclosures and forms.  Can we show space without form on our papers?   Whether we can or can’t does not concern us.  We are not interested in implied space.  Yet it is meaningful to simply think about space without form as we draw.

This brief look into Newman’s approach provides contrast between the mind of an artist and the mind of a problem solver.  The mind of an artist is content to consider the two dimensional space of a piece of paper or canvas.  The artistic mind is, in fact, comfortable talking about the space on a two dimensional plane.  That’s why we are not artists.  We do not abstract.  And we do not consider the medium that we draw on “space.”

These pages focus on the simultaneous creation of form and space. That’s why I really like the last sentence of the quote, in which he states that he works with the whole space.  Because that’s exactly what we do.  Like Newman, we are not interested in remnants of space.  We are interested in all of it.

My drawing above was based on the geometry of a drawing by Bruce Nauman, who was a contemporary of Newman.  As a Transparent Drawer, although I tried, I could not, of course, think about space without form.  Yet the straight thin “zip” shape is resonant with the focus of Newman.

1.  Richardson, Brenda.  Barnett Newman:  The Complete Drawings, 1944-1969.  Baltimore,  The Baltimore Museum of Art.  1979.  p 18.