Vir Heroicus Sublimis was done in 1950 and the colour of one stripe was changed in 1951. It's eight feet high and eighteen long. Except for five stripes it's a red near cadmium red medium. From the left, a few feet in, there is an inch stripe of a red close in colour but different in tone; a few feet further there is an inch of white; across the widest area there is an inch and a half of a dark, slightly maroon brown that looks black in the red; a few feet further there is a stripe like the first one on the left; a foot or so before the right edge there is a dark yellow, almost raw sienna stripe, the colour that was changed. These stripes are described in sequence but of course are seen at once, and with the areas.

Shining Forth is symmetrical, but obviously isn't thoroughly symmetrical: the widest black stripe runs down the centre; two large, nearly equal halves lie left and right, each including a large area of canvas, a narrow stripe and a narrow area of canvas. The two halves and their parts are very different. The central line is not simply a dividing line. Like all the areas and lines it can be discrete and it can also be part of the lines and areas to either side. The two narrow stripes are symmetrical, but one is black, thin paint on canvas, and one is white, bare canvas bounded by marks on the canvas; the black stripe is symmetrical to the same surface it's on. The white stripe needs and supports larger areas, on either side, than the black stripe; the right half extends furthest from the central stripe; it's cantilevered but still matches the left half. Both outlying stripes are surprisingly far from the centre and the right one is even further. The narrow black stripe and the wider one are on the canvas surface but the white stripe is that surface. The marks along the white stripe are even more intimately on the canvas than the black stripes. The position of the white stripe is highly ambiguous. It is, approximately, a negative area that comes forward. Since it is the same surface as the rectangle of the painting, that is forced forward. The white stripe is like the rest of the white but it's underneath it and yet forward of it. The whole surface has to come forward. If this didn't occur the black lines would lie slightly in front of the canvas, as most marks do, and the areas would stand back slightly. The areas are as forward and as definite as the stripes. This description may have been dry reading but that's what's there.

It's important that Newman's paintings are large, but it's even more important that they are large scaled. His first painting with a stripe, a small one, is large scaled. The single stripe allowed this and the scale allowed the prominence and assertion of the stripe and the two areas. This scale is one of the most important developments in the twentieth-century art. Pollock seems to have been involved in the problem of this scale first. Newman shared attitudes which were leading to the scale and developed it on his own in 1950. A few others, a little later, recognized its importance. All of the best American art, to this moment, has this scale. The form and qualities of the work couldn't exist otherwise. The major division in contemporary art is between that involving the smaller, older scale. There is a lot of uninteresting art in the United States based on the smaller scale and a little that is interesting. The most interesting European art, except for Klein's which is broad, is relatively small scaled, judging of course by what has been seen in New York.