At The Ad Reinhardt Show

I absolutely positively enjoyed this wide ranging career spanning exhibit of Mr. Reinhardt's that is now residing at one of the many Zwirner galleries that line Chelsea. I especially liked all those marvelous cartoons and drawings that he did for some of the aggressive left leaning magazines and newspapers of the 30's and 40's and the first gallery is full of them. What was impressive about them, (besides their political learnings) were the intricate details of these small illustrations, he didn't work large and then have them reduced, these are really small, charming and ferocious Ad took no prisoners especially those in the then much smaller and intimate New York art world. He also did book covers and posters, and then presto he was on to making these black paintings which aren't really all black, and the second gallery is lined with them. I've always liked them, black has always been more interesting to me than white. Under the right viewing situations you can start seeing the delicate squares of different tones of black that make up the works, even sometimes seeing some blue black patches, that's if as I said the viewing situation is right. Unfortunately I found the installation here uncomfortable and not at all to my liking. I know that Reinhardt wanted to keep viewers at a certain distance from his work but its way too extreme at this show with those annoying barriers and annoying guards getting in the way of the works. I felt like i was in a corral, and by being so far away from the paintings I couldn't really make out all the subtleties of the works. I think some of those nice clunky low wooden platforms painted white would have worked much better and in fact thats how his show at Betty Parson's was installed, (no I wasn't there in 1965, but there is a photo of the installation in the very nice free brochures that you can pick up at the gallery). The final part of the show is a big slide show of his photographs that he took on his travels that he would force on his artist friends whenever he could. These are absolutely of no interest to me, and after looking a a few I left.