The Work
Barnett Newman's The Stations of the Cross -- Lema Sabachthani is a series of fourteen large canvases completed between 1958 and 1966, now permanently installed in a dedicated gallery at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Each canvas measures approximately 197 by 154 centimeters and is composed entirely in black and white: raw, unprimed linen contrasted with bands and fields of painted black and white. There is no figuration, no narrative imagery, no depiction of the traditional stations' events (the condemnation, the falls, the meeting with Mary, Veronica's veil, the stripping, the nailing, the death, the deposition). Newman strips the Passion to its irreducible theological question: why has God forsaken? Each canvas is a different encounter with this unanswerable cry, the composition varied -- the blacks and whites shifting, the bands narrow or wide, the edges soft or hard -- but the fundamental confrontation never resolved. A fifteenth canvas, Be II, painted after the series was complete, is a coda.
Biblical Source
The series takes its subtitle from the Aramaic of Psalm 22:1 as spoken by Jesus from the cross: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani' -- 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' -- recorded in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34. Newman was not interested in depicting the fourteen traditional stations iconographically; he was interested in the question itself -- the cry of dereliction that theologians identify as the most theologically troubling moment in the entire New Testament. The God who abandons his Son in the moment of greatest suffering, the silence that answers the cry: this is what the series confronts. Newman described the work as 'the unanswerable cry' and said that the question is the central human question, not just a Christian one.
The Artist
Barnett Newman (1905-1970) was a central figure of Abstract Expressionism and the most theologically serious artist of the New York School. A New York Jew deeply formed by Kabbalistic mysticism, Talmudic study, and the Hebrew prophetic tradition, Newman believed that abstract art could carry the weight of the most fundamental religious and metaphysical questions. He began work on the first canvas in 1958 while recovering from a heart attack and worked on the series intermittently for eight years. He exhibited the complete series at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1966, where it prompted one of the most significant critical discussions of any American art exhibition in the postwar period.
Iconography
Newman's visual language strips the Passion to its irreducible question. The black 'zips' -- vertical bands -- cut through the white fields with the abruptness of a cry. The series proceeds through variations on this confrontation without resolving it: no resurrection, no comfort, no narrative arc toward Easter Sunday. Each canvas is an encounter with a different aspect of the same desolation, the composition varying as the question is turned and returned to. Newman said the Lema Sabachthani is asked by all humanity, not just by Jesus: 'Who has not asked, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?' The fifteenth canvas, Be II, with its characteristic bold stripe on white, has been interpreted by some as resurrection but Newman declined to confirm this reading.
Significance
The Stations of the Cross is the most theologically ambitious work of American Abstract Expressionism and one of the most important religious artworks of the twentieth century. Newman demonstrated that abstraction could bear the full weight of the Passion narrative without abandoning either rigor or honesty -- that art could approach the most painful theological question without providing premature consolation. The series has been widely discussed in the theology of divine suffering developed in response to the Holocaust, particularly in the work of Jurgen Moltmann, and its connection to Jewish experience of abandonment gives it a historical depth that purely Christian interpretation tends to miss.
The contemporary theological resonance of the series has only deepened since Newman's death in 1970. Elie Wiesel's Night (1960), Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God (1972), and Dorothee Solle's Suffering (1973) all engage with the question of divine absence and forsakenness in the context of the Holocaust, developing a theology of divine solidarity with suffering that Newman's visual series anticipates and parallels. The National Gallery installation places Newman's series in the context of American modernism, but its deepest conversations are with the Jewish and Christian traditions of lamentation -- the psalmic tradition that gave Newman his subtitle -- and with the twentieth century's most catastrophic experiences of human abandonment.
Visiting Info
The Stations of the Cross is permanently installed in a dedicated gallery in the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The National Gallery is free of charge and open daily (closed Christmas Day and New Year's Day), located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets NW. The gallery is arranged so that visitors can move through the fourteen canvases in sequence, and the room's design encourages sustained, meditative engagement. Gallery talks and interpretive materials about the series are regularly offered.