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Ad Reinhardt Quotes

Adolph Frederick "Ad" Reinhardt was an abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered on the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as abstract expressionism. He was also a member of The Club, the meeting place for the New York School abstract expressionist artists during the 1940s and 1950s. He wrote and lectured extensively on art and was a major influence on conceptual art, minimal art and monochrome painting. Most famous for his "black" or "ultimate" paintings, he claimed to be painting the "last paintings" that anyone can paint. He believed in a philosophy of art he called Art-as-Art and used his writing and satirical cartoons to advocate for abstract art and against what he described as "the disreputable practices of artists-as-artists". Wikipedia  

✵ 24. December 1913 – 30. August 1967
Ad Reinhardt: 22   quotes 1   like

Famous Ad Reinhardt Quotes

“The art of 'figuring' or 'picturing' is not a fine art. An artist who is lobbying as a 'creature of circumstances' or log rolling as a 'victim of fate' is not a fine master artist. No one ever forces an artist to be pure.”

Ad Reinhardt

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), pp. 156-157

“The one thing to say about art and life is that art is art and life is life, that art is not life and life is not art. A 'slice-of-life' art is no better or worse than a 'slice-of-art' life. Fine art is not a 'means of making a living' or a 'way of living a life', and a artist who dedicates his life to his art or his art to his life burdens his art with his life and his life with his art. Art that is a matter of life and death is neither fine nor free.”

Ad Reinhardt

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 155

“The one art that is abstract and pure enough to have the one problem and possibility, in our time and timelessness, of the 'one single grand original problem' is pure abstract painting. Abstract painting is not just another school or movement or style but the first truly unmannered and untrammeled and un-entangled, styleless, universal painting. No other art or painting is detached or empty or immaterial enough.”

Ad Reinhardt

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 157

“The one place for art-as-art is the museum of fine art. The reason of the museum or fine art is the preservation of ancient and modern art that cannot be made again and that does not have to be done again. A museum of fine art should exclude everything but fine art, and be separate of museums of ethnology, geology, archaeology, history... Any disturbance of a true museum's soundlessness, timelessness, airlessness, and lifelessness is a disrespect.”

Ad Reinhardt

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 155

“And today many artists like myself refuse to be involved in some ideas. In painting – for me – no fooling-the-eye, no window-hole-in-the wall, no illusions, no representations, no associations, no distortions, no paint-caricaturing, no dream pictures of dripping, no delirium trimmings, no sadism or slashing, no therapy, no kicking-the-effigy, no clowning, no acrobatics, no heroics, no self-pity, no guilt.... no abstraction of everything, no nonsense, no involvements, no confusing painting with everything that is no painting.”

Ad Reinhardt

1940 - 1955
Source: Contemporary American Painting, University of Illinois, Urbana 1952, p. 226-227

“It’s been said many times in world art writing that one can find some of painting’s meaning by looking not only at what painters do, but what they refuse to do.”

Ad Reinhardt

1940 - 1955
Source: Contemporary American Painting, University of Illinois, Urbana 1952, p. 226

Ad Reinhardt Quotes about art

“What greater challenge today…. to disorder and insensitivity; what greater propaganda for integration than this emotionally intense, dramatic division of space? [quote in 1943, discussing the art of Piet Mondrian ]”

Ad Reinhardt

Quote of Ad Reinhardt in: Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. ?
1940 - 1955

“The one standard in art is oneness and fineness, rightness and purity, abstractness and evanescence. The one thing to say about art is, its breathlessness, lifelessness, deathlessness, contentlessness, formlessness, spacelessness, and timelessness. This is always the end of art.”

Ad Reinhardt

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 158

“The one question, the one principle, the one crisis in art of the twentieth century centers in the uncompromising 'purity' of art, and in the consciousness that art comes from art only, not from anything else.”

Ad Reinhardt

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 155

“The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art as art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art.”

Ad Reinhardt

Quote of Ad Reinhardt (1963); as cited in: Joseph Kosuth, (1969), " Art after Philosophy http://www.ubu.com/papers/kosuth_philosophy.html"
1956 - 1967
Variant: The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art as art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art.

“The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more, making it purer and emptier, more absolute and exclusive – non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective. The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.”

Ad Reinhardt

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 154

Ad Reinhardt Quotes

“The artists is responsible for his history and his nature, his history is part of his nature.”

Ad Reinhardt

after 1967 - posthumous
Source: Gerhard Richter, Doubt and belief in painting, Robert Storr, MOMA, New York, 2003, p. 32 note 1.

History , Nature , Parting

“My painting represents the victory of the forces of darkness and peace over the powers of light and evil. [1957, reacting on a remark of Picasso ]”

Ad Reinhardt

1956 - 1967
Source: Pax, no. 13, 1960; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 151

Peace , Light , Evil , Victory

“vagueness is a 'romantic' value.... an emphasis on geometry is an emphasis on the 'known', on order and knowledge.”

Ad Reinhardt

Quote of Ad Reinhardt in: Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 107
after 1967 - posthumous

Knowledge

“Who said last, 'A cleaner New York-school is Up To You?”

Ad Reinhardt

1956 - 1967
Source: the 'Ad Reinhardts Papers', Archives of American Art, microfilm no. N/69-103, frame no. 285

School

“Study the old masters. Look at nature. Watch out for armpits'. [in 1956, Reinhardt is quoting Paul Cézanne here freely]”

Ad Reinhardt

1956 - 1967
Source: Pax, no. 13, 1960; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 150

Quotes , Nature , Study

“There is nothing there. What you see is not what you see. What you see is nothing. Nothing but shapes, lines, colors. What you see is whats in your mind. What you see is something somebody told you to look for. Look out for anything you see! Watch it! Watch out! Take care! Don’t leap before you look out.”

Ad Reinhardt

1956 - 1967
Source: the 'Ad Reinhardts Papers', Archives of American Art, microfilm no. N/69-103, frame no. 268

Color

“An abstract painting will react to you if you react to it. You get from it what you bring to it. It will meet you half way but no further. It is alive if you are. It represents something and so do you. YOU, SIR, ARE A SPACE, TOO.”

Ad Reinhardt

Quote from the six page comic How to Look at Anvolved in some ideas. In painting – for me – no fooling-the-eye, no window-hole-in-the wall, no illusions, no representations, no associations, no distortions, no paint-caricaturing, no dream pictures of dripping, no delirium trimmings, no sadism or slashing, no therapy, no kicking-the-effigy, no clowning, no acrobatics, no heroics, no self-pity, no guilt.. ..no abstraction of everything, no nonsense, no involvements, no confusing painting with everything that is no painting.


Source: Contemporary American Painting, University rt, in Arts & Architecture, January 1947. note: 1940 - 1955,
en.wikiquote.org - Ad Reinhardt / Quotes of Ad Reinhardt / 1940 - 1955

Painting , Way

“Voyaging into the night, one knows exactly where, on a known vessel, an absolute harmony with the elements of the unreal. [1959, reacting on a remark of Robert Motherwell ]”

Ad Reinhardt

1956 - 1967
Source: Pax, no. 13, 1960; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 152

Night

“Voyaging into the night, one knows exactly where, on a known vessel, an absolute harmony with the elements of the unreal.”

Ad Reinhardt

1959, reacting on a remark of Robert Motherwell
1956 - 1967
Source: Pax, no. 13, 1960; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 152

Night

“Study the old masters. Look at nature. Watch out for armpits.”

Ad Reinhardt

[in 1956, Reinhardt is quoting Paul Cézanne here freely]
1956 - 1967
Source: Pax, no. 13, 1960; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 150

Study , Nature

“What greater challenge today.... to disorder and insensitivity; what greater propaganda for integration than this emotionally intense, dramatic division of space?”

Ad Reinhardt

quote in 1943, discussing the art of Piet Mondrian
Quote of Ad Reinhardt in: Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. ?
1940 - 1955

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