Reinhardt: Part I

This weekend, I re-read Running With Scissors. A vaguely salacious and gossipy book by Augustine Burroughs, it is, nonetheless filled with razor-like observations and humor. It takes the horrifying and renders it into hilarity.

In the book, one of the coping mechanisms the Hope character uses to deal with her family’s nutty home life are Bible Dips. Basically, ask a question, and then open the Bible, point to a word, and “interpret” it.

In that same absurdist spirit, I decided to let (my recently relocated) copy of Art-as-Art, The selected writings of Ad Reinhardt flop open to a random page.

It opened to:

AN ARTIST,
A FINE-ARTIST OR
FREE-ARTIST

An artist, a fine-artists or free artists,
An artist-as-artist
Has always nothing to say,
And he must say this over and over again.
Especially in his work
What else is there to say?
In work or words

What in hell, on earth, or in heaven, is an artist up to when he says he has something to say?

All artists-as-artists say the same thing

The post-historic artist is the timeless artist-as-artist.
The artist-as-artist is the post-historic artist.
The post-historic artist is the artist aware of himself as artist, aware of art-as-art, aware of everything that is not art, inside or outside art.
The only way to say what an artist-as-artist is is to say what an an artist-as-artist is not.
A fine artist by definition is not a commercial or industrial or fashion or applied or useful artist.
A fine, free or liberal or abstract artist is by definition not a servile or professional or meaningful artist.
A fine artist has no use to use, no meaning for meaning, no need for any need.
A fine artist has nothing to use, has no need for any meaning, and would not use himself or his work for anything.
A fine artist by definition does not use or need any ideas or images, does not use or need any help, cannot use or help anyone or anything.
Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea.
A good artist does not need anything.

*italics are according to the book, which was edited by Barbara Rose.
** though I do not agree with many of his tenants, I find Reinhardt endless fascinating for his output, and his humor.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

The other day, the magazine Humanities (the published arm of the NEH) ran an article that took a look at the ideas of Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) and Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978). Dubbing them the Ali and Frazier of the Abstract Expressionist era, the article cursorily sums up each man’s view. Though their arguments now have the dated tone of ideas whose time has come and gone, it is nonetheless instructive as we today still wrestle with the ideological leavings of the 40s-70s.

In fact, the author writes, “...American modern art reached its apex in the 1950s through the flowering of Abstract Expressionism, art criticism achieved a glittering purity of its own—a beautiful high criticism perfectly matched to the period of high art.” This discussion is timely: the Jewish Museum has mounted a show (underwritten by the NEH), Action/Abstraction, which mounts works by “rival godheads,” Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and fine works by (notably) Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still, and later painters like Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and successors Jasper Johns, Frank Stella.

However, interspersed in the exhibit, writes Peter Schjeldahl, “abundant texts, photographs, and memorabilia. Film clips display the men’s differently impressive rhetorical panache: Greenberg is incisive and imperious, Rosenberg droll and oracular. (Parallel shots witness Pollock dripping and de Kooning stroking).”

In considering the show, one must cede the point that both Rosenberg and Greenberg were wonderfully logical writers, and highly influential thinkers. But now, we deal with their ideological detritus that asks writers to quantify, qualify and organize art...possibly/probably to our disadvantage.

As writers and essayists decry the obtuse and often seemingly nonsensical art writing of the present, we (as artists, writers, performers...) are left defending a position that though defensible, sometimes begs the question, why.

No, this is not a call for art and by extension art-writing to become incredibly accessible (art is elite, good art even more so), it is however, a call for truth in writing. Sometimes, a work is successful purely on its aesthetic merits...and that is enough. Placing artworks in a larger, social/political, cultural context is always instructive, but not always necessary.

That being said, it is worth noting that it took this writer 351 words to spit that idea out.

It is the ability to defend and explain that should be nurtured, not the need to endlessly do so. That way, when one is on a plane and forced into a conversation with a seatmate who argues the old trope "My kid could paint like Jackson Pollock," the line, "But little Sally didn't," can thrust home...leaving one in peace.



Pictured top: Greenberg, de Kooning, Rosenberg

Bottom: The Irascibles protest their exclusion from a New York exhibition in 1950. Back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne; middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Bradley Walker Tomlin; front row: Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, and Mark Rothko. —Photographed by Nina Leen, Getty Images

Sanctified

In addition to three or four art shows, last weekend also saw the pinnacle of AIA Jacksonville’s lecture series, “Mid Century Modern: exploring mid-century modern architecture in Florida.” The event included a bus tour of some significant, and not-so-significant examples of modern architecture.

The highlight of the tour was a visit to the Unitarian Universalist Church designed by architect Bob Broward. As we filed into the space, and gazed upward through the skylights (a feature Broward used in other churches) with the warm scent of good intentions and dust in the air, Broward’s intent was clear: a simple, pared-down space that echoed elements of sacred grottos and pre-Christian spaces.

When Broward started to talk about the building, his face started to shine. He wasn’t just talking about ideas and formal construction, he was talking about a small community’s labor of love. A community he is a part of.

As he spoke, he looked around the main sanctuary, gesturing here and there, remembering buckets of concrete, touching the cypress timbers of the exposed gabling, and gesturing towards the overgrown pond saying, “when the church was originally built, it was reflected perfectly in the pond; like the Taj Mahal…you met it twice.”

Now, the pond is overgrown, full of lily pads and algae, it reflects nothing. The reason? Runof from nearby Arlington Expressway. The church has contacted the EPA for help with a clean-up...but its a slow process laments Broward.

Quiet and sincere, the church is as like the mega-churches scattered across Jacksonville, as ruins are like McMansions.

A space sanctified not by some overblown idea of a mighty God, but by the people it shelters.