Paintings Reinhardt's earliest exhibited paintings avoided representation, but show a steady progression away from objects and external reference. His work progressed from compositions of geometrical shapes in the 1940s to works in different shades of the same color (all red, all blue, all white) in the 1950s. Reinhardt is best known for his so-called "black" paintings of the 1960s, which appear at first glance to be simply canvases painted black but are actually composed of black and nearly black shades. Among many other suggestions, these paintings ask if there can be such a thing as an absolute, even in black, which some viewers may not consider a color at all. In 1967 he contributed one of 17 signed prints that made up the portfolio
Artists and Writers Protest Against the War in Viet Nam organized by the group
Artists and Writers Protest. Reinhardt's lithograph, known as "No War" from its first two words of text, shows both sides of an air mail post card addressed to "War Chief, Washington, D.C. U.S.A." with a list of 34 demands that includes "no napalm," "no bombing," "no poverty," "no art of war," and admonitions concerning art itself, "no art in war" and "no art on war." That same year, Reinhardt received a
Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts.
Writings His writing includes comments on his own work and that of his contemporaries. His concise wit, sharp focus, and sense of abstraction make them interesting reading even for those who have not seen his paintings. Like his paintings, his writing remains controversial decades after its composition. Many of his writings are collected in
Art as Art, edited by
Barbara Rose,
University of California Press, 1991.
Graphics Reinhardt joined the staff of
PM in 1942 and he worked full-time at this daily newspaper until 1947, with time out while drafted for active duty in the
U.S. Navy. While at
PM he produced several thousand cartoons and illustrations most notably the series of famous and widely reproduced
How to Look at Art series. Reinhardt also illustrated the highly influential and controversial pamphlet
Races of Mankind (1943) originally intended for distribution to the
U.S. Army, but after being banned subsequently sold close to a million copies. He also illustrated a children's book
A Good Man and His Good Wife. While attending Columbia University he designed many covers and illustrations for the humor magazine
Jester and was its editor in his senior year (1934–35). In 1940 he was the designer of "The Chelsea Document", a public exhibition of five 4x8 foot panels. Other commercial art work was done "for such varied employers as the
Brooklyn Dodgers,
Glamour magazine, the
CIO,
Macy's,
The New York Times, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, The Book and Magazine Guild, the American Jewish Labor Council,
New Masses, the
Saturday Evening Post, Ice Cream World, and
Listen magazine. He illustrated many books such as ''Who's Who in the Zoo''. Cartoons and illustrations were generally regarded as outside the canon of fine art in 1950s America, which was dominated by abstract painting. However, this aspect of Reinhardt’s oeuvre has garnered renewed interest in recent decades. In 2013,
Robert Storr curated a dedicated room showcasing Reinhardt's cartoons at the
David Zwirner Gallery in New York. ==Recent exhibitions==