In the John Moores painting prize 2010 catalogue, Alison Watt, one of the judges, has an essay where she uses an extract to speak about the difficulty of painting.  I love it, so thought I would write it down to try and remember it.

“There’s an essay by Thomas Hess on Barnett Newman which I was given years ago.  This extract sums up for me the ‘problem’ with painting.  I’ve always loved it.

Franz Kline and Elaine De Kooning were sitting at the Cedar Bar when a collector Franz knew came up to them in a state of fury.  He had just come from [Barnett] Newman’s first one-man show. ‘How simple can an artist be and get away with it?’ he spluttered.  ‘There was nothing, absolutely nothing there!’

‘Nothing?’ asked Franz, beaming.  ‘How many canvases were in the show?’

‘Oh maybe ten or twelve - but all exactly the same - just one stripe down the centre, that’s all!’

All the same size?’  Franz asked.

‘Well no; there were different sizes; you know, from about 3 to 7 feet.’

‘Oh, 3 to 7 feet, I see; and all the same colour?’  Franz went on.

‘No, different colours, you know; red and yellow and green… but each picture painted one flat colour - you know, like a house painter would do it, and then this stripe down the centre.’

‘All the stripes the same colour?’

‘No’

‘Were they all the same width?’

The man began to think a little.  ‘Let’s see.  No. I guess not.  Some were maybe an inch wide and some maybe four inches, and some in between.’

‘And all upright pictures?’

‘Oh, no, there were some horizontals.’

‘With vertical stripes?’

‘Oh, no, I think there were some horizontal stripes, maybe.’

‘And were the stripes darker or lighter than the background?

‘Well I guess they were darker, but there was one white stripe, or maybe more…’

Was the stripe painted on top of the background colour or was the background colour painted around the stripe?’

The man began to get a bit uneasy.  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘I think it may have been done either way, or both ways, maybe…’

‘Well I don’t know,’ said Franz. ‘It all sounds damned complicated to me.’

(Thomas Hess in ‘Barnett Newman’, 1972, Tate)”

(Larger extract taken from Alison Watt in ‘John Moores Painting Prize 2010′, 2010, National Museums Liverpool)