AD REINHARDT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

The point is that thinking about black
all day long will only get you depressed
or turn you into a goth. There's much
more to life than faded shades of night;
you need to buy yourself more clothes.

Ad Reinhardt is not your friend,
he has far too many dark moods
as he fixates on a five foot square.
He has mixed all your colours together
in search of negative light.

The point is that thinking about black
means you end up forgetting there's grey.
Art may be art, and black may be all
that philosophy allows to us now
but it can seem awfully dull.

Ad Reinhardt is not your friend.
He's got an obsession and always insists
on repainting his work every week.
It must be possible to make nine blacks;
it must, it must, it must.

"A lost broadcast from the past."
 

     © Rupert M Loydell

 

AD REINHARDT COULD BE YOUR COUSIN

Thinking about not only blackness
but how nine different blacks
could perhaps make a white.  There's
no plot as such, but a pattern
like a landscape lurking somewhere in the dark.

Ad Reinhardt could be your cousin
sending cool coloured cards
of birthday-black squares to wish you
many happy returns, laying it on the line:
"art as art as art as art".

Artists aiming high
like those who climb mountains
are half in love with themselves
and half in love with oblivion,
blacking out the mind from a bruised body and spirit.

Ad Reinhardt could be your cousin,
so stand still in front of his blacks
for a gentle fix of a repainted square.
His birthday gift just might shift your head
from the ordinary to something other glowing behind.

"The way somebody says a name, you get a vibration."

© Peter Gillies
 

MOMENTS WITH UNCLE AD

More black postcards from Uncle Ad,
detailing the dark pit of despair that
appears first thing in the morning.

These negative spaces in a New York gallery
that smells of newly-laid tarmac from outside
are blank windows looking onto the inside of the city.

Italian nights are more blue than black
and when they turn out the lights in the caves
you understand what night really is.

Uncle Ad's paintings are shadows on black marble,
indecipherable pencil marks on soft black paper,
bitumen's gritty memory, absences, black outs.

      © Rupert M Loydell