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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 9
Lesson 2: New York School- The Impact of Abstract Expressionism
- Sari Dienes, Star Circle
- Jasper Johns, Flag
- Johns, White Flag
- Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing
- Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon
- Robert Rauschenberg, Bed
- Robert Rauschenberg, Signs
- Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz Useful Art #5: The Western Hotel, 1992
- Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting
- Ad Reinhardt
- The Painting Techniques of Ad Reinhardt
- Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea
- Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay
- Frankenthaler's The Bay
- Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor
- “Protractor, Variation I” by Frank Stella
- New York School (quiz)
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Ad Reinhardt
Take time with Ad Reinhardt's black canvases and discover the rewards of contemplation. To learn more and create your own works, take our online course Materials and Techniques of Postwar Abstract Painting. Created by The Museum of Modern Art.
Want to join the conversation?
- is it possible to actually see the colors blue, red, green in the painting.(7 votes)
- Yes. If you spend a few minutes focused on the painting, your eyes adjust enough to see the colors.(10 votes)
- ~0:45do we know why he devoted himself to black toward the end of his life?(5 votes)
- http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=78976 ... "In his unpublished writings, the artist indicates that these pictures relate aesthetically to monotonal Chinese paintings rather than Western painting's concepts of light and dark. These canvases are intentionally enigmatic, painted to resist interpretation and to represent the beginning of a new way of seeing and thinking about art."(5 votes)
- Is it just me or did she say that if you don't get it you are stupid?(3 votes)
- No, she didn't say that at all. She just said that to understand these paintings, the viewer may have to spend a little time looking at them.(2 votes)
- Ha anyone tried to interpret Abstract Expressionism in terms of Eric Hoffer's "True Believer"?
When Ms. Temkin started framing the movement in terms of viewers proving themselves (around2:55and later), it sounds strikingly similar to the exclusivity that many other groups outside of art try to achieve.(3 votes) - At2:36the speaker says that Reinhardt believed that anyone not appreciative of his art is a Philistine, or, in other words, that they are un-cultured or narrow minded. The speaker seems to agree. Is this type of attitude conducive to Art History scholarship?(2 votes)
- I would not assume that the curator agrees with Ad Reinhardt on this point based on what is said in the video.(2 votes)
- I don't mind spending time with a piece of art, provided the return on my investment is adequate. Does anyone else feel that seeing merely a cross is hardly worth the time spent standing there gazing? It's not that my time is worth money, but that my feet and back will only hold out for just so long before I have to leave. My pain-free time would be more enjoyably spent looking at a Monet or Renoir.(2 votes)
- In the painting black i see blue do you?(1 vote)
- I did! Please put this in the Tips and Thanks.(0 votes)
Video transcript
Ann: Where as many of the abstract
expressionist artists began as figurative painters, Ad Reindhart
began as a geometric painter. Very much following in the
footsteps like many American artists at that time of Piet
Mondrian and the geometric, almost rhythmic patterns
of his early work. He limited his palette to
a very few select colors: white, red, blue and ultimately
by the end of the 50s black. A color to which he
devoted himself exclusively through up until his death
at the end of his 60s. The sensibility of his
pictures is a mystical one. Like most of the abstract expressionist
painters there's no figures or any indication of landscape
that the viewer can connect to. Instead it's really the painting
itself, the making of the painting and perhaps even more important
the perception of the painting that matters to Reinhardt. With the black paintings especially,
his interests are very clear. When you first look at a black
square painting by Reinhardt you really just see a black square. But when you continue to focus and
look at it a little while longer what you'll see emerging from
the depths of that black surface is a cross going from top
to bottom and side to side in the center of the canvass. In which you can read different
colors embedded in that black and emerging through the black,
rewarding the viewer who takes the time to really look and really
be patient with the picture. For all of the abstract
expressionists, this is a key priority. They're making paintings
that take time to unfold. They're making paintings
that can't be glanced at or walked passed quickly. In this way the abstract expressionists
I think thought of their works almost as the holders of secrets. One can initiate one's
self into those secrets without having to say any magic
password or anything like that, but just by spending time. For those Philistines, the abstract
expressionists would have said who did not even know enough or
care enough to spend the time. They would walk right by these
canvasses with no idea of what treasures lay within them. I think that just pleased
these artists totally fine. Their work was made to
communicate with a certain level of like-minded or like-spirited
viewers who were ready for what they were providing them. If those viewers had to
do something to prove it like stand in front of the painting
a little while, all the better.