Ad Reinhardt: Art + Satire

Curated by Diana Baldon

Galleria Civica di Modena presents the first and largest exhibition in an Italian institution of a still largely unexamined aspect of Ad Reinhardt’s visual practice. Although the American artist is predominantly known as an abstract painter, this exhibition comprises over 250 of his original political cartoons, satirical art comics and collages selected from the archives of the Estate of Ad Reinhardt, New York. These works on paper are accompanied by a slide show of digitised 35mm colour photographs by the artist, as well as a number of his travel journals, sketches and pamphlets. 

Reinhardt first developed an interest in painting and cartooning as a child. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, both during and after the four years he was employed by the United States Federal Art Project in the Easel Division as an abstract painter, Reinhardt created over 3,000 witty cartoons and cover illustrations, which appeared in a wide range of American publications. These included the periodicals New Masses, The Student Advocate and The Fight Against War and Fascism; magazines as diverse as Glamour, Listen, and Ice Cream Field; as well as baseball yearbooks and The Races of Mankind, an anti-racist pamphlet that sold over a million copies. Most notably, Reinhardt served as the staff artist for the daily newspaper PM beginning in 1943, producing distinctive collage-cartoons that combined hand-drawn elements with cut-outs from second­hand books, a striking technique never seen in daily newspapers before.

Having studied and taught art history most of his life, Reinhardt stated in 1958: “I don’t believe in originality. I believe in art history.” Such declaration is substantiated in his celebrated and widely reproduced series, the art comics How to Look. The popular full-page series appeared in the Sunday edition of PM throughout 1946 and served as a platform upon which Reinhardt could adamantly defend the development and understanding of abstract art in America. After securing a full-time teaching position at the Brooklyn College in 1947, Reinhardt only occasionally published additional art comics in the art periodicals ARTnews, trans/formation and Art d’aujourd’hui, among others.

In 1952, Reinhardt began travelling the world extensively. On various trips to Europe, the Middle East, Japan and Southeast Asia, he took over 12,000 colour photographs that were presented in his legendary “Non-Happenings.” Reinhardt’s marathon-like presentations remixed geographies and periods in unlikely, unexpected sequences, thus shifting from art history lecture to a humorous parody of the artist’s personal travelogue. A vast array of images drawn from distant cultures would disclose analogous and playful visual patterns, such as the buttocks of statues erotically rhyming with the features of an urban fire hydrant. Their formal compositions demand the viewer’s prolonged attention, similar to the way his paintings and writings encourage an active awareness when looking at and experiencing them. Evident across Reinhardt’s career, including the artworks presented here, is an ability to expand current definitions of what the aesthetic domain of art is, and can be. 

Ad Reinhardt. Arte + Satira (Art + Satire) is realised in collaboration with Ad Reinhardt Foundation, New York, and the museum Mudam Luxembourg, and with the support of David Zwirner, New York/London/Hong Kong. 

Together with Museo della Figurina and Fondazione Fotografia Modena, Galleria Civica di Modena is part of Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, an institution directed by Diana Baldon and dedicated to the presentation and promotion of contemporary art and visual culture.

Forthcoming event
Thursday, May 17, 2018, 6pm
Talk: How to look: art explained by Ad Reinhardt
Robert Storr, Professor of Painting, Yale University School of Art, New York

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Saturdays and Sundays and public holydays, 10:30am–7pm
Mondays and Tuesdays closed

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Irene Guzman
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