Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt

Documents of Twentieth-Century Art

by Ad Reinhardt

Rose in the introduction suggests that Reinhardt's ultimate value is as 'a prophet of the realization that high art can only endure as spiritual art.' Well, maybe, but his copious writings are also exuberant, ironic, rancorous and parodistic and, as such, a marvelous commentary of the recent art world.

Genres: Art, Essays

236 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

120119: and why this is not five? because, finally, sadly, i have not experienced his actual art. but i just looked at work by japanese contemporary artist takahi murakami, and in images it becomes clearer that reinhardt is outside any one culture, politics, critiques, because it is exactly not the usual repertoire of artistic techniques that he employs. not gestures, symbols, allusion, culture, history. art as art. damn, i want to see his work...

first review: this is four because i like his work, his intention, his philosophical, his pure artistic aspiration. 'art as art' could be confused with 'for arts sake', but his point is more strict: art is not for any purpose. art is art. as such, reinhardt is an abstract artist concerned with art, not interested in illustrating, depicting, summoning, either the usual 'real world' or the world as interpreted in non-art ways, expressionism, surrealism, primitivism... etc. so i admire his attitude, his ideas, his historical awareness, his insistence and moral stance...

my experience of his work is entirely by reproductions, which are always less than. his work may require some art education- i continue in all arts the prejudice that whatever it is, it must be effective, must work, and everything else is ancillary. art is art. he never claims to be a poet, though his notes often enough seem kind of beat. this might be perfect example of art having to be in exactly the right medium for it to work. poetry is not for reinhardt. essays, interviews, monologues, are much better. and the art itself is best...

[Andrew Baron · Rating 5 out of 5]

To review this would be to have a position towards it. I write no review in light of it. It is a book with or without my review. It is because it is. Ad would have been completely indifferent to all of this. lol

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I recently visited the Whitney Museum of American Art, I went with my oldest son and a friend, who is a great cartoonist. The inaugural exhibition for the newly built Whitney is a survey of American art cast over the last century, curated from the museum’s permanent collection. My cartoonist friend figured he’d like everything until we got to the mid-century, as he’s a champion of figurative art and dismissive of the turn towards concept over craft and technique. His hate tour was thoroughly entertaining, even if I didn’t agree with much of it. I felt the same way reading ART AS ART: THE SELECTED WRITINGS by Ad Reinhardt. Reinhardt, also a cartoonist but one of the most severe of abstract artists, has strong opinions of what makes art, ethics in art, what is art education, even religion and art. His is a pure form, platonic, that is uncorrupted by isms or, for that matter, anything. As the title suggests, this is art for art alone, not art as this, that or anything else. Reinhardt may seek a rarified space for art, but he does it with style and a wicked sense of humor. And he’s a pretty good cartoonist, too. For the last seven years of his life all he did was paint five-foot-by-five-foot canvases of black paintings. I wish there was one of his black paintings at the Whitney. I really wanted the experience of being in their presence. It would have articulated what his writings cannot and never were intended to say.

[Ziortza Pereira · Rating 3 out of 5]

3'5*****

[Patrick Sprunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I reviewed Ad Reinhardt's satirical cartoons in an art history class a long time ago. I am also open to the idea of the black painting as an "end" to painting (I doubt one in ten people surveyed could name an artist or work created after 1970; I doubt one in fifty could name one made after 1980). Art as Art has been on my "to read" shelf for years.

I was a little disappointed by how irascible Reinhardt was. Perhaps de Kooning and Rothko* need to be depicted as the petit bourgeois accessories to culture crime they were. Even if Reinhardt's irascibility can be justified by his own rule for artists that "those in possession of the truth have an obligation to throw the first stone," his obsession with repeating himself - often word for word - cannot be.

Reinhardt takes visible comfort in calling out others on their personal failures. Principal in his grievances is the allegedly phony intermingling of media. "Art is art. Everything else is everything else." Well, if Reinhardt is a student of rhetoric, isn't he fouling up the purity of his day job by importing rhetoric into art criticism? Isn't talking about art critically defiling art by associating it with words? Art is art. Words are words. Right?

I would appreciate Reinhardt more if - rather than publishing snide letters to the editors of culture pages and art magazines - he wrote a private memoir to be published posthumously, giving his feelings at the time but in a less public, petulant, pathetic way.

There are other contradictions, but I give Reinhardt credit for never letting his ego or moral compass trick him into believing he was anything other than human. Nevertheless, one cannot inactivate the observation of these contradictions and not be irritated by them.

My word of advice for anyone interested in Ad Reinhardt: Find the cartoons he did for the socialist newspapers and read his essays on Islamic, Chinese, and Khmer art. You do not need this much view into Reinhardt's mind. You might not like what you see and it might affect the way you look at his painting later.

*Though I still count Rothko as one of the three greatest painters (call me a sentimentalist).

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me Ad Reinhardt is more interesting as an artist than theorist. His cartoons and black paintings pretty much explains his aesthetic in themselves. Nevertheless his cranky commentary is very amusing. His stance against art is life is fascinating - and clearly how anyone can separate one's life from their art... Is that possible?

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great introduction to the written material by Ad Reinhardt, the introductions Rose provides are also quite valuable.
Keep in mind, though, while reading that some of the articles have been edited to 'fit' into this book, meaning that some important parts of his writing have been edited out.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Im a ridiculously big fan.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Almost impossible to understand. Reinhardt (who’s paintings intrigue me) rejects surrealism, but his writing comes off like surrealist poetry. They are mostly a list of statements that at times to contradict each other. They do have a sort of hypnotic quality where every once in a while a deeper meaning seems to appear. I agree with his premise that art should be art alone and not a commodity, message, statement...... He thought he was painting the last paintings, and there’s something to that. Paintings I see these days are representational or a riff on abstract expressionism. He is an original.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend Raha turned me onto Reinhardt many years ago, and this book in particular. Another one I'd like to re-read. There is a book of Reinhardt's satirical cartoons that is brilliant which I picked up in Germany two years ago. Has an English translation for the scholarly text part and all the cartoons are still in English; it also includes some of his paintings. I like that book almost as much as this one.

[Lechiot Volant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ce livre est un livre engagé. Ad Reinhardt défend une théorie de la peinture épurée de tout ce qu'elle n'est pas. Il propose un travail aride, critique, quasi invisible comme une lutte contre la récupération, l'instrumentalisation, la marchandisation de l'art. Le ton, souvent caustique, parfois sévère, n'empêche pas l'ironie et la mégalomanie affichée cache une défense farouche d'une conception de l'art non assujettie à toute externalité.

[Jack]

I did not understand this book. I will return later.