black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Painting cannot be the only activity of a mature artist.

Ad Reinhardt

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
The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.
AD REINHARDT

Abstract Abstraction Art Artist Only Way
The more an artist works the more there is to do.
AD REINHARDT

Artist Interesting More Work
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
We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren’t.
AD REINHARDT

Artist Ask Call Name Nobody Ourselves
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
An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.
AD REINHARDT

Art Artist Burden Creative Dedicate Life
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
The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more
AD REINHARDT

Abstract Art Fifty Nothing Present Year
Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.
AD REINHARDT

Anything Artist Good Idea Need Thinking
Art is not the spiritual side of business.
AD REINHARDT

Art Artist Business Creative Interest Like Spiritual
That’s an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.
AD REINHARDT

Dozen Fact Idea Interesting Making Money Painting Selling Take
Art is too serious to be taken seriously.
AD REINHARDT

Art Serious Seriously Taken
My paintings are the last paintings one can make.
AD REINHARDT

Consuming Last Make One Painting Time
So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.
AD REINHARDT

Department Everything Facility Now Worst
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

Painting cannot be the only activity of a mature artist.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Painting cannot be the only activity of a mature artist.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ad Reinhardt Quotes