Taking the painting Be I by famous American Abstract Expressionist painter Barnett Newman as a starting point, this paper explores relationships between Mohandas K. Gandhi's aesthetic life and an emerging aesthetic of nonviolence in the post WWII era. A nonviolent aesthetic is considered in the painting and in relation to two key photographs featured in the exhibition "Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence" at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas from October 3, 2014

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... ry 1, 2015: Margaret Bourke-White's now iconic photograph of Gandhi Spinning and an anonymous photograph of Gandhi's Earthly Belongings published in a 1954 book by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1954. One of the most enigmatic inclusions was Barnett Newman's 1949 Be I, an example of his brand of American Abstract Expressionism that featured a radically reduced visual vocabulary. This pared down composition, in fact, inspired its inclusion in the show, demonstrating an aesthetic of nonviolence made palpable in the postwar period even in ostensibly apolitical art.