A significant exhibition of the artist's satirical works
2017
June 17, 2017–January 21, 2018
Hard to Picture: A Tribute to Ad Reinhardt at Mudam musuem in Luxembourg focused on the artist's largely unexamined work as a published illustrator which ran parallel to his career as an abstract painter from the 1930s to the 1960s. Featuring over 250 political cartoons and satirical art comics from the archives of the Estate of Ad Reinhardt in New York, this was the largest ever exhibition of these works. Also presented will be Abstract Painting (1956), one of Reinhardt's minimal "black" canvases, a slide show of color slides, and many of the artist's travel journals, pamphlets, and sketches. This was their third presentation in Europe following Art vs. History at Malmö Konsthall in Sweden in 2015 and EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland in 2016.
Reinhardt first developed an interest in cartooning as a child, refining his talent for drawing throughout elementary school before first earning money for his illustrations while in high school. This eventually allowed him to support his career as an abstract artist, keeping his painting free from commercial considerations. These activities were accompanied by his fierce commitment to politics, in particular pro-labor rights and anti-war campaigns, which remained vital to his identity. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, his illustrations and cartoons appeared in many American publications, notably the daily newspaper PM, the Marxist periodical New Masses and magazines from Glamour to Listen and Ice Cream Field. His popular series of art comics, How to Look (1946-1961), appeared in the Sunday edition of PM newspaper between 1946 and 1947; after this time, Reinhardt published additional art comics only occasionally in the art periodicals ARTnews, trans/formation, and Art d'aujourd'hui, among others.
Also part of the exhibition at Mudam were selected works by seven contemporary artists—Olav Westphalen, Judith Hopf, fellow David Zwirner artist Kerry James Marshall (whose works Dailies from Rythm Mastr (2010) and Black (2012) were included), Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Sara Cwynar, Luis Camnitzer, and Álvaro Oyarzún—which explored the ongoing impact of Reinhardt's work.
Read more: A review of the presentation at Malmö Konsthall in Frieze magazine