June 21, 2005
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Art History
“I studied with Reinhardt and I found
that a fantastic course. I think he was really very stimulating….Art history was very personal through the eyes of Ad Reinhardt.”
– Robert Morris,
Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Related material:“The Road to Simplicity
Followed by Merton’s Friends: Ad Reinhardt and Robert Lax” in The Merton
Annual 13
(2000) 245-256, by Paul J. Spaeth, library director at St. Bonaventure University
The Merton here is Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Here is
Merton in a letter to poet Robert Lax on the death of their friend Ad Reinhardt,
sometimes called the “black monk” of abstract art:“Make Mass beautiful silence like big black picture
speaking requiem. Tears in the shadows of hermit hatch requiems blue
black tone. Sorrows for Ad in the oblation quiet peace request rest.
Tomorrow is solemns in the hermit hatch for old lutheran reinhardt
commie paintblack… Tomorrow is the eternal solemns and the barefoots
and the ashes and the masses, oldstyle liturgy masses without the
colonels… Just old black quiet requiems in hermit hatch with decent
sorrows good by college chum.”– from J. S. Porter, “Farewell to a Monk,”
Antigonish Review, Winter 1997
