"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Ad Reinhardt at David Zwirner, this catalogue will present a comprehensive exploration of Reinhardt's cartoon works, which he created for various publications throughout his lifetime, most notably the progressive tabloid daily newspaper PM in which his "How to Look" series first appeared in 1946. Reinhardt's comics shed light on the artist's humorous insight into art history, politics, and culture, as well as his unparalleled critical sensibility as a painter and thinker. The publication will include new scholarship on this facet of Reinhardt's practice by curator Robert Storr." -- publisher's description.
In the late 1940s, several prominent artists of the New York School--among them Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Frank Stella--were intently studying the color black. That work, interrelated but not collaborative, resulted in an astonishing number of almost monochromatic black paintings, which today are considered treasures of many major collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art's. For the first time, Black Paintings gathers all of the best of the title artist's black works textured black, striped black, blue-black, brown-black, black-black. In thorough illustration and thoughtful analysis, it sheds light on the differences between these postwar works as well as their commonalities. For Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg, black was a way to disappear into something new, a way to a new artistic vocabulary. For Mark Rothko, it stood for emptiness and nothingness; it asked the spectator to reflect back on it. For Ad Reinhardt, it offered denial and invisibility. Each artist's black portfolio reflects a breakthrough or transition in his own work, and, combined, they represent a larger moment of transition. The Black Paintings marked both a beginning and an the end of painting as illusion, as a window onto the world, and the beginning of painting as the mode for the creation of self-sufficient perceptual objects--a change that granted new roles to both artist and viewer.
'. der für jeden Freund der modernen Kunst unentbehrliche Band.' (Laszlo Glozer in der Süddeutschen Zeitung) 'Reinhardts Statements zählen zu den prägnantesten, auch witzigsten Künstlertexten der fünfziger und sechziger Jahre.' (Der Spiegel) 'Es sind aktuelle Texte, weil sie unabhängig von der eigenen Kunst zurecht rücken helfen, was wichtig und was Betrieb ist.' (Gottfried Böhm in der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung)
