Barnett Newman’s The Wild is the type of painting that some people might look at and get angry that it’s in a museum.

And I mean, I get it. At first glance, it’s just a long, thin, red rectangle. But the fact that you might question if it should even be considered art is at the heart of what Newman was trying to convey with its creation.

The Wild stands at eight feet tall and comes in at just one and a half inches wide. It is, in effect, a very long stick on a wall. In its first exhibition, it was placed across from Newman’s previous piece titled Vir Heroicus Sublimis. When you look at the two paintings side by side, you can see their connection; The Wild was taken out of Vir Heroicus Sublimis. It is a similar shade of red, and it's essentially the same shape of Newman’s famous “zips,” present in all of his work.

The Wild gives some serious shine to the zip. In most of Newman’s abstract work, he painted one color on a large portion of the canvas, and then another color would cut through the canvas in horizontal lines of varying sizes. These were dubbed zips, and became Newman’s signature. Here, instead of including it on a larger piece of canvas, Newman decided to give the zip its moment in the spotlight. While it’s overwhelmingly red, it does in fact have other colors within. It’s outlined by a grayish blue that leaves the impression that this zip once existed on a larger canvas and was carved out. 

Newman uses The Wild to focus on the zip for one major reason. He wanted to challenge critics and viewers alike by making them question what shape a painting must be. When we make up a mental image of a painting in our heads, The Wild isn’t what we picture at all. But why couldn’t it be? Just because something isn’t a more proportional rectangle with a tangible narrative topic on display doesn’t mean that it can’t be considered art. The Wild’s sheer existence is to challenge that notion. If it didn’t hang on the wall at a museum and you instead saw it sitting by a dumpster, you probably wouldn't make the connection that this was a world famous work of art. And that’s kind of cool.