Barnett Newman's series, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? (1966-1970) exemplifies the emancipation of color. In this case, the color is the subject, it does not represent anything, it only expresses itself. The series consists of four large scale paintings tied together through the use of primary colors.

"Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue" is a series of four monumental paintings by the American abstract expressionist Barnett Newman, created between 1966 and 1970. The provocative title is a play on the 1962 Edward Albee play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which itself referenced the "Big Bad Wolf" from Disney. Newman’s goal was to "liberate" these primary colors from the strict, geometric constraints of artists like Piet Mondrian and De Stijl, presenting them as vast, overwhelming fields of pure color. The series is famous not just for its artistic merit, but for the extreme emotional reactions it provoked; two of the paintings were the victims of high-intensity vandalistic attacks in museums by individuals who found the "monochrome" simplicity of the work offensive or "perverted." In 2026, these works remain high-value symbols of the power of modern art to challenge the viewer's perception and provoke a visceral, sometimes even violent, psychological response to pure color and scale.