(University of California Press, 2005)
Member of American Abstract Artists Group 1937-47, did a master's in Asian art history. Critical of abstract expressionists - antithesis of what would be called art in far east, where intensity and consciousness are based on repetition and tradition.
Often described as monk-like in his way of living. Zen practitioner.
Gradually eliminated imagery in his art - evolved through calligraphic and brick-like forms to a cruciform of subtly varied shades of one colour - red, blue and then black. Trying to avoid any expression of ego. Looking for a kind of purity.
His paintings to take time to absorb and to be absorbed by. One critic wrote that they reduced the viewer 'to the sole organ of his or her vision....What one then perceives, in the blackest of the 'black' paintings, is no longer the infinitesimal variation of color, but the always fleeting, always dubitable, beginning, the promise of a speck of light, the 'last vestige of brightness' ' (Yve-Alain Blois) The painting as a moment in a process of consciousness.
A lot of theorising e.g. in his Twelve Rules for a New Academy 1953 - very connected to Buddhist teachings on emptiness/nothingness
https://users.wfu.edu/~laugh/painting2/reinhardt.pdf
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| Abstract painting, Blue 1952 |
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