With the monumental “Vir Heroicus Sublimins” (“Man, Heroic and Sublime”), Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman answered his own question: “If we are living in a time without a legend that can be called sublime, how can we be creating sublime art?” Brimming with symbolic and spiritual connotations, the work suggests attaining a higher level of being. Atypical of Abstract Expressionists, Newman (1905 – 1970) utilized wide, uniform fields of intense red, grazed by slender lines he called “zips,” which may represent human figures within a void. Newman intended viewers to stand close to the massive painting to replicate the intimacy of an encounter with another person.

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