PART I
COLOUR AND VISUAL CULTURE
CHAPTER 1
AD REINHARDT: âCOLOR BLINDSâ1
Michael Corris
âA color in artâ, wrote the American painter and cartoonist Ad Reinhardt in âArt-as-Art Dogma, Part Vâ in 1965, âis not a colorâ. Similarly, âcolorlessness in art is not colorlessnessâ (Rose 1975: 66).2 The process of symbol formation teaches us to expect that colour may signify something other than a visually perceptible hue. Colourlessness, too, may serve to express metaphorically, signifying non-aesthetic attributes like lassitude or the proclamation of a defiant nonconformity. Reinhardt took great pleasure in this interpretive loophole provided by polysemy, fascinated by what he called the âmysterious delights of multiple meaningsâ. But it was really pure colour â that is to say, colour drained of its meaning â that appealed to him. We revel in the linguistic perversity of those inventive and maddening texts of Reinhardt in the 1960s known as âart-as-art dogmaâ, wherein hues and their possible references couple and uncouple at will. For Reinhardt, the directness of the visual experience of pure colour that lurked in the infinite cultural complexity of the colour sign was nothing less than beautiful.3
Reinhardt âmakes of black something witty and perverseâ, but the black in Reinhardtâs paintings does not appear black; rather, an extremely dark, matt grey (Reinhardt 1974: 7). Yet Reinhardt did not immediately abandon the lusciously glowing chromatics of the blue and red monochromes of the early 1950s for the dark paintings that really came to dominate his production a decade later. Rather than make a decisive break with un-greyed hues, Reinhardt lingered for close to four years on the problem of how to make a painting nearly âblackâ or very dark. Discussions of Reinhardtâs âblackâ paintings tend to concentrate on the series inaugurated in 1960, where uniformity of size and schemata complement the single-mindedness of the artistâs project. Reinhardtâs âblackâ paintings constitute a radical reinvention of the art of painting because of the sheer novelty of the paintingâs unfolding optical effects.
The rectilinear, geometric format adopted by Reinhardt from the early 1950s onwards is absolutely crucial to the generation of these optical effects. In paintings completed between 1949 and 1950, we can see Reinhardtâs ambivalence towards the adoption of a strictly geometric structure. Red and blue hues â utilized separately for monochrome paintings and in combination to produce visually dissonant canvases â were the means Reinhardt chose to eliminate illusionist space. These works were greyed or âun-doneâ from 1952 to 1953. With the greying also came a change of heart concerning the scale of the paintings, so there are no dark grey canvases in Reinhardtâs body of work to match the heroic scale of his 1952 Red Painting.
To account for the radical âdraining of light from colorâ that characterizes Reinhardtâs work from 1953 onwards, it has been suggested that the artist was responding negatively to the strong figure-ground illusion present in Josef Albersâs series, Homage to the Square. At Albersâs invitation, from 1950 to 1952, Reinhardt was a visiting critic at Yale University School of Art, working mainly during the summer terms. It seems likely that this contact with Albers was instrumental in convincing Reinhardt of the need to revisit geometry and to develop a more analytical approach towards colour. In Albersâs work, these two aspects went hand in hand; without the stable, straightforward armature of the mise-en-abyme of square-within-square, the relativity of colour perception could not be convincingly demonstrated.
The question that remains is, quite simply, âWhy black?â It is undeniable that Reinhardt had already encountered the lyrical black monochrome paintings of Edward Corbett during a 1950 summer residency at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), San Francisco.4 Shortly thereafter, Reinhardt saw the controversial series of monochrome paintings by Robert Rauschenberg: the white monochromes at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1951, the black, glossy monochromes at Stable Gallery in 1953, and the red monochromes at Charles Egan Gallery in 1954.5 Many of Rauschenbergâs monochromes are gestural, collaged paintings where paint is applied over newspapers (one important exception is the artistâs four-panel white monochrome). As examples of monochrome painting, the works of Corbett and Rauschenberg were suggestive but not necessarily seminal to Reinhardtâs project. In the artistâs view, Rauschenbergâs white monochromes were a kind of sceptical nihilism, while the black glossy monochromes committed the cardinal sin of being reflective and thereby allowing the introduction of distracting, art-negating elements into the experience of looking. In contrast to Rauschenbergâs Neo-Dadaist gesture, Reinhardtâs monochromes are constructive, in that the possibility of painting, rather than its utter negation, prevails. Nevertheless, coming to terms with these various conceptions of monochrome painting bolstered Reinhardtâs conviction of the fundamental correctness of his resolve to adopt an unmotivated geometric format to structure monochrome painting. It also strengthened his resolve to present his work in a manner that emphasized its distance from the everyday. It was black that most effectively negated hue while allowing for sufficient subtle variations through the use of progressively deeper tonalities.
The aesthetic issues that Reinhardt had attempted to work through during the early 1950s included the all-over composition as a marker for non-illusionist, shallow painterly space and the use of formal symmetry to destroy hierarchical or dynamic composition. The monochrome enabled Reinhardt to reduce the number of variables in his painting so that he could concentrate on the matter of colour. The charge of âminor key Orientalismâ levelled against Reinhardtâs paintings of this period, while harsh, underscores a common perception about the lack of resolution in the artistâs body of work at this time. It remains the case that for several years during the early 1950s, Reinhardt was groping towards a solution that was only partially revealed by any given work of the time. These paintings showed Reinhardt what would not work within his scheme. Having worked through red and blue and white, the problem of affecting optical resonance using close-valued hues based on black was the only untested option. Once that decision was reached, Reinhardt gave free reign to his vivid comic imagination as he explored the manifold and suitably gothic cultural associations of black in his studio notes that reflected on his practice of painting.
Thereâs something nice about religious points of view in which the central meanings canât be pinned down.
(Reinhardt 1991: 27)6
When Reinhardt complained in an undated, untitled note, âwhatâs wrong with the art world is not Andy Warhol or Andy Wyeth but Mark Rothkoâ, he added: âthe corruption of the best is the worstâ (Rose 1975: 190). Reinhardtâs invective was prompted by Rothkoâs decision to take up a commission to decorate the De Menil chapel in Houston, Texas. From the early 1950s, Reinhardt â something of an expert on the contemporary question of art and religion â had been chastizing New York colleagues such as Robert Motherwell for accepting a commission to decorate a synagogue, and Barnett Newman for aspiring to religious painting in his series Stations of the Cross.7
While Reinhardt was mounting these attacks he was, along with Robert Motherwell, a trustee on the board of the New York-based Foundation for Art, Religion and Culture (FARC), an organization that encouraged dialogue between artists and theologians for the purpose of developing a more modern understanding of the relationship between religion and avant-garde art. Reinhardtâs reasons for maintaining an interest in religion are encapsulated in a series of remarks made in 1959 while lecturing at the Dayton Art Institute:
A great many people are trying to make art a religion or have it replace traditional religion in which a god or the central essence canât be pinned down and named. But pure abstract art is very limited as to what can be read into it. Abstract Expressionist art, on the other hand, is very open, in that people can read their own wishes and fantasies and subjectivities into it. Pure abstract art doesnât permit that. (Reinhardt 1991: 27)
Reinhardt rejected left-wing criticism of Abstract Expressionism as an art devoid of meaning. On the contrary, he sought an antidote for the glut of associative meaning such works encouraged. To this end, Reinhardt turned to Zen Buddhism. By the late 1950s, Reinhardt had become well known for his interest in Zen Buddhism â more a set of moral precepts than a theology â and was deeply immersed in the writings of Christian mystics. For Reinhardt, Zen Buddhism provided a clear argument for detachment that would render a particular mode of consumption of art problematic. Similarly, the writings of Christian mystics provided Reinhardt with vivid descriptions of spiritual revelation in terms of kenosis: an emptying out figured by the trope of darkness or the void. These were critical resources that enabled Reinhardt to extend the conceptualization of his âblackâ paintings in opposition to what he held to be the inflated metaphysical claims of the work of the Abstract Expressionists.
During the early 1950s, Reinhardtâs work attracted the attention of theologians owing to its allegedly transcendental and meditative qualities. One admirer of Reinhardtâs âblackâ paintings was the artistâs lifelong friend, Thomas Merton. Since the early 1940s, Merton had been a monk of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, commonly known as the Trappists.8 Throughout the late 1950s, Merton repeatedly asked Reinhardt for âsome small black and blue cross painting (say about a foot and a half high) for the cell in which I perchâ in the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Lexington, Kentucky.9 Nearly two years passed before Reinhardt relented and produced such a painting. Summing up his consideration of the work that Reinhardt gave him in 1957, Merton wrote:
It has the following noble feature, namely its refusal to have anything else around it. It thinks that only one thing is necessary and this is time, but this one thing is by no means apparent to one who will not take the trouble to look. It is a most religious, devout, and latreutic small painting. (Masheck 1978: 24)
Merton eloquently articulates the paintingâs effect on the beholder:
Almost invisible cross on a black background. As though immersed in darkness and trying to emerge from it . . . You have to look hard to see the cross. One must turn away from everything else and concentrate on the picture as though peering through a window into the night . . . I should say a very âholyâ picture â helps prayer â an âimageâ without features to accustom the mind at once to the night of prayer â and to help one set aside trivial and useless images that wander into prayer and spoil it. (Masheck 1978: 24)
As early as 1940, Merton was convinced that Reinhardtâs painting was religious and pure owing to the artistâs rejection of naturalism in favour of âformal and intellectual valuesâ (Merton 1996: 139â40; Spaeth 2000: 250).
The ethereal quality of the experience of a âblackâ painting â exemplified by Mertonâs commentary â is frequently used to justify a connection between Reinhardtâs art and the spiritual, and has been a perennial topic of interest for contemporary critics, notably Joseph Masheck, Naomi Vine and Paul J. Spaeth.10 Rather than dwell on these associations, I prefer to explain Reinhardtâs interest in theological and moral texts in terms of their practical value as surrogates for conventional aesthetic discourse.
By the late 1950s, Merton was making a reputation for himself as a scholar of Zen Buddhism and the early Christian mystics, such as Nicholas of Cusa and, most importantly, the sixteenth-century Spanish figure, Juan de Yepes, canonized in 1726 as St John of the Cross. St John of the Cross wrote eloquently in his allegory on negative theology of âthe dark night of the soulâ as a path to enlightenment; both Merton and Reinhardt cite him in their writings.11 According to theologian Peter C. King (1995: 6), âMerton very clearly understood himself as standing in the tradition of [St John of the Cross]. He used Johnâs language and concepts â among others â to describe his journey of faith as a contemplative and a monk.â12
Merton was well known for promoting a meditative practice known as contemplative prayer, that drew upon his extensive knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which refreshed his practice as a Cistercian monk. Merton (1962) discusses three modes of contemplation while referring explicitly to similar practices in Zen Buddhism. Reinhardtâs most private reflections on the âblackâ paintings are indebted to Mertonâs writing on this discipline and to his lively correspondence with the artist. For Merton, contemplative practices are classed as âbeginningsâ where the decisive moment is âa sudden emptying of the soul in which images vanish, concepts and words are silent, and freedom and clarity suddenly open out within you until your whole being embraces the wonder, the depth, the obviousness and yet the emptiness and unfathomable incomprehensibility of Godâ (ibid.: 172). Replace âsoulâ with âpaintingâ and âGodâ with âartâ, and Merton could just as well be speaking of Reinhardtâs iconoclastic paintings. In Contemplative Prayer â published posthumously in 1969 â Merton cites the mystics of the Rhineland, such as John Tauler and Ruysbroeck (author of Spiritual Marriage), and the Philokalia, all of which stress the encounter with God âwithout intermediaryâ, through âimagelessâ contemplation. The dominant figure of speech was that of a âsimple lightâ that âshows itse...