Eve

Gallery Tate, London (the UK).

Canvas, oil.

The huge – more than two meters in height – space of unmodulated red paint in this work absorbs the viewer and even somewhat disorientates. The local colour is interrupted by a single narrow and almost even purple stripe running along the entire length of the right edge. This “lightning” creates tension on the canvas between the presence and emptiness, hardness and fragility. The vertical line “echoes” the viewer’s position, and this helps to realize Newman’s idea, which claimed that “the viewer in front of my picture knows that he is there”. A year later, the artist created the painting “Adam”, which complements the concept. From the mid-40s, Newman paid attention to Jewish myths about the creation of the world. The vertical stripes in this regard may be associated with particular traditions that represent God and a human being as a single ray of light.