I finally got to see this wonderful Adolf Reinhardt painting. 5ft square. Black. But not truly black. It is a slow painting that unfolds with the more time you put into viewing it. Sometimes I began to wonder if I were seeing things just from looking at all the black for so long. But it did begin to work it's magic on me and I began to see the red, the violet within the painting. The strange thing is that, of the reproductions I have seen of these paintings. You usually can see what looks like a cross pattern within the painting, with the cross being painted with a glossy sheen and the rest a very matte paint. But this one in particular did not have any of the sheen whatsoever. Which kinda threw me a bit, as I always thought that each one had that cross pattern within it. For as much as I looked at it, I could see no pattern within the painting at all. There are slight views that let you think there is an almost checkerboard pattern within it, but I don't know what I think as to that matter. All I know, is that I FINALLY got to see one. After all these years...more than a decade, I finally got to see one of the Reinhardt square black paintings. After viewing the rest of the ab-ex show at Moma, I now feel even more minuscule as a painter. These were painters that really hit you over the head with their work. Which makes me wanna work on my paintings even more to find what they found. That power, that intensity, that scale. Seeing Barnett Newman's painting Vir Heroicus Sublimis really made me realize what scale is truly all about. It stands before you, defiant of your thoughts and pushes right back at you. I still can't get these images out of my head.
1963. Oil on canvas, 60 x 60" (152.4 x 152.4 cm). Gift of Mrs. Morton J. Hornick. © 2010 Estate of Ad Reinhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
If you get the chance while this show is up. I highly recommend that you drop your preconception about New York and get there to witness this amazing show of all the Abstract Expressionists (Though I think they missed Milton Resnick)
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ATA%3AE%3AAbExFeatured&page_number=8&template_id=1&sort_order=1
