Saturday 10 June 2017

Joseph Semah / Barnett Newman




Barnett Newman
The Name I
1949
oil paint on canvas
121,9 x 152,4 cm
collection Daros, Zwitserland



HaSheM, in Hebrew 'the Name'.
Religious Jews use the word השם HaSheM for what is unnameable, יהוה YHVH.

I read the work of Barnett Newman, The Name I, from the tradition of the source text, the Hebrew.
Right to left: we see a four-striped canvas, entitled The Name I.
The first line is very thin, the third is thicker, the second and the fourth are identical, and the thickest.
The first line stands for י YUD, the second and the fourth for ה HeH and the third for ו VaV. When we read this, from right to left, we see that Newman has painted the name YAHUVEH YHVH; Tetragrammaton.

Joseph Semah, 2017




Joseph Semah (IL/NL)
The Name השם (HaSheM)
1983
ink, pencil on paper
30 x 21 cm


No comments:

Post a Comment