{"id":19153,"date":"2013-12-07T00:52:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-07T00:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/blakegopnik-daily-pic-the-last-in-a-week-of\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T20:12:30","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T03:12:30","slug":"blakegopnik-daily-pic-the-last-in-a-week-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/blakegopnik-daily-pic-the-last-in-a-week-of\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-19153 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/blakegopnik-daily-pic-the-last-in-a-week-of\/attachment\/19154\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxeij6lKRG1qdr6jto1_1280-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxeij6lKRG1qdr6jto1_1280-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxeij6lKRG1qdr6jto1_1280-493x500.jpg 493w, https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxeij6lKRG1qdr6jto1_1280-296x300.jpg 296w, https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxeij6lKRG1qdr6jto1_1280.jpg 764w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blakegopnik.com\/post\/69200955777\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">blakegopnik<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><strong>DAILY PIC: <\/strong><span>\u00a0<\/span>The last in a week of 1960s Black Paintings by Ad Reinhardt, inspired by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidzwirner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/ARpressFINALOct30.pdf\" title=\"Ad Reinhardt at David Zwirner\">show now at David Zwirner<\/a> in New York. As I hope has been clear from the images (if not the texts) of my\u00a0 weeklong celebration,\u00a0 Reinhardt\u2019s paintings are, among other things, gorgeous to look at. Arrayed in orderly series around one of Zwirner\u2019s deluxe white-walled spaces, they are all you could ask for in elegance and grace. I can\u2019t imagine any lofty condo that wouldn\u2019t look\u00a0 better with two or three on the walls. And that\u2019s one of the pitfalls of these pictures, and of pictures in a similarly \u201cspiritual\u201d vein by the likes of Rothko and Agnes Martin: Their artistic substance can easily sublimate into stylish but vaporous design. Reinhardt\u2019s black-on-black paintings often seem to slide into the same register as the lovely black-on-black crepes of a classic Armani suit \u2013 but without the extra heft that function always lends to fashion. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">That\u2019s why I\u2019ve spent this week stressing the conceptual side of Reinhardt. If we imagine his paintings as <em>both<\/em> beautiful, visually, and more than a bit absurd, conceptually, I think that can keep them, and us, a bit off-balance, as the Black Paintings and their viewers must have been in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">One art historian I know took exception to the way I\u2019ve been implying that Duchampian art (and therefore what I\u2019m claiming as its Reinhardtian progeny) is made up of immaterial and un-visual, or even anti-visual, gestures. He\u2019s pointed out that the specifics of what a readymade <em>is \u2013 <\/em>the shape and size and nature of the object the artist selects \u2013 mattered to Duchamp, and ought to matter to us. I completely agree: I\u2019ve written about how, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2011\/12\/15\/duchamp-s-fountain-was-subversive-but-subverting-what.html\" title=\"Duchamp and porcelain urinals\">to understand Duchamp\u2019s \u201cFountain\u201d, we need to understand the original meanings of porcelain urinals<\/a>, which came closer to being deluxe than abject or common.<span>\u00a0 <\/span>But I still think that what Duchamp made clear is that such readings are destabilized \u2013 made richer than the usual propellers-are-beautiful line \u2013 when the objects we are reading also seem absurd and almost arbitrary. When we believe that Duchamp might as easily have chosen another piece of plumbing (but didn\u2019t) and when we imagine that Reinhardt could have juggled different blacks (but didn\u2019t), we are made to look and think longer and deeper.\u00a0 Reinhardt\u2019s surfaces are stunning, but they\u2019re better for the guffaw underneath. <em>(<\/em><em>Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, purchase, with funds from The Lauder Foundation, Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund, <\/em><em>\u00a92013 Estate of Ad Reinhardt\/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy David Zwirner, New York\/London)<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><em>For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit <a href=\"http:\/\/blakegopnik.com\/archive\">blakegopnik.com\/archive<\/a>. The Daily Pic can also be found at the bottom of the home page of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/newsmaker\/art-and-photography\" title=\"Art Beast\">thedailybeast.com<\/a> and on that site\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/art.html\" title=\"Art Beast at The Daily Beast\">Art Beast<\/a> page.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>blakegopnik: DAILY PIC: \u00a0The last in a week of 1960s Black Paintings by Ad Reinhardt, inspired by the show now at David Zwirner in New York. As I hope has been clear from the images (if not the texts) of my\u00a0 weeklong celebration,\u00a0 Reinhardt\u2019s paintings are, among other things, gorgeous to look at. Arrayed in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-4YV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19155,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19153\/revisions\/19155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}