Ad Reinhardt
American,( 1913–1967)
- About this artist
Source: Oxford University Press
American painter and writer. He was renowned for his
work as an abstract painter and for his influence on Minimalism; he
also wrote and lectured throughout his life, using these forms to deal
with matters he felt were best left out of painting. He set his date of
birth in the context of a personal, cultural and political chronology,
describing it as having taken place nine months after the Armory Show
had ended, on the eve of Europe’s entry into World War I and during the
year in which Kazimir Malevich painted the first geometric abstract
painting. Extensive travel throughout the world fed his encyclopedic
interests.
Reinhardt studied (1931–5) literature and then art history under Meyer Schapiro (b
1904) at Columbia University, New York, where he gained a broad-based
arts education; also under Schapiro’s influence he became involved in
what were then considered radical campus politics. Reinhardt was editor
of the humorous campus publication Jester, for which he created covers in a flattened Cubist style.
Reinhardt’s decision to be an artist was strengthened
by his years at Columbia, but his practical training as a painter came
primarily after graduation, first at the National Academy of Design and,
from 1936 to 1937, at the American Artists’ School on 14th Street.
There he was affected by the alternatives proposed by the painters who
ran the school, Francis Criss (b 1901) and
Carl Holty (1900–73), to the then dominant Social Realism: Criss
favoured asymmetrical geometry in his urban landscapes; Holty flattened
and divided figures and objects into complex and broad shapes of solid
colour. Reinhardt became a member in 1937 of the American Abstract
Artists (AAA), of which Holty was chairman; Reinhardt also became
affiliated to the Artists’ Union and the American Artists’ Congress,
through both of which he met Stuart Davis, who became a great
inspiration to him. Reinhardt thus allied himself with the
forward-thinking American artistic–political groups of the late 1930s.
From 1936 to 1941 Reinhardt was among the relatively
few abstract artists employed in the Easel Division of the Works
Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP). His numerous
paintings that resulted consisted of collage-based, solid-toned, linear,
interlocking, geometric forms, such as Abstract Painting (1940;
priv. col., see Lippard, 1981, pl. 20) in which his circular and
rectilinear shapes were composed as variations on small, cut-paper
collages. Reinhardt seemed to have reached immediate artistic maturity.
During the early 1940s his original Cubist-derived geometry grew in
complexity, as organic and gestural markings gradually replaced precise,
hard-edged forms. Though the foundation of his art was collage,
as the decade progressed his paintings and drawings were characterized
by an embellished linear activity comparable to the incipient Abstract Expressionism of some of his colleagues, as in Number 18 (1949; New York, Whitney). Reinhardt’s work was included in The Ideographic Picture,
the group exhibition organized in 1947 by Barnett Newman at the Betty
Parsons Gallery in New York; among others taking part were Newman
himself, Hans Hofmann and Theodoros Stamos. Apart from a year’s
interruption for military service from 1944 to 1945, throughout the
1940s Reinhardt’s art focused progressively on a gestural and linear abstraction related to Abstract Expressionism.
When Reinhardt’s funding from the WPA/FAP came to an
end in 1941 he began a period of commercial and industrial jobs and
freelance graphic work. He was associated with the vanguard PM
newspaper as an artist–reporter from 1942 to 1947, producing memorably
incisive cartoons. His earliest solo shows occurred in 1943 and 1944 and
recognition quickly followed. In 1944 his work was first acquired by a
public collection, A. E. Gallatin’s Museum of Living Art (this
collection was donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1946).
Reinhardt joined the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1946, where he remained
throughout his life. In 1947 he took up a post at Brooklyn College,
teaching art history.
There are definite links between Reinhardt’s work and
that of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly with Barnett Newman
and Mark Rothko. Reinhardt’s abhorrence, however, of the biomorphism,
emotionalism and cult of individuality favoured by the Abstract
Expressionists led him to produce geometric paintings dominated by grid
structures and by variations of a single colour, for example Red Painting (1952; New York, Met.) and Black painting (1952–3; see
Colour interaction, colour pl. VIIId), signalling a break with them.
Curved forms were eliminated in favour of horizontal and vertical
brick-like strokes of paint. Ragged, sinuous edges were purged. His new
perception of the work of Piet Mondrian and his personal contact with
Josef Albers, with whom he taught in the Yale University Art Department
from 1952 to 1953, were catalysts for this return to the geometric. The
solid symmetrical blocks of colours characteristic of his late paintings
appeared by 1952. These rectilinearly and then squarely structured
monochrome paintings were first painted in shades of blue or red and
culminated in Reinhardt’s final black series, for example Abstract Painting, Black
(1960–66; London, Tate). With these ‘ultimate’ paintings, Reinhardt
merged his art and his aesthetics, concentrating the viewer’s attention
on gradations of colour of such subtlety that they were nearly
impossible to see. Reinhardt’s early identification with the New York
School was challenged by his more potent role as the precursor of
Minimalism and conceptual art
of the 1960s and 1970s. His reductive paintings, buttressed by some of
his most complex prose, insisted on the primacy of direct observation
unattended by literary or naturalistic association. These dark and
seemingly invisible works were composed in nine-part, Greek cross
blocks. Reinhardt pursued this form exclusively until his death.
Patterson Sims
Jagdish Swaminathan is one of the most significant modern artists of
India. He has the skill to express himself easily in words. He was among
the co-founders of the Group 1890. Indian art received an all new
direction by him and he started working towards a new set of values
based on an indigenous identity. His mystical bent of mind is mirrored
in his paintings. The account below throws more light on the
achievements of Jagdish Swaminathan. 
Nandalal Bose was a remarkable painter of Bengal school of art. He was
mentored by both Abanindranath Tagore and Havell. His artistic
capabilities are echoed by his oeuvre. His works beautifully represented
his nationalistic impulses. Many critics consider his artistic works
among India's finest modern paintings. Along with his favorite students
(Beohar Rammanohar Sinha and others), he took-up the momentous task of
beautifying the original manuscript of the Constitution of India.
Ratan
Parimoo was born in 1936 in Srinagar, Kashmir. Illustrious artist Naina
Dalal is the proud wife of this celebrated painter. Ratan Parimoo
obtained his graduation in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.
University, Baroda in 1955. Afterwards he obtained M.A. in (Fine)
Creative Painting, Post Graduate Diploma in Museology under M.S.
University, Baroda in 1957. Ratan Parimoo obtained his graduate degree
in History of Art from London University in 1963. He obtained Ph.D. in
Art history from M.S. University, Baroda in 1972. He has ornamented the
esteemed posts of- Lecturer in Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda
1959; Reader and Head, Department of Art History and Aesthetics 1966;
Professor in Art History and Aesthetics from the years 1966 to 1978; and
also the Dean, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda from the years 1975 to
1981.
