Ad Reinhardt
(American 1913-1967)
Abstract Painting, 1960-61
60 x 60 in (152.4 x 152.4 cm)
Gift of the Longview Foundation, 1970.3
At first glance, Abstract Painting, No. 6 might appear to be completely black in color. However, on closer inspection, nine painted squares of slightly varying tonal value can be detected. Some squares have a reddish cast to them, some green or blue. Some are warm, some cool. Some squares seem lighter than others.
Reinhardt thinned and drained most of the oil in his oil paint, carefully layering strokes so that no individual brush stroke could be identified—thereby denying the hand of the artist. His desire to remove the presence of the artist in his work was a critique of Abstract Expressionism and a major principle of Minimalism.
Reinhardt was dedicated to abstraction. He was one of only a few American artists who worked completely abstractly before World War II. Reinhardt believed that Abstract Art had developed over time as a sequence of visual subtractions, and that he was creating the "last" paintings in a historical evolution. In 1955 he described his formula for these paintings:
"A square (neutral, shapeless) canvas, five feet wide, five feet high, as high as a man, as wide as a man's outstretched arms (not large, not small, sizeless), trisected (no composition), one horizontal form negating one vertical form (formless, no top, no bottom, directionless), three (more or less) dark (lightless) no-contrasting (colourless) colours, brushwork brushed out to remove brushwork, a matte, flat, freedhand painted surface (glossless, textureless, non-linear, no hard edge, no soft edge) which does not reflect its surroundings—a pure, abstract, non-objective, timeless, spaceless, changeless relationless, disinterested painting—an object that is self-conscious (no unconsciousness) ideal, transcendent, aware of no thing but art (absolutely no anti-art)."
This work can be seen on display in the exhibition A Legacy for Iowa: Pollock's Mural and Modern Masterworks from the University of Iowa Museum of Art, on view at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa.
Other pages in the American Art 1900-1970 Collection
