sᴇʟᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴀʀᴛᴡᴏʀᴋ: ᴀᴅ ʀᴇɪɴʜᴀʀᴅᴛ, ᴀʙsᴛʀᴀᴄᴛ ᴘᴀɪɴᴛɪɴɢ, 1960-61

                77 - 79

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             Early Career

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Adolph Reinhardt born in 1913, in Buffalo, NY

relocated with family to NYC

parents were immigrants from Germany and Lithuania,

attracted to NY's worker's movement out of socialist convictions

work as commercial artist and block illustrator as teen

1931 - Columbia University, study under Marxist art historian

Meyer Schapiro

1930s- painting classes at Columbia's Teacher's College, 

American Artists School, National Academy of Design

1937 - elected to membership in American Abstract Artists,

hired by Works Progress Administration's Federal Art

Project, small salary for paintings in next 4 years

represented by Betty Parsons before she opened own gallery

in NY, regular beginnings beginning in 1946 - 1965

1940s brief sting in US Navy

studied Asian art history at New York University's Institute

of Fine Arts, interested in Zen Buddhism

associated with New York School

1930s-40s - paintings were colourful biomorphic forms

overlapping in harmonious arrangements and floating at center

or interlocking geometric shapes across entire canvas usually

in limited palette of 3-4 saturated colours

recalled Piet Mondrian's grids, Cubists such as Pablo Picasso,

Juan Gris

encounter through imported magazines, MoMA's exhibition

Cubism and Abstract Art in NY in 1936

influenced by Stuart Davis, who listened to jazz, compelled

him to use brighter, louder colours

style shuttle between organic and geometric, remain wholeheartedly

committed to pure abstraction

many works from this period titled  Abstract Painting

believe art should be created for art's sake, distinct from everyday 

life

painting is "responsible social art" "direct form of communication"

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               Analysis

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desire to strip away all elements extraneous to task of painting

modernist directive articulated in writing of critic Clement 

Greenberg, pursue monochromatic abstraction in 1953

reduce paintings to single colour, variation in tonal value

allow him to illustrate most basic elements of painting, the canvas

and paint itself

start with red and blue monochromes, strong contrasts of value

1956 - dark gray and black canvases

Abstract Painting, 1960-61, last body of work

5x5 ft, as all monochromes after 1960

9 squares, different tints of black

corner-red, vertical-blue, horizontal-green

drain oil from pigments once mixed

paint is spreadable but has no shine

generate light themselves

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      From Monochrome

          to Minimalism

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create art entirely interested in itself, not responsive to

surroundings

closeness to rhetoric of Abstract Expressionism and  NY School

saw himself at the end of painting

first monochromes - Soviet artists Alexander Rodchenko, Kasimir

Malevich exhibited in 20c, rediscovered in post war period

Robert Rauschenberg - all white painting in 1950s

French Yves Klein- paint monochromes in 1950s, blue monochromes

(in colour he patented) in 1957

similar statements about elemental facets of painting, varied meaning

attributed to monochrome

argued one direction in fine or abstract art is painting same form over

one intensity, one perfection come from long routine preparation and

attention and repetition

Minimalists, Conceptualists employ craftsmen and assistants to 

produce work, Reinhardt insist on using his own hand

took his monochromes as point of departure

basis for works by Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Sol

Lewitt, Robert Morris