| The couples in all of these works are shown in varying degrees of embrace and release, rendered in colors that seem reflective of their emotional states. The distance between the couple in What Ya Thinking-Mitsubishi Electric bespeaks utter silence, the failure to reach any resolution to their different points of view. The sense of detachment is heightened in Jessica and the Swan, 1982, a tender portrait of the artist’s daughter that seems to reveal both her inner and outer selves simultaneously. These, and many of Newman’s other works from the period, were Washington’s antidote to the bold, outspoken expressionism and the slick, concept-driven work that have come to symbolize the eighties art scene. Newman also worked periodically throughout the eighties in a political vein that had its origins in his 1979 painting The Last Marathon. The tall canvas shows marathoners sweeping across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, a split second away from being casualties of the mass destruction chasing behind them — a painting that feels eerily familiar to anyone who watched the hordes streaming across the Brooklyn Bridge on September 11, 2001. Beginning in 1984, The Last Marathon traveled internationally in the exhibition “Disarming Images: Art for Nuclear Disarmament,” alongside works by Laurie Anderson, Robert Longo, and Claes Oldenburg. Politics resurfaced in 1984, when Newman returned to large-scale painting at a construction site, this time replacing pinups with public discourse. The work, on a fence near the Federal Trade Commission building, depicted President Ronald Reagan staring up at the sky, captioned with the words “5 Minutes”—a reference to the on-air faux pas in which he joked of plans to bomb the Soviet Union “in five minutes.” Within days, a pile of office furniture from the Federal Trade Commission hid the painting from public view. Newman removed the furniture. A few days later the image was papered over. Newman removed the paper. Finally, the fence was taken apart by an Army crew and carted away on a flatbed truck. A photograph of the painting graced the cover of the November 1984 issue of the New Art Examiner. |
"Self-Portrait from the Blue Dreams Series" |
| In the nineties Newman began to master the tool that came to symbolize the decade—the computer. He had begun experimenting with using computers in his work as soon as the Macintosh was introduced in 1984 and was among the first artists to do so. The Mac allowed Newman, whose motor skills and vision were deteriorating because of multiple sclerosis, to function creatively in a new way that was both challenging and satisfying. “With the computer you can do something completely new in seconds. With a painting you have to be much more selective in your imagery because of the time invested,” he has noted. In essence, the computer became a creative partner, allowing him to do much of his visual experimentation on screen in a few key strokes rather than on canvas, with brush strokes. The creative experimentation afforded by the Mac has become even more important to Newman over the years, as assistants have taken on a greater role in the actual painting of his canvases. Several of the works produced shortly after Newman began using the Mac seem to serve as experimental bridges spanning traditional and technological production. Her, 1985, is perhaps the best example. The nude in the bottom panel is classically rendered and drawn with consummate skill, but the two panels above are progressively deeper steps into the digital realm. The couple in the middle panel are from a stretched video still; the horizontal bands left behind by the conversion from the low-resolution video format are subtle but evident in Newman’s execution. But in the monochromatic top panel he seems to have almost entirely |
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