Ad Reinhardt was an abstract painter and influential polemicist who in the early 1960s wrote negative aphorisms fiercely devoted to art that had only art for its content, not say, narrative or political messages—though he supported those expressed elsewhere. For Reinhardt 'serious' or 'high' art avoided being illustrative, soapbox rants, poetic, or commercial.
Read MoreInstead, he promoted the perceptual, experiential, minimal and, strangely enough, the spiritual or timeless. 'Quality' art could only be about itself: as art, its own materiality and production, and its place in art history. He was an important influence on the pioneer conceptualist Joseph Kosuth, and believed he was painting 'the last painting' in a long art historical progression.
Reinhardt is particularly unusual in that he was an abstract painter from the get-go, when he started making art in the 1930s. He is known for his very dark monochromes. He never made a transition from figuration.
Raised in the Riverside suburb of Buffalo by the Niagara River, Reinhardt went to Columbia University in New York to study art history. He was a precocious painter at high school and refused the bursaries he was offered as he felt he had all the technical skills he needed. He took painting classes at Columbia's Teachers College and studied at the American Artists School and National Academy of Design. He became accredited as a painter and subsequently worked for the WPA Federal Art Project between 1936 and 1940.
He then joined the American Abstract Artists group, through which he participated in group shows at the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery and soon became represented by Betty Parsons. He also became a teacher in Brooklyn College in 1947. A methodical researcher of East Asian religious art, he was a close friend of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton and the poet Robert Lax. He also drew cartoons and wrote commentaries on the art scene for the evening newspaper PM. He was always keen to provoke debate within the art community. According to The New York Times, Reinhardt was once unsuccessfully sued by his former colleague Barnett Newman for slander.
Ad Reinhardt's 1930s paintings used flickering light and daubs of hot colour hovering and swirling in space, influenced structurally by Cubism and Piet Mondrian. See Untitled (1938), Study for a Painting (1939), Abstract Painting (1948), and Newspaper Collage (1940).
Over time, Reinhardt's paintings became more simple, even, and unified as he became more and more influenced by the Russian Supremicist Kazimir Malevich. Geometric bars that crossed in the picture plane took over, and the thinly applied colour became more restricted and much darker. Examples include Abstract Painting (1960), Red Abstract (1952), and Abstract Painting Blue (1952).
Originally vertical rectangles, the format of Reinhardt's paintings changed to five-by-five-foot squares. These initially looked to be solid black, though prolonged scrutiny often revealed otherwise: a faint three-by-three grid with dark blue or red hues.
Reinhardt was known for his focusing on single colours such as black, blue, or red, and butting together tonally similar forms. Often the chromatic difference was barely perceptible, detectable only when the viewer's eyes had adjusted. See Untitled (1966), Ultimate Painting No.39 (1960), and Abstract Painting, No.9 (1960—1966).
Ad Reinhardt has been the subject of many solo and group exhibitions.
Recent solo exhibitions include Blue Paintings, David Zwirner, New York (2017); Art vs History, Espoo Museum of Modern Art (EMMA) (2016); Ad Reinhardt, David Zwirner, New York (2013); Art vs History, Malmö Konsthall (2015).
Recent group exhibitions include David Zwirner: 25 Years, David Zwirner, New York (2018); Thread Benefit Exhibition, David Zwirner, New York (2017); Paintings on Paper, David Zwirner, New York (2014); Last Paintings, Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop (2011); Imageless, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008).
Reinhardt's paintings are held in major institutional collections across the world, including Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Anderson Collection, Stanford University; Tate Modern, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Menil Collection, Houston.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2022
