“Diao’s multilayered engagement with Newman is one of the high water marks of painting in the past 30 years.” – John Yau

David Diao (b. 1943) has long turned to Barnett Newman’s work as a spur and a foil to his own, and this richly illustrated catalog surveys his sustained fascination with the Abstract Expressionist master. Diao worked as an art handler in his twenties and installed Newman’s Stations of the Cross at the Guggenheim in 1966—a signal event that he credits with setting his own course as a painter. On Barnett Newman, 1991–2023 documents a cycle of paintings that tabulate the elder artist’s career, through lushly painted charts, lists, and diagrams that filter geometric abstraction through the lens of tribute. An original essay by Jeffrey Weiss details the complex blend of reverence and wry humor for which Diao has become known, citing this series as emblematic of his “foundational critical ambivalence regarding modernism—its role as a source of pleasure and skepticism in equal measure.”