Art: Ad Absurdum

Among the new acquisitions currently on display at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art is a large square canvas called Abstract Painting that seems at first glance to be entirely black. Closer inspection shows that it is subtly divided into seven lesser areas. In a helpful gallery note at one side. Abstractionist Ad Reinhardt explains his painting. It is: “A square (neutral, shapeless) canvas, five feet wide, five feet high, as high as a man, as wide as a man’s outstretched arms (not large, not small, sizeless), trisected (no composition), one horizontal form negating one vertical form (formless, no top, no bottom, directionless), three (more or less) dark (lightless), non-contrasting (colorless) colors, brushwork brushed out to remove brushwork, a mat, flat, freehand painted surface (glossless, texture-less, nonlinear, no hard edge, no soft edge) which does not reflect its surroundings—a pure, abstract nonobjective, timeless, spaceless, changeless, relation-less, disinterested painting—an object that is self-conscious (no unconsciousness), ideal, transcendent, awaare of no thing but art (absolutely no anti-art).”