Page 39 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

young sculptor Larry Bell said, 'These paintings
are objects without reference and without
relationship even to themselves ... It is painting
in the most absolute and abstract sense', he
could very well have been thinking of Reinhardt,
if he had not, in fact, been referring to Warhol.
However singular the unconscious affinities
and analogues between these two, Warhol and
Reinhardt, their peerage is one of style, and
personal style at that, rather than in any bid for
power. The enormous influence they have
exerted—one that has affected minimal
sculpture and systemic painting—has been
despite, rather than through their passive
ideology, because they have elected to think
outside received art history. Of course, each can
be located within a tradition: Warhol the
mock-naive Duchampian or Cagian; Reinhardt,
the super-subtle Bauhaus pedagogue. But it is
remarkable with what venom they attack and
subvert these continuities, and with them, their
establishment claims on the future. It is almost
as if Warhol's and Reinhardt's art was so
uprooted and alienated, so obsessed with
impotence, so convinced that production does
not equal invention, that it has no spiritual
choice but to run down, decelerate, like the
wind on some toy clock.
Still and all, their clamour for inertia is a
protesting too much. Why did Reinhardt insist
that he was so empty and meaningless, if his art
did not open itself to the most extravagant
speculation ? Where was the consistency in
saying, 'Only a standard form can be imageless,
only a stereotyped image can be formless, only a
formularized art can be formulaless' ? And why
would Warhol have extolled an almost cosmic
enthusiasm, if his very action did not speak of
some monstrous paralysis ? Nowhere is the
impossibility of their desire more apparent to
us, and to the artists themselves, than in the
absurdity of reproducing over and over again
works, any single example of which should have
demonstrated a pictorial sufficiency. The visual
impulse, for these are still visual artists, wins
over the anti-visual premise; but it is possibly a
Pyrrhic victory. Reinhardt acknowledges the
fact when he calls a picture, 'Ultimate Painting
it was possible for one artist to call another are dealing with peculiarly bodiless No. 39.' And Warhol does as much when he
artist an old whore. It's not possible any more. intelligences). But this is ultimately a bad bit of announces that 'in the future, everyone will be
The whole art world is whorish... Everyone casting. Andy was once asked, 'When did you famous for at least fifteen minutes'. The pity of
now wants to be a "howling" success and a start with the Death Series ?' , and he replied, their situation is not that they are deficient in
celebrity. Everyone wants to be like Elizabeth `I guess it was the big plane crash picture, the perception or insight—on the contrary, they are
Taylor. And there isn't anything Elizabeth front page of a newspaper : 129 Die. I was also most brilliant—but that they had too much time
Taylor can't do that's of great interest to painting the Marilyn. I realized that everything on their hands to continue insights whose very
everybody.' But Warhol, who always sells out, I was doing must have been Death.' That is a nature fought off development. The result was a
and apes whoredom with great ease, is famous very crushing realization for an artist, but not redundancy converted into a paradox which
precisely for doing very uninteresting less than our own dawning awareness that finally laughs at itself. When Reinhardt's
things—like his movies. If, once again, Warhol would like to drown everyone and interviewer said : 'One can't avoid commenting
Reinhardt cannot forsake executing his everything—they are often given as the same—in on the presence of a very sardonic and dry
paintings himself, he takes elaborate pains to a nameless coma. In comparison, Reinhardt, humour in your answers ... Is it possible that
cancel his own touch—only one step behind talking about essences and freedom, sounds a you have been taken more seriously than you
Warhol, who farms out his work to others, fantastic optimist. Be that as it may, one man wished ?', 'Mr. Pure' responded, 'This is too
(while, as recently, only reluctantly admitting longs to refashion humanity in his own serious to be taken seriously'. So that, in the end,
the difference of authorship). I said before that anaesthetized image, the other simply puzzles the Great Accepter and the Great Demurrer
Warhol appears to be the positivist to why more aren't like him. It's a kind of baffled break out into laughter, but a laughter which
Reinhardt's nihilist (though in both cases, we egomania, an exasperated absolutism. When the cries. q