Surrealism, is interested in a dream world that will penetrate the human psyche. - Barnett Newman

The present painter is concerned not with his own feelings or with the mystery of his own personality but with the penetration into the world mystery. His imagination is therefore attempting to dig into metaphysical secrets. To that extend his art is concerned with the sublime. It is a religious art which through symbols will catch the basic truth of life which is its sense of tragedy.

The new painter owes the abstract artist a debt for giving him his language, but the new painting is concerned with a new type of abstract thought.. .He [the new painter] is declaring that the art of Western Europe is voluptuous art first, an intellectual art by accident. He is reversing the situation by declaring that art is an expression of the mind first and whatever sensuous elements are involved are incidental to that expression. The new painter is therefore the true revolutionary, the real leader who is placing the artist's function on its rightful plane of the philosopher and the pure scientist who is exploring the world of ideas, not the world of the senses.. ..so the artist is today giving us a vision of the world of truth in terms of visual symbols.

My idea was that with an automatic move you could create a world [Newman's comment on his series small mixed media works, 1944].