Ad Reinhardt Quotes

My painting represents the victory of the forces of darkness and peace over the powers of light and evil.

The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.

The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more, making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive - non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective. the only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.

As for a picture, if it isn't worth a thousand words, the hell with it.

We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren't.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

Art is art. Everything else is everything else.

The job at Brooklyn is interesting because Brooklyn reflects what happened to university art departments everywhere. It might be the worst department now, and yet at one point it was the best in the country.

Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything.

There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.

I taught a lot of art history, especially Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. But the painting classes came back. The nudes came back. Not so much the still lifes. So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.

The artist should once and forever emancipate himself from the bondage of appearance.

The more an artist works the more there is to do.

Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are. That's an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.

The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.