Ad Reinhardt, American Abstract Expressionist Painter

Ad Reinhardt, American Abstract Expressionist Painter Ad Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 - August 30, 1967) was an American abstract expressionist artist who sought to create what he called, absolute abstraction. The result was a series of works known as the Black Paintings, which consisted of geometrical shapes in subtle shades of black and near-black. Fast Facts: Ad Reinhardt Full Name: Adolph Frederick Reinhardt Occupation: PainterBorn: December 24, 1913 in Buffalo, New YorkDied: August 30, 1967 in New York, New YorkSpouse: Rita ZiprkowskiChild: Anna ReinhardtSelected Works: Untitled (1936), Study for a Painting (1938), Black Paintings (1953-1967)Notable Quote: Only a bad artist thinks he has a good idea. A good artist does not need anything. Early Life and Education Ad Reinhardt was born in Buffalo, New York, but moved to New York City with his family at a young age. He was an outstanding student and showed an interest in visual art. During high school, Reinhardt illustrated his schools newspaper. Upon applying to college, he turned down multiple scholarship offers from art schools and enrolled in the art history program at Columbia University. At Columbia, Ad Reinhardt studied under the art historian Mayer Schapiro. He also became good friends with theologian Thomas Merton and poet Robert Lax. The three all embraced approaches to simplicity in their specific disciplines. Untitled (1936). The Pace Gallery Works Progress Administration Work Shortly after graduation from Columbia, Reinhardt became one of the few abstract artists hired in the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). There he met other prominent 20th-century American artists including Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky. His work of the period also demonstrated the impact of Stuart Davis experiments with geometric abstraction. While working for the WPA, Ad Reinhardt also became a member of the American Abstract Artists group. They were profoundly influential in the development of the avant-garde in the U.S. In 1950, Reinhardt joined the group of artists known as The Irascibles who protested that the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York was not modern enough. Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Hans Hofmann, and Mark Rothko were part of the group. John Loengard / Getty Images Absolute Abstraction and the Black Paintings Ad Reinhardts work was non-representational from the beginning. However, his paintings show a distinctive progression from visual complexity to simple compositions of geometrical shapes in shades of the same color. By the 1950s, the work began approaching what Reinhardt called absolute abstraction. He believed that much of the abstract expressionism of the era was too full of emotional content and the impact of the artists ego. He aimed to create paintings with no emotion or narrative content at all. Although he was part of the movement, Reinhardts ideas often ran counter to those of his contemporaries. In the latter part of the 1950s, Ad Reinhardt began work on the Black Paintings that would define the rest of his career. He took inspiration from Russian art theorist Kazimir Malevich, who created the work Black Square in 1915, referred to as the, zero point of painting. Malevich described an art movement focused on simple geometric shapes and a limited color palette that he called suprematism. Reinhardt expanded on the ideas in his theoretical writings, saying that he was creating, the last paintings one can make. While many of Reinhardts black paintings look flat and monochrome upon first glance, they reveal multiple shades and intriguing complexity when viewed close up. Among the techniques used to create the works was the siphoning of oil from the pigments used that resulted in a delicate finish. Unfortunately, the method also made the paintings challenging to preserve and maintain without damaging the surface. Black Series #6. U.S. Department of State embassy collections Despite the purging of all references to the outside world in his paintings, Ad Reinhardt insisted that his art could impact society and bring about positive change. He saw art as an almost mystical force in the world. Legacy The paintings of Ad Reinhardt remain an essential conceptual link between abstract expressionism and the minimalist art of the 1960s and beyond. Although his fellow expressionists often criticized his work, many of the most prominent artists of the next generation saw Reinhardt as a vital leader pointing toward the future of painting. Ad Reinhardt in Museum of Modern Art exhibition of his paintings. Robert R. McElroy / Getty Images Ad Reinhardt began to teach art in 1947 at Brooklyn College. Teaching, including a stint at Yale University, was a significant part of his work for the next 20 years until his death from a massive heart attack in 1967. Source Reinhardt, Ad. Ad Reinhardt. Rizzoli International, 1991.

Free Essays on Piaget Theory Applied To Education

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development – Assignment 1 Our thinking changes drastically, though slowly, from our birth to our maturity because we constantly strive to make sense of the world. According to Piaget, four factors interact to influence changes in our thinking over our lives. These factors are biological maturation, activity, social experiences, and equilibrium. Piaget concluded that we inherit two basic tendencies, or invariant functions. Organization is the combining and averaging then recombining and rearranging of thoughts and behaviors into a more coherent system. Adaption is the tendency to adjust thoughts and behaviors to the environment. Piaget described our organized system of thought allowing us to mentally represent objects and events of our world, as schemes. These basic building clocks of thinking can be very small and very specific, like the â€Å"sucking on a straw† scheme or the â€Å"recognize and carnation† scheme. The simple structures are continuously combined and coordinated to become larger and more general like the â€Å"drinking scheme† or a â€Å"categorizing plants† scheme. In addition to the tendency to organize our psychological structures, we also inherit a tendency to adapt to our environment. The basic processes of adaption are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is a process of trying to comprehend some things new by fitting it into our existing schemes. Using our existing schemes to make sense of our world sometimes distorts the new information; like calling a skunk a kitty the first time a child sees a skunk. Accommodation occurs when information cannot fit into any existing schemes and new scheme structures must be developed. We change our existing schemes to adjust our thinking to fit the new data, instead of adjusting the new data to fit our thinking (assimilation). Two strengths of Piaget’s theory are matching problem solving and knowledge construction. In problem solving... Free Essays on Piaget Theory Applied To Education Free Essays on Piaget Theory Applied To Education Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development – Assignment 1 Our thinking changes drastically, though slowly, from our birth to our maturity because we constantly strive to make sense of the world. According to Piaget, four factors interact to influence changes in our thinking over our lives. These factors are biological maturation, activity, social experiences, and equilibrium. Piaget concluded that we inherit two basic tendencies, or invariant functions. Organization is the combining and averaging then recombining and rearranging of thoughts and behaviors into a more coherent system. Adaption is the tendency to adjust thoughts and behaviors to the environment. Piaget described our organized system of thought allowing us to mentally represent objects and events of our world, as schemes. These basic building clocks of thinking can be very small and very specific, like the â€Å"sucking on a straw† scheme or the â€Å"recognize and carnation† scheme. The simple structures are continuously combined and coordinated to become larger and more general like the â€Å"drinking scheme† or a â€Å"categorizing plants† scheme. In addition to the tendency to organize our psychological structures, we also inherit a tendency to adapt to our environment. The basic processes of adaption are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is a process of trying to comprehend some things new by fitting it into our existing schemes. Using our existing schemes to make sense of our world sometimes distorts the new information; like calling a skunk a kitty the first time a child sees a skunk. Accommodation occurs when information cannot fit into any existing schemes and new scheme structures must be developed. We change our existing schemes to adjust our thinking to fit the new data, instead of adjusting the new data to fit our thinking (assimilation). Two strengths of Piaget’s theory are matching problem solving and knowledge construction. In problem solving...

The Sex differances in learning in chimpanzees Essay

The Sex differances in learning in chimpanzees - Essay Example In specific, this paper has selected an article, ‘Sex Differences in Learning in Chimpanzees’ (Lonsdorf et al, 2004) that is a synopsis of a four-year longitudinal study carried out at Gombe National Park in Tanzania on wild chimpanzees. Primarily, the paper will attempt to provide a brief summation of the mentioned article that will enable the reader to understand basic and important findings, as well as limitations of this article. In this article, as earlier mentioned, wild chimpanzee of Gombe National Park in Tanzania were the participants of this four-year longitudinal study, and experts attempted to identify the sexual differences in the learning process and practice of these chimpanzees during the study. Findings of the study indicated that chimpanzees were skillful in the utilization of flexible tools for hunting termites from their mounds. Plantations were the only source of such tools that enabled chimpanzees to ‘fish for termites’ and eat them after extraction from the termite heaps. Experts (Lonsdorf et al, 2004) specified that chimpanzee culture of the local environment indicated that utilization of tools was a common practice for chimpanzees that used tools for various purposes. In addition, experts revealed that various studies have indicated that chimpanzees are the most intelligible non-human species to utilize tools for different purposes. Experts also disclosed that social learning and interaction capabilities of chimpanzees were some of the basic factors that cause such a varying range of utilization of tools in their communities. Article denoted that the experts focused on fourteen chimpanzees below eleven years of age during the period of four months, and paid attention to their interaction with their chimpanzee mothers during fishing sessions for the termites. Analysis of fishing practices and social interaction in the chimpanzee community indicated that chimpanzees of both genders interacted