Ad Reinhardt

Ad Reinhardt (Adolph Reinhardt), 1913-67, American painter, b. New York City. Both a painter and an art theorist, Reinhardt is best known for his black paintings, begun in 1960. Associated with minimalism (see modern art ), the paintings appear all black and exhibit only slight variations in hue and the presence of form on close scrutiny. In rejecting the conventional attributes of painting, he attempted to abstract the pure and contemplative qualities he admired in Eastern art.

Reinhardt, Ad (1913–1967). American painter and writer on art, born in Buffalo, New York, the son of German and Russian immigrants. He studied art history under Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University, New York, 1931–5, and in 1936–7 had lessons with the abstract painter Carl Holty (1900–73) and at the National Academy of Design. From the beginning of his career Reinhardt's work was abstract, but it changed radically in style over the years. During the 1930s he worked in a crisp, boldly contoured geometrical style that owed something to both Cubism and the Neo-Plasticism of Mondrian. In the 1940s he passed through a phase of all-over painting which has been likened to that of Mark Tobey, and in the late 1940s he was close to certain of the Abstract Expressionists, including Motherwell, with whom he jointly edited Modern Artists in America (1950), a book based on conversations with contemporary artists. During the 1950s he turned to geometric and then monochromatic paintings, influenced by Josef Albers, with whom he taught at Yale University, 1952–3. At first his monochromatic paintings were usually blue or red, but from the late 1950s he devoted himself to all-black paintings with geometrical designs of squares or oblongs barely perceptibly differentiated in value from the background colour (Abstract Painting No. 5, Tate Gallery, London, 1962). This reduction of his work to ‘pure aesthetic essences’ reflects his belief in the complete separation between art and life—‘Art is art. Everything else is everything else.’ His later work was influential on the development of Minimal art. Irving Sandler writes (Abstract Expressionism, 1970): ‘In some respects, Reinhardt's intentions resembled those of Newman, Still, and Rothko. Like them, he wanted to create an absolute, timeless, suprapersonal art, and his stance was as moralistic as theirs. Unlike them, however, he renounced extra-aesthetic associations in favor of a purist approach.’ His views, indeed, were extremely uncompromising and he was an outspoken critic of trends in modern art of which he did not approve, as a polemical writer, as a lecturer, and as a satirical cartoonist (from 1942 to 1947 he worked as an artist-reporter on the avant-garde newspaper PM). Art-as-Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, edited by Barbara Rose, appeared in 1991.

Reinhardt, Ad (b Buffalo, NY, 24 Dec. 1913; d New York, 30 Aug. 1967). American painter. From the beginning of his career his painting was abstract, but it changed radically in style over the years. During the 1930s he worked in a crisp, boldly contoured geometrical style that owed something both to Cubism and to the Neo-Plasticism of Mondrian. In the 1940s he passed through a phase of all-over painting which has been likened to that of Mark Tobey, and in the late 1940s he was close to certain of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Motherwell, with whom he jointly edited Modern Artists in America (1950), a book based on conversations with contemporary artists. During the 1950s he turned to monochromatic paintings. At first they were usually red or blue, but from the late 1950s he devoted himself to all-black paintings with geometrical designs of squares or oblongs barely perceptibly differentiated in value from the background colour—works that were influential on the development of Minimal art. His reduction of his work to ‘pure aesthetic essences’ reflects his belief in the complete separation between art and life—‘Art is Art. Everything else is everything else.’ Reinhardt's views were extremely uncompromising and he was a noted critic of trends in modern art of which he did not approve, as a polemical writer, as a lecturer, and as a satirical cartoonist.