How to Look at Modern Art in America

Ad Reinhardt, artist

1913–1967

Thomas B. Hess, author

1920–1978

Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, publisher

How to Look at Modern Art in America, 1946

Portfolio/Series title: The Art Comics and Satires of Ad Reinhardt

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: offset lithograph

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 342 x 262 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 13 7/16 x 10 5/16 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 355 x 278 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 14 x 10 15/16 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 19 x 14 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Museum of Art Acquisition Fund

Accession number: 2009.0002.09

Not on display

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Exhibition Label:
"Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture," Mar-2009, Steve Goddard
Artist and writer Ad Reinhardt was a prominent champion of abstract painting. His How to Look at Modern Art in America is one of 22 comics that appeared approximately every two weeks in the New York tabloid P.M. from January 1946 until January 1947. This hierarchical tree diagram, based in part on a similar but much tamer work by artist Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957), was a parody of an attempt to map out the competing trajectories of Cubism and abstract art by art historian and MoMA director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (1902-1981). Barr’s diagram is a mix of a flow chart and a timeline and reads like a seething sea of vectors and “isms," while Reinhardt’s hilarious comic of the breaking tree of modern art is as clear as it is opinionated.