Barnett Newman on Abstract Expressionism

"We are reasserting man's natural desire for the exalted, for a concern with our relationship to the absolute emotions. We do not need the obsolete props of an outmoded and antiquated legend. We are creating images whose reality is self-evident and which are devoid of the props and crutches that evoke associations with outmoded images, both sublime and beautiful. We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of Western European painting. Instead of making cathedrals out of christ, man, or 'life,' we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident one of revolution, real and concrete, that can be understood by anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic glasses of history." - The Sublime is Now