Modern Merican Painted Canvas didn't always float free to be seen in Independence Daze on the staged walls of Theatre of the Actors of Regard.
Various photos of Barnett Newman in his studio show him with heavily-suspended stretched right-angles of canvas anchored by chains before during and after the paint.
In the mid-1940s Newman painted a small number of mostly untitled circle/sun motifs. One was clue-titled Pagan Void. After that, the vertical line motif ("zip") on the field (of colour) motif predominated the play.
His 1948 consolidation work - one vertical zip centred on a vertical format canvas - he titled Onement (at one out of atonement). The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he had studied philosophy in New York and it all showed. Soon came By Twos (1949).
dynamic of the suspension chain verticals 'outside'
on the painted verticals 'inside'?
Barnett Newman conducts the Choir of Eyes (TAR)
Photos of the early exhibitions of these artworks, such as at Betty Parsons gallery, show them still in obvious suspension, not 'free floating'.
Ditto when shown in Melbourne in 1967.
We conclude this now with the Sight Gag song as...Barnett Newman conducts the Choir of Eyes (TAR)