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54-478: Most famous for his "black" or "ultimate" paintings, he claimed to be painting the "last paintings" that anyone can paint. He believed in a philosophy of art he called Art-as-Art and used his writing and satirical cartoons to advocate for abstract art and against what he described as "the disreputable practices of artists-as-artists". He was a member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of

108-521: A Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts. His writing includes comments on his own work and that of his contemporaries. His concise wit, sharp focus, and sense of abstraction make them interesting reading even for those who have not seen his paintings. Like his paintings, his writing remains controversial decades after its composition. Many of his writings are collected in Art as Art , edited by Barbara Rose , University of California Press , 1991. Reinhardt joined

162-524: A composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Abstract art , non-figurative art , non-objective art , and non-representational art are all closely related terms. They have similar, but perhaps not identical, meanings. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. By

216-853: A Circle (1911); František Kupka had painted the Orphist works, Discs of Newton (Study for Fugue in Two Colors ), 1912 and Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs ( Fugue in Two Colors ), 1912; Robert Delaunay painted a series entitled Simultaneous Windows and Formes Circulaires, Soleil n°2 (1912–13); Léopold Survage created Colored Rhythm (Study for the film), 1913; Piet Mondrian , painted Tableau No. 1 and Composition No. 11 , 1913. With his expressive use of color and his free and imaginative drawing Henri Matisse comes very close to pure abstraction in French Window at Collioure (1914), View of Notre-Dame (1914), and The Yellow Curtain from 1915. And

270-507: A basis for a diversity of modes of abstraction. The following extract from The World Backwards gives some impression of the inter-connectedness of culture at the time: " David Burliuk 's knowledge of modern art movements must have been extremely up-to-date, for the second Knave of Diamonds exhibition , held in January 1912 (in Moscow) included not only paintings sent from Munich, but some members of

324-680: A color at all. In 1967 he contributed one of 17 signed prints that made up the portfolio Artists and Writers Protest Against the War in Viet Nam organized by the group Artists and Writers Protest . Reinhardt's lithograph, known as "No War" from its first two words of text, shows both sides of an air mail post card addressed to "War Chief, Washington, D.C. U.S.A." with a list of 34 demands that includes "no napalm," "no bombing," "no poverty," "no art of war," and admonitions concerning art itself, "no art in war" and "no art on war." That same year, Reinhardt received

378-582: A departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. Abstraction exists along a continuum. Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is impossible. Artwork which takes liberties, e.g. altering color or form in ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstract. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction , for instance, one

432-715: A few directions relating to abstraction in the second half of the 20th century. In the United States, Art as Object as seen in the Minimalist sculpture of Donald Judd and the paintings of Frank Stella are seen today as newer permutations. Other examples include Lyrical Abstraction and the sensuous use of color seen in the work of painters as diverse as Robert Motherwell , Patrick Heron , Kenneth Noland , Sam Francis , Cy Twombly , Richard Diebenkorn , Helen Frankenthaler , Joan Mitchell , and Veronica Ruiz de Velasco . One socio-historical explanation that has been offered for

486-799: A few of the exiled Europeans who arrived in New York. The rich cultural influences brought by the European artists were distilled and built upon by local New York painters. The climate of freedom in New York allowed all of these influences to flourish. The art galleries that primarily had focused on European art began to notice the local art community and the work of younger American artists who had begun to mature. Certain artists at this time became distinctly abstract in their mature work. During this period Piet Mondrian's painting Composition No. 10 , 1939–1942, characterized by primary colors, white ground and black grid lines clearly defined his radical but classical approach to

540-500: A manifesto defining an abstract art in which the line, color and surface only are the concrete reality. Abstraction-Création founded in 1931 as a more open group, provided a point of reference for abstract artists, as the political situation worsened in 1935, and artists again regrouped, many in London. The first exhibition of British abstract art was held in England in 1935. The following year

594-407: A technician, learning to use the tools and materials of modern production. Art into life! was Vladimir Tatlin 's slogan, and that of all the future Constructivists. Varvara Stepanova and Alexandre Exter and others abandoned easel painting and diverted their energies to theatre design and graphic works. On the other side stood Kazimir Malevich , Anton Pevsner and Naum Gabo . They argued that art

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648-446: A total sum of almost $ 400 million since its inception. Each year, the foundation receives a high number of applications; since its formation it has seen anywhere between 500 and 4,000 applications. Out of these, approximately 175 Fellowships are awarded. The size of each grant varies and the amount and duration of the grant is adjusted based on the individual needs of the recipients, taking into consideration their other resources and

702-558: A view from a single point, with modulated color in flat areas – became the basis of a new visual art, later to be developed into Cubism . Additionally in the late 19th century in Eastern Europe mysticism and early modernist religious philosophy as expressed by theosophist Mme. Blavatsky had a profound impact on pioneer geometric artists like Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky . The mystical teaching of Georges Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky also had an important influence on

756-439: Is conspicuously and deliberately altered vis-a-vis reality, and cubism , which alters the forms of the real-life entities depicted. Patronage from the church diminished and private patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists. Three art movements which contributed to the development of abstract art were Romanticism , Impressionism and Expressionism . Artistic independence for artists

810-498: Is then precisely the abstract nature of social existence—legal formalities, bureaucratic impersonalization, information/power—in the world of late modernity . By contrast, Post-Jungians would see the quantum theories with their disintegration of conventional ideas of form and matter as underlying the divorce of the concrete and the abstract in modern art. Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since 1925  ( 1925 ) by

864-424: Is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive . But figurative and representational (or realistic ) art often contain partial abstraction. Both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. Among the very numerous art movements that embody partial abstraction would be for instance fauvism in which color

918-654: The Abstract expressionists and the New York School . In New York City there was an atmosphere which encouraged discussion and there was a new opportunity for learning and growing. Artists and teachers John D. Graham and Hans Hofmann became important bridge figures between the newly arrived European Modernists and the younger American artists coming of age. Mark Rothko , born in Russia, began with strongly surrealist imagery which later dissolved into his powerful color compositions of

972-456: The Bauhaus . By the mid-1920s the revolutionary period (1917 to 1921) when artists had been free to experiment was over; and by the 1930s only socialist realism was allowed. As visual art becomes more abstract, it develops some characteristics of music : an art form which uses the abstract elements of sound and divisions of time. Wassily Kandinsky , himself an amateur musician, was inspired by

1026-786: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation , endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated distinguished accomplishment in the past and potential for future achievement. The recipients exhibit outstanding aptitude for prolific scholarship or exceptional talent in the arts. The foundation holds two separate competitions each year: The performing arts are excluded from these fellowships, but composers, film directors, and choreographers are still eligible to apply. While students are not qualified to apply, advanced professionals in mid-career, such as published authors, are encouraged to do so. Upon receipt of

1080-540: The National Academy of Design under Karl Anderson. Upon finishing college he was accredited as a painter by Burgoyne Diller , which allowed him to work from 1936 until 1940 for the WPA Federal Art Project , easel division. Sponsored by Holty he became a member of the American Abstract Artists group, with whom he exhibited for the next decade. Reinhardt described his association with the group as "one of

1134-761: The New York University Institute of Fine Arts, Reinhardt became a teacher at Brooklyn College in 1947 and taught there until his death from a heart attack in 1967. He also taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco , the University of Wyoming , Yale University and Hunter College , New York. Reinhardt's earliest exhibited paintings avoided representation, but show a steady progression away from objects and external reference. His work progressed from compositions of geometrical shapes in

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1188-441: The U.S. Army , but after being banned subsequently sold close to a million copies. He also illustrated a children's book A Good Man and His Good Wife . While attending Columbia University he designed many covers and illustrations for the humor magazine Jester and was its editor in his senior year (1934–35). In 1940 he was the designer of "The Chelsea Document", a public exhibition of five 4x8 foot panels. Other commercial art work

1242-448: The 1940s to works in different shades of the same color (all red, all blue, all white) in the 1950s. Reinhardt is best known for his so-called "black" paintings of the 1960s, which appear at first glance to be simply canvases painted black but are actually composed of black and nearly black shades. Among many other suggestions, these paintings ask if there can be such a thing as an absolute, even in black, which some viewers may not consider

1296-565: The Bauhaus went to America. During the 1930s Paris became the host to artists from Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries affected by the rise of totalitarianism . Sophie Tauber and Jean Arp collaborated on paintings and sculpture using organic/geometric forms. The Polish Katarzyna Kobro applied mathematically based ideas to sculpture. The many types of abstraction now in close proximity led to attempts by artists to analyse

1350-757: The Betty Parsons Gallery beginning in 1946. He was involved in the 1940 protest against MoMA , designing the leaflet that asked How modern is the Museum of Modern Art ? His works were displayed regularly throughout the 1940s and 1950s at the Annual Exhibitions held at the Whitney Museum of American Art . He was also part of the protest against the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1950 which became known as " The Irascibles ." Having completed his studies at

1404-628: The German Die Brücke group, while from Paris came work by Robert Delaunay , Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger , as well as Picasso. During the Spring David Burliuk gave two lectures on cubism and planned a polemical publication, which the Knave of Diamonds was to finance. He went abroad in May and came back determined to rival the almanac Der Blaue Reiter which had emerged from the printers while he

1458-527: The Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism . The raw language of color as developed by the Fauves directly influenced another pioneer of abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky . Cubism , based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to cube , sphere and cone became, along with Fauvism , the art movement that directly opened

1512-538: The ancient wisdom of the sacred books of India and China in the early years of the century. It was in this context that Piet Mondrian , Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint and other artists working towards an 'objectless state' became interested in the occult as a way of creating an 'inner' object. The universal and timeless shapes found in geometry : the circle, square and triangle become the spatial elements in abstract art; they are, like color, fundamental systems underlying visible reality. The Bauhaus at Weimar, Germany

1566-661: The depiction of objects. Even earlier than that, with her "spirit" drawings, Georgiana Houghton 's choice to work with abstract shapes correlate with the unnatural nature of her subject, in a time when abstraction was not yet a concept (she organized an exhibit in 1871). Expressionist painters explored the bold use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations, and intense color. Expressionists produced emotionally charged paintings that were reactions to and perceptions of contemporary experience; and reactions to Impressionism and other more conservative directions of late 19th-century painting. The Expressionists drastically changed

1620-429: The door to abstraction in the early 20th century. During the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or , where František Kupka exhibited his abstract painting Amorpha, Fugue en deux couleurs ( Fugue in Two Colors ) (1912), the poet Guillaume Apollinaire named the work of several artists including Robert Delaunay , Orphism . He defined it as, "the art of painting new structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from

1674-702: The early 1950s. The expressionistic gesture and the act of painting itself, became of primary importance to Jackson Pollock , Robert Motherwell , and Franz Kline . While during the 1940s Arshile Gorky 's and Willem de Kooning 's figurative work evolved into abstraction by the end of the decade. New York City became the center, and artists worldwide gravitated towards it; from other places in America as well. Digital art , hard-edge painting , geometric abstraction , minimalism , lyrical abstraction , op art, abstract expressionism, color field painting, monochrome painting , assemblage , neo-Dada, shaped canvas painting, are

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1728-410: The early formations of the geometric abstract styles of Piet Mondrian and his colleagues in the early 20th century. The spiritualism also inspired the abstract art of Kasimir Malevich and František Kupka . At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque , André Derain , Raoul Dufy and Jean Metzinger revolutionized

1782-460: The emphasis on subject matter in favor of the portrayal of psychological states of being. Although artists like Edvard Munch and James Ensor drew influences principally from the work of the Post-Impressionists they were instrumental to the advent of abstraction in the 20th century. Paul Cézanne had begun as an Impressionist but his aim – to make a logical construction of reality based on

1836-401: The end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology , science and philosophy . The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time. Abstraction indicates

1890-452: The extended family, but work took his father to New York City. He later studied art history at Columbia College of Columbia University , where he was a close friend of Robert Lax and Thomas Merton . The three developed similar concepts of simplicity in different directions. Reinhardt considered himself a painter from a very early age and began winning prizes for painting in grade school and high school. Feeling that he had already acquired all

1944-483: The grant, Fellows are free to use the funds however they deem fit. The goal of the grant is to provide recipients with dedicated time and freedom to pursue their projects or artistic endeavours, while being relieved of their regular duties. Applicants are required to submit references as well as a CV and portfolio . As of 2023, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has funded over 18,000 Fellows with

1998-671: The greatest things that ever happened to me". He participated in group exhibitions at the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery, and he had his first one-man show at the Artists Gallery in 1943. He then went on to be represented by Betty Parsons , exhibiting first at the Wakefield Bookshop, the Mortimer Brandt Gallery and then when Parsons opened her own gallery on 57th street. Reinhardt had regular solo exhibitions yearly at

2052-431: The growing prevalence of the abstract in modern art—an explanation linked to the name of Theodor W. Adorno —is that such abstraction is a response to (and a reflection of) the growing abstraction of social relations in industrial society . Frederic Jameson similarly sees modernist abstraction as a function of the abstract power of money, equating all things equally as exchange-values. The social content of abstract art

2106-861: The more international Abstract and Concrete exhibition was organized by Nicolete Gray including work by Piet Mondrian , Joan Miró , Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson . Hepworth, Nicholson and Gabo moved to the St. Ives in Cornwall to continue their constructivist work. During the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s many artists fled Europe to the United States. By the early 1940s the main movements in modern art, expressionism, cubism, abstraction, surrealism , and dada were represented in New York: Marcel Duchamp , Fernand Léger , Piet Mondrian , Jacques Lipchitz , André Masson , Max Ernst , and André Breton , were just

2160-728: The movement centered on the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism . He was also a member of The Club , the meeting place for the New York School abstract expressionist artists during the 1940s and 1950s. Reinhardt was born in Buffalo, New York , and lived with his family in the Riverside section along the Niagara River. His cousin Otto and he were close, as well as

2214-419: The possibility of marks and associative color resounding in the soul. The idea had been put forward by Charles Baudelaire , that all our senses respond to various stimuli but the senses are connected at a deeper aesthetic level. Closely related to this, is the idea that art has The spiritual dimension and can transcend 'every-day' experience, reaching a spiritual plane. The Theosophical Society popularized

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2268-457: The rectangle and abstract art in general. Some artists of the period defied categorization, such as Georgia O'Keeffe who, while a modernist abstractionist, was a pure maverick in that she painted highly abstract forms while not joining any specific group of the period. Eventually American artists who were working in a great diversity of styles began to coalesce into cohesive stylistic groups. The best-known group of American artists became known as

2322-449: The school was moved to Dessau and, as the Nazi party gained control in 1932, The Bauhaus was closed. In 1937 an exhibition of degenerate art , 'Entartete Kunst' contained all types of avant-garde art disapproved of by the Nazi party. Then the exodus began: not just from the Bauhaus but from Europe in general; to Paris, London and America. Paul Klee went to Switzerland but many of the artists at

2376-602: The search continued: The Rayist (Luchizm) drawings of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov , used lines like rays of light to make a construction. Kasimir Malevich completed his first entirely abstract work, the Suprematist , Black Square , in 1915. Another of the Suprematist group' Liubov Popova , created the Architectonic Constructions and Spatial Force Constructions between 1916 and 1921. Piet Mondrian

2430-448: The staff of PM in 1942 and he worked full-time at this daily newspaper until 1947, with time out while drafted for active duty in the U.S. Navy . While at PM he produced several thousand cartoons and illustrations most notably the series of famous and widely reproduced How to Look at Art series. Reinhardt also illustrated the highly influential and controversial pamphlet Races of Mankind (1943) originally intended for distribution to

2484-531: The technical skills in high school he turned down scholarships at art schools and accepted a full scholarship at Columbia University which he attended from 1931 to 1935. Reinhardt studied under the art historian Meyer Schapiro. He took painting classes as an undergraduate at Columbia's Teachers College and after graduation began to study painting with Carl Holty and Francis Criss at the American Artists School , while simultaneously studying portraiture at

2538-532: The various conceptual and aesthetic groupings. An exhibition by forty-six members of the Cercle et Carré group organized by Joaquín Torres-García assisted by Michel Seuphor contained work by the Neo-Plasticists as well as abstractionists as varied as Kandinsky, Anton Pevsner and Kurt Schwitters . Criticized by Theo van Doesburg to be too indefinite a collection he published the journal Art Concret setting out

2592-463: The visual sphere, but had been created entirely by the artist...it is a pure art." Since the turn of the century, cultural connections between artists of the major European cities had become extremely active as they strove to create an art form equal to the high aspirations of modernism . Ideas were able to cross-fertilize by means of artist's books, exhibitions and manifestos so that many sources were open to experimentation and discussion, and formed

2646-628: Was advanced during the 19th century. An objective interest in what is seen can be discerned from the paintings of John Constable , J. M. W. Turner , Camille Corot and from them to the Impressionists who continued the plein air painting of the Barbizon school . Early intimations of a new art had been made by James McNeill Whistler who, in his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket , (1872), placed greater emphasis on visual sensation than

2700-829: Was done "for such varied employers as the Brooklyn Dodgers , Glamour magazine , the CIO , Macy's , The New York Times , the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, The Book and Magazine Guild, the American Jewish Labor Council, New Masses , the Saturday Evening Post , Ice Cream World, and Listen magazine. He illustrated many books such as Who's Who in the Zoo . Abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create

2754-672: Was essentially a spiritual activity; to create the individual's place in the world, not to organize life in a practical, materialistic sense. During that time, representatives of the Russian avant-garde collaborated with other Eastern European Constructivist artists, including Władysław Strzemiński , Katarzyna Kobro , and Henryk Stażewski . Many of those who were hostile to the materialist production idea of art left Russia. Anton Pevsner went to France, Gabo went first to Berlin, then to England and finally to America. Kandinsky studied in Moscow then left for

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2808-428: Was evolving his abstract language, of horizontal and vertical lines with rectangles of color, between 1915 and 1919, Neo-Plasticism was the aesthetic which Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and other in the group De Stijl intended to reshape the environment of the future. Many of the abstract artists in Russia became Constructivists believing that art was no longer something remote, but life itself. The artist must become

2862-557: Was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius . The philosophy underlying the teaching program was unity of all the visual and plastic arts from architecture and painting to weaving and stained glass. This philosophy had grown from the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement in England and the Deutscher Werkbund . Among the teachers were Paul Klee , Wassily Kandinsky , Johannes Itten , Josef Albers , Anni Albers , and László Moholy-Nagy . In 1925

2916-563: Was in Germany". From 1909 to 1913 many experimental works in the search for this 'pure art' had been created by a number of artists: Francis Picabia painted Caoutchouc , c. 1909, The Spring , 1912, Dances at the Spring and The Procession, Seville , 1912; Wassily Kandinsky painted Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor) , 1913, Improvisation 21A , the Impression series, and Picture with

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