Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 61-03, Section: A, page: 0801.

Director: Christopher Wood.

Though abstract expressionist Barnett Newman was active as a painter and critic in the forties and fifties, his career did not reach its zenith until the sixties---a decade in which abstract expressionism was usually discussed in the past tense. This dissertation investigates the ways in which Newman negotiated with the younger age that finally welcomed him. Primarily focusing on Newman's serial works, the Stations of the Cross, the 18 Cantos and the Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? paintings, this project examines the ways in which Newman confronted artistic strategies and attitudes native to the sixties.

This project is in many ways an attempt to introduce notions of difference into Newman's work. Barnett Newman has frequently been identified as one of the artists most committed to the metaphysics of presence in painting. By focusing upon the sites of difference in Newman's work (in the figure of the "Zip," in the production of different canvases in serial works), this dissertation argues for a more complex reading of Newman's work.

This dissertation is thus also an attempt to juxtapose different methodologies by joining social art historical techniques with analytic methods commonly associated with deconstruction.