Love at first sight is an amazing feeling. And it happened to me in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York.
I was 21 at the time when I decided to visit the Met. And that was when it happened.
The work was Eve by Barnett Newman. It blew me away: I loved the composition and the whole feeling of the piece. There is something very powerful in the silence of this work – it had so much going on and resonated with the core of my inner being.
I subsequently found out that Barnett Newman was one of the major figures in abstract impressionism and one of the foremost of the colour field painters. Now owned by the Tate Gallery, Eve was one of two paintings undertaken by Barnett before his second one-man exhibition in New York in 1951, the other painting being called Adam. The colour field style, with flat fields of colour separated and united by thin lines or ‘zips’, is what Barnett himself considered to be his mature style.
I didn’t know this as I stood in front of Eve. I only knew that this painting had changed forever how I viewed art and that my love affair with Modern Art had begun. And I could feel how powerful and transformational art can be!
One of the most rewarding things in my art consultancy, is when I get to deliver a similar moment for a client. A moment when their world shifts and a work makes them look at things with fresh eyes.
To discuss how Modern Art could change the way you see things
Call Iaysha on 07876 253324
