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 REINHARDTOnly a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.
More Ad Reinhardt Quotes
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We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren’t.
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So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.
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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.
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As for a picture, if it isn’t worth a thousand words, the hell with it.
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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.
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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.
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Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are.
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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.
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Art is too serious to be taken seriously.
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The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.
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Making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive – non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective.
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My paintings are the last paintings one can make.
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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.
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Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
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The artist should once and forever emancipate himself from the bondage of appearance.
AD REINHARDT






