The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.
Ad ReinhardtThe 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.
Ad ReinhardtNow 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.
Ad ReinhardtWe all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren't.
Ad ReinhardtThe 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.
Ad Reinhardt