NARRATOR:  

American artist Barnett Newman is more generally known for the large-scale abstract paintings he created in the mid-20th-century. Here, curators Gary Garrels, Ali Gass, and Peter Samis talk about one of the artist’s few sculptures, Zim Zum I, which was made the year before he died. 

GARRELS:  

The title, I think, is important. It’s called Zim Zum I. And zimzum is a word that comes from the Jewish mystical texts of the Kabbalah. And it refers to the idea at the time of creation that God withdrew from the world. And so what we see in this piece is a void down the center. We see a sense of movement. And zimzum evoking this idea of the emptiness, of the void, of God removing himself from the world. 

NARRATOR:  

Try stepping into the artwork. 

GASS:  

As you enter into this structure you do become cut off from the world around you. The world becomes something you can’t physically know right at that moment. You’re in this space, the world goes on around you, and that’s metaphorically very much what the Kabbalah is about. You know, the Kabbalah is Judaism’s sort of answer to things we can’t know, things we can’t argue through and can’t fully comprehend.  

SAMIS: 

The zimzum is in some ways almost like an inhalation. It’s like, you know, God had to subtract himself from the world in order to breathe life into the world when it was created.  

GARRELS:  

Right. But also, by God’s withdrawal, allowed a place for humans in the world to create their place in the world.