Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967)
(Dear Copyright owner please read p.s. at the bottom of my post)
(Dear Copyright owner please read p.s. at the bottom of my post)
Today I present some thoughts by one of the few Immortals of Modern Art. It is the american painter Ad Reinhardt. Since it is absolutely essential for the Arts to apply his principles today, I have chosen an excerpt of his text "Twelve Rules for a new Academy. (or How to Achieve the Twelve Things to Avoid " ) . I have chosen rule no. 4-12:
[4] No forms. "The finest has no shape". No figure or fore- or background. No volume or mass, no cylinder, sphere or cone, or cube or boogie-woogie. No push or pull. "No shape or substance".
[5] No design. "Design is everywhere".
[6] No colors. "Color blinds". "Colors are an aspect of appearance and so only of the surface". Colors are barbaric, unstable, suggest life, "cannot be completely controlled" and "should be concealed". Colors are "distracting embellishment". No white. "White is a color of all colors". White is "antiseptic and not artistic, appropriate and pleasing for kitchen fixtures, and hardly the medium for expressing truth and beauty". White on white is "a transition from pigment to light" and "a screen for the projection of light" and "moving" picture.
[7] No light. No bright or direct light in or over the painting. Dim, late afternoon absorbent twilight is best outside. No chiaroscuro, "maldorant reality of craftsmen, beggars, topers with rags and wrinkels".
[8] No space. Space should be empty, should not project, and should not be flat. "The painting should be behind the picture frame". The frame should isolate and protect the painting from its surroundings. Space divisions within painting should not be seen.
[9] No time. "Clock time or man's time is inconsequential". There is no ancient or modern, no past or future in art. "A work of art is always present". The present is the future of the past, not the past of the future. "Now and long ago are one".
[10] No size or scale. Breadth and depth of thought and feeling in art have no relation to physical size. Large sizes are aggressive, positivist, intemperate, venal, and graceless.
[11] No movement. "Everything else is on the move. Art should be still".
[12] No object, no subject, no matter. No symbols, images, or signs. Neither pleasure nor paint. No mindless working or mindless non-working. No chess-playing.
The fine artist should have a fine mind, "free of all passion, ill-will and delusion. The fine artist need not sit cross-legged."
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P.S. Dear copyright owner of the picture, please contact me, if you don't want to see your picture above in this context! Your picture will of course be instantly removed! Thank you. S.K.G. The text excerpt is taken from the book: Ad Reinhardt. Rizzoli 1991.
