This is a labour of love and also of penance for not having been courageous enough to speak out loud and defend Franz Meyer the one and regretfully only time I've attended one of his lectures.It was on the 29th of June 1997 at a symposium accompanying the retrospective of Barnett Newman at the Kunstsammlung in Düsseldorf. I only just had returned from the Biennale in Venice and had spent the night with a German couple, a Dutch student, and two Roman Catholic priests, one from Italy, the other from Nigeria, on the nighttrain from Milan. And there he was, Franz Meyer, a sincere, open-minded and frank art historian, who had been lucky enough to have been acquainted with Barnett Newman. His words were like a beacon and he surely gave a lot away of his own beliefs and foundations as an individual, as I've myself have noticed would happen to people once they are faced with Newman's ouvre. Regretfully this frankness and liberty left him also with no defences against anybody out to scorn him for exactly these beliefs. And regretfully as well, there was Beat Wyss, who had taken a lot of his students on an outing to this symposium. Once given the opportunity they started relentlessly attacking Franz Meyer, the poor man was left absolutely nacked against their forces. Even Wyss, who had not been very kind and critical in his own lecture, felt the urge to quieten them a little, but the damage had already been done. The woman next to me had done the only decent thing possible and left the event murmuring words of protest, yet I stayed because there was one final lecture I desperately wanted to hear...
My conclusion after all these years is that firstly I hope that those students would never have to face anything that threatens their very existence, for from the look of it they wouldn't have zip to fall back on, and secondly I would very much recommend Franz Meyer's monography on Barnett Newman entitled Lema Sabachthani - The Stations of the Cross (despite its title it's in German!!)
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