black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren’t.

Ad Reinhardt

Making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive – non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective.
AD REINHARDT

Abstract Empire Happen Purer Say Speaking Way What
The job at Brooklyn is interesting because Brooklyn reflects what happened to university art departments everywhere. It might be the worst department now, and yet at one point it was the best in the country.
AD REINHARDT

Art Country Department Happened Job Reflect University
There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.
AD REINHARDT

Black Dull Fresh Lustrous Shadow Sunlight
Painting cannot be the only activity of a mature artist.
AD REINHARDT

Activity Artist Color Creative Mature Paint Painting
The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea… The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.
AD REINHARDT

Art Business Idea Selling Spectacle Themselves Ugliest
Art is not the spiritual side of business.
AD REINHARDT

Art Artist Business Creative Interest Like Spiritual
Art is too serious to be taken seriously.
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Art Serious Seriously Taken
If some student came up and wanted to know where to study painting, you’d want to suggest someplace, but there’s no place. I wouldn’t know where to send a student to study.
AD REINHARDT

Painting Someplace Student Study Suggest Want
I taught a lot of art history, especially Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. But the painting classes came back. The nudes came back. Not so much the still lifes.
AD REINHARDT

Art Chinese Class Especially History Painting People Person
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
AD REINHARDT

Art Avant-Garde Everything Simplify
As an artist I would like to eliminate the symbolic pretty much, for black is interesting not as a color but as a non-color and as the absence of color.
AD REINHARDT

Artist Color Eliminate Interesting Much Pretty Symbolic
I like the idea of the museum world and the university-academic situation where artists talk to each other or where artists or art students study with artists.
AD REINHARDT

Art Artist Idea Museums Situation Talk University
As for a picture, if it isn’t worth a thousand words, the hell with it.
AD REINHARDT

Design Feeling Hell Picture Software Thousand Word
It is not right for painters to think that painting is like prostitution, that ‘first you do it for love, then you do it for others, and finally you do it for money.
AD REINHARDT

Art Creative First Idea Painter Painting Right Thinking
My paintings are the last paintings one can make.
AD REINHARDT

Consuming Last Make One Painting Time
The artist should once and forever emancipate himself from the bondage of appearance.
AD REINHARDT

Appearance Art Artist Bondage Emancipate Forever

We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren’t.

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We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren’t.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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