Oblique strategies elena palacios carral

OBLIQUE STRATEGIES Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority1 by Elena Palacios Carral

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (History and Critical Thinking) in the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

1 The title of this thesis, ‘Oblique Strategies: Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority’, is directly lifted from Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s ‘Oblique Strategies: Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas’, a set of cards that they wrote to aid the studio practice. Each of them provided aphorisms to help artists break creative block in the studio and encourage lateral thinking. These cards would say things like ‘Discipline self-indulgence’, ‘Turn it upside down’, ‘Instead of changing the thing, turn the world around you’ or ‘It is simply a matter of work’ Each of them were not necessarily looking for something they hadn’t tried before but wanted to use ‘old habits’ to produce ‘new ones’. ‘The question becomes knowing how to tear the new from the always- the-same’ This thesis also uses this idea, using the image itself as a sort of aphorism or ‘truth’ about interiority that, when seen in relation to the text or to each other, might provoke or induce lateral thinking on dilemmas concerning what we might understand as an interior in Architecture.

Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to give special thanks to: Mario Palacios Kaim, Maria Elena Carral Davila and Jon Lopez.

I would also like to give thanks to everyone who assisted me in my writing and thinking. Firstly my tutors, Marina Lathouri, Mark Cousins, Douglas Spencer and John Palmesino, but also Thomas Weaver, Barney Gilks, Sam Jacoby, Alvaro Velasco PĂŠrez, Sylvie Taher, Manijeh Verghese, Byron Blakeley, Natalia Sherchenkova.

Last but not least, thank you to Miraj Ahmed for introducing me three years ago to a photograph that would become the leading character in this thesis.

Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

CONTENT

Visual Index

1

Entering the image

5

The act of inhabitation

7

Form and Life

17

Form-of-Life vs. Life-Style

21

The Struggle to be an Individual

24

To be or not to be part of things...

29

Contemplation and the production of Knowledge

37

Appendix Bibliography

53

List of Figures

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

VISUAL INDEX

Fig. 1

Fig. 10

Fig. 17

Fig. 18

Fig. 19

Fig. 20

Fig. 22

Fig. 24

Fig. 25

Fig. 28

Fig. 29

Fig. 31

Fig. 32

Fig. 40

Fig. 45

Fig. 44

Fig. 46

Fig. 50

Fig. 55

Fig. 56

Fig. 57

Fig. 62

Fig. 63

Fig. 64

Fig. 66

Fig. 67

Fig. 68

Fig. 69

Fig. 70

Fig. 75

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Fig. 77

Fig. 79

Fig. 81

Fig. 92

Fig. 93

Fig. 94

Fig. 95

Fig. 96a

Fig. 96b

Fig. 96c

Fig. 96d

Fig. 96e

Fig. 96f

Fig. 98

Fig. 99

Fig. 100

Fig. 101

Fig. 102

Fig. 103

Fig. 104

Fig. 112

Fig. 113

Fig. 115

Fig. 117

Fig. 119

Fig. 120

Fig. 121

Fig. 127

Fig. 130

Fig. 131

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

ENTERING THE IMAGE A photograph of a man inside a room staring at a black surface. Or perhaps the photograph is of a room that has been covered in black by the man sitting on the stool.

Or perhaps the photograph is of a space that has been taken over by this man and his collection of black objects.1 As the art critic and theorist Erwin Panofsky might say now, regardless of which description of the image we might think is best, we have already overstepped the limits of purely formal perception and entered a first sphere of subject matter or meaning.2 We have already identified objects (a man and a surface), spaces (a room) and actions (staring). We have entered the image whilst also projecting matter and meaning onto it.

If we follow Panofsky’s steps on to his distinction between subject, matter and meaning on the one hand, and form on the other, we now move to his second stage of interpretation - or the ‘iconographical’ one - and identify that the man is an artist. The room then becomes an artist’s studio and the black surfaces his paintings. As Panofsky further elaborates, once we understand the significance of an action one must not only be familiar with the practical world of objects and events, but also the more-than-practical world of customs and cultural traditions peculiar to a certain civilization.3 The third and final stage that Panofsky outlines involves unlocking the intrinsic, iconological meaning or content of an artwork: ‘besides constituting a natural event in space and time, besides naturally indicating moods or feelings, the action of [the artist staring at a black painting] can reveal to an experienced observer all that goes to make up his ‘personality.’4 In this case, the subject is Ad Reinhardt, one of the American Abstract Expressionists, who lived and worked in Manhattan during the Cold War. However, even this informed description of what the image depicts might still be somehow superficial and not ‘correct’5 to Panofsky, who believed that the meaning of an image was concealed within and that this true meaning could only be found inside the artist’s mind, or somewhere just as inaccessible.

Roland Barthes provided what we might call a more ‘liberating’ method with which to enter an image or any other form of cultural artefact. He believed that the meaning of an image or object is not only found within the piece itself, but is also determined by its relationship to its surroundings, making the process of analysis something unstable

1 Look at Fig. 1. Ad Reinhardt in His Studio looking at one of his ‘Ultimate’ paintings.

Photograph taken for an article in Life Magazine by John Loengard in 1966. Published in Life Magazine February 3 1967.

2 Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, 3 3 Ibid, p. 4.

4 Ibid, p. 4.

5 I am using the word ‘correct’ as this is the exact word that Panofsky uses himself to qualify when the meaning of an image arises as a synthesis rather than analysis. ‘Setting aside the fact that the objects, events and expressions depicted in a work of art may be unrecognizable owing to the incompetence or malice aforethought of the artist, it is, on principle, impossible to arrive at a correct pre-iconographical description, or identification of primary subject matter, by indiscriminately applying our practical experience to the work of art. Our practical experience is indispensable, as well as sufficient, as material for a pre-iconographical description, but it does not guarantee its correctness.’ Look at Erwin’s Panofsky book in Studies in Iconology, Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance’ page 9

5

and mutable (unlike the systematic approach taken by Panofsky). Barthes identifies two elements within an image, the studium and the punctum. While he identifies the studium as the intent or the intention of whoever makes the image or object, the punctum is the element within that destabilises the whole picture, ‘A mark, a wound […] a sting, speck, cut, little hole-and also cast of dice’6 that grabs the attention of the viewer and as such becomes the focal point. As Barthes says ‘In order to perceive the punctum, no analysis would be of any use to me (but perhaps memory sometimes would, as we shall see)’7…

This photograph was taken for an article on Ad Reinhardt’s artistic trajectory that would be published in the American magazine Life in 1967 (coincidentally the same year of the artist’s death). So one could argue that the studium or one of the artistic intentions behind John Loengard’s8 lens might simply have been to capture Reinhardt at work, to illustrate the article and give the reader an impression of the artist, a scene at which the viewer peers in on like a spy, an intruder of an intimate, hidden world. Loengard uses a collection of codes and signs: meaningful objects (the tools, the furniture, the paintings), actions (staring, contemplating, meditating), events and patterns that, when seen together, convey an image of interiority. But what are the spatial conditions of these relationships that overall make us identify the picture as an image of an interior? Besides looking at it in light of the fact that Reinhardt is evidently within a room, what are the qualities of being inside and (in a similar way as to how one might enter an image) how is it that one comes to fully embody the quality of being within? A condition that might not be absolute, as Panofsky might understand a work of art to be, but rather something that acts like an interface (or common boundary) that is in a state of constant transformation and evolution, as it negotiates notions of identity as a physical construct.

As what we might call an epitome of interiority, the study, studium or studio, as a three dimensional concept like the space that Reinhardt is in, will be the context through which I will investigate both the visual and spatial manifestations of interiority beyond the physical enclosure of a room. Tracing the original concept of the studio as it was described by early philosophers (a space for contemplation and the production of knowledge), as it came to be utilised by monks (a space of salvation and religious practice) and politicians (a space of governance), whilst always returning to how it came to be used by the creative figure of the artist (a space of creation but also creative block, anguish, anxiety and internal conflict). In all cases, examining a spatial configuration that appears to be negotiating the forms life take through the repetition of certain practices - condensed into one word: habitus.

6 7 8

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p 27 Ibid 42 John Loengard was one of the official photographers of Life Magazine at the time.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

THE ACT OF INHABITATION Similar to the processes of visual engagement and identification we see in Panofsky’s three steps to analysing an image, the act of inhabiting seems to go beyond the merely physical presence of an object or a body within a space. Even though John Loengard is present within the boundaries of the room he has photographed and has removed for us the ‘wall’ that separates the intimate life of the artist from the spectator, we can see that there are a whole series of practices one would need to embody in order to actually be a part of ‘the order’ that defines the space of the artist (his habitus). Just as in the monastic life, as Giorgio Agamben explained, ‘habitus’ originally signified ‘a way of being or acting’,9 in the case of the artist this would be self-imposed and therefore would not necessarily relate to a person’s religious or ideological ‘way of being or acting’. The signs we see of Reinhardt’s way of being and acting or habitus nevertheless become the interface through which we interpret the photograph, as spectators rather than practitioners of this internal world.

This painting by Antonello da Messina of St Jerome in his Study10 has many similarities to the photograph of Ad Reinhardt. The Saint is also in profile and has also been caught in a moment of contemplation. However, while Reinhardt is staring at one of his paintings, St Jerome is pictured reading a book. Both of them are surrounded by a collection of objects that appear to have been purposefully selected to portray (as Panofsky would say) the subject’s ‘personality’, objects that reveal a certain form of life using both ‘‘compositional methods’ and ‘iconographical significance’’11. There is, however, a difference in the way that the spectator enters the space of Da Messina’s painting that might help understand the act of inhabitation. Although we again might feel like an intruder spying on St Jerome during a private moment, Da Messina, as the architect of the painting, has depicted a series of thresholds that the spectator must cross, as if to indicate that - even though we are witnessing the Saint at ‘work’ - we are still not inside the study but outside. Here, we don’t have the same illusion created in Loengard’s photograph (that of witnessing the artist at work from within, through the blurring of the boundaries of the room), instead, in a Matrushka-like effect, Da Messina has framed our view through a series of architectural elements. The arch of the building - and the overall frame of the picture - which constitute the starting point of our view are there to suggest where the picture plane begins but also to make us believe that we are gaining a more objective view of St Jerome. A series of steps that thicken the frame of the building push us further outside and the Saint further in.

This series of thresholds might also suggest to us that, although we might presently be looking at St Jerome from a distance, there is a way to get to where he is.

9 Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, 14 10 Look at Fig. 10. St Jerome in His Study by Antonello da Messina. Completed around 14601475. Oil on Wood. Currently at The National Gallery in London.

11 Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, p 7.

7

Fig. 10.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

Once inside the church we see that the cubiculum of the saint is lifted off the ground, as if to be elevated closer to God. This proximity to God is reached via the four steps towards lectio divina, that are represented here by a ladder. These four steps, as described in the Scala Claustralium of Bernard, involve reading (lectio), meditation, prayer (oratio) and contemplation. In other words, in order for us to physically arrive at the same place as the Saint, we would first need to undergo a mental transformation.

The various architectural elements like the arch and the steps show how one could get to the study physically but also symbolise the various ‘rules’ that each of these frames or thresholds are governed by; from our view as spectator, the space of the church is the order to which St Jerome belongs, the study is the Saint’s personal space within the church and, finally, the habitus of the Saint12 is represented by his position within these various systems. His habitus - one could argue – we understand by the robes that he is wearing and these become, in a sense, the last threshold one would need to cross in order to ‘inhabit’ the life of the saint, something that would involve far more than our physical presence within a space but ‘a virtue and spiritual condition’13. The clothes the Saint is wearing become representative of an order to which he belongs and a morum formula. In the same way that one might put on pyjamas before going to bed, wear a suit before going to work, wear a long dress to go to a wedding or sports wear before going for a run. We could read the manifestations of these ‘habits’ in time and space, in the words of Georges Teyssot, “as ‘signs’ of need’, both internally from the organism, and externally, from the environment.” 14 The interior is full of such signs and codes, procedures, rules and rituals that one must go through before one can fully embody the quality of being inside. The habitus in the form of vests or clothing constitutes one of these rituals: ‘to describe the exterior dress (exteriorem ornatum) will be the equivalent to revealing an interior way of being (interior cultum… exponere,ibid).The habit of the monk does not really bear on the care of the body, but is instead a morum formula, ‘an example of a way of life’’.15

‘And when the night arrives, I return home, and enter into my studiolum; and on the threshold I take off that everyday costume, and put on royal and curial vests; and thus I enter into the ancient courts of those ancient men, where I am lovingly accepted by them, and where I can feed upon that food that is only mine, for which I was born; where I do not feel ashamed to speak with them and ask them about the reasons of their deeds; and they humanely reply to me; and for those hours I do not feel any dullness, forget every affliction, I’m not afraid of poverty, and not anxious of death: I entirely rely upon them.’16

12 It is important to clarify that St Jerome is not wearing a monk’s habitus, he is not a cenobite but a hermit. He is wearing the vests of a Cardinal.

13 See Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, p 13. Here Agamben explains, in terms of monasticism, how the notion of habitatio as a term itself ‘seems to indicate not so much a simple fact as, rather, a virtue and spiritual condition’ that becomes evident when reading a passage of The Rule of the Four Fathers ‘The virtue that distinguishes the brothers is habitation and obedience’ (Pricoco, p.10) 14 Geroges Teyssot, Topology of Everyday Constellations, 17 15 Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, p 14 16 Niccolò Machiavelli, from a letter to Francesco Vettori, 10 December 1513

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In regard to the above quote of Machiavelli’s on entering his studio, on the threshold he first of all removes his ‘everyday costume’ to put on the ‘royal and curial vests.’ An act that becomes symbolic of inhabitation: it is not until he has changed his clothes that Machiavelli fully enters this other world. Once inside the studio (studioli), the rules that govern the outside world become somehow suspended. But to what kinds of rules or norms are these spaces attached? It is a space that, as Machiavelli makes clear at the beginning of the quote, is contained within the home, but is also set apart, something that was typical of the studiolos of the Renaissance and, for that matter, the kind of study in which we also find St Jerome in Antonello de Messina’s painting where the Saint’s studio is instead contained within the space of a church. In a similar manner, Reinhardt’s studio is embedded within the metropolis of New York, with all its political, economic, cultural and social history: 732 Broadway.

Fig. 17.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

Fig. 18.

Fig. 20.

‘The Black monk’, as Reinhardt was known colloquially, had his studio at the intersection between Broadway and Waverly Place, almost at the point at which the street becomes oblique to the city grid.17 His studio stood facing Waverly Place,18 with a direct view down the street19, running west towards the Hudson River. The building sat in the middle of a landscape of great heights20 - the shortest building within that landscape. His studio occupied the first floor; the piano nobile of a what had once been a residential family home built upon a piece of farmland, belonging to one of the most prominent families in New York. A four-story, brown stone structure in the Greek Revival style, the building was later turned into a Gallery Space, and was converted in 1900 to accommodate a restaurant and manufacturing company owned by Richard L. Treffurth21, who rebuilt the façade of the building in the style of the Renaissance Revival, and installed a loft-like interior that would imitate the stylistic form of his industrious neighbours, in keeping with the rise in shops and manufacturing companies along the street. Cast metal capitals, brick side peers, and a bracketed cornice industrialised the building upon which the inscriptions of its great renovator, ‘Treffurth’,22 are still inscribed. All of these modifications obscured any evidence that there was once a house underneath, turning the building into something more like a factory. However, these industrial spaces would later fall out of use due to the need for greater space modern production methods demanded (many industries having to

17 Look at Fig 17. Fragment of plan drawn for the NOHO Historic District Designation Report 1999. Showing in Black 732 Broadway (black rectangle added by the author) 18 Look at Fig 18. Frontal view of 732 Broadway, New York, New York. Photograph by Thomas Weaver.

19 Look at Fig 19. Photograph of Ad Reinhardt inside his studio, showing the view into Waverly Place from the interior of his studio.

20 Look at Fig 20. Frontal view of 732 Broadway, New York, New York. Photograph by Thomas Weaver.

21 Look at NoHo Historic District, Designation Report. NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission June 29, 1999, for the history of 732 Broadway and the development of the area of NoHo. 22 Look at Fig 22. Photograph of façade detail of 732 Broadway, New York, New York.

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Fig. 22.

Fig. 19.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

vacate urban areas in favour of the city’s outskirts) leaving these spaces empty, ready to receive the newly emerging artistic industry.

Reinhardt, like many other artists, found this kind of space ideal for his artistic production: spacious, with big windows and cheap rent. This new movement amongst artists, who were coming to prefer loft spaces for their studios, was in part formed by the drive of two contingencies: ‘an upper group of patrons of the arts and patrician politicians, who wanted to promote artists and save old buildings, and a middle-class group of urban homeowners – including artists - who wanted to protect their neighbourhoods’23. These two contingencies had started to subsidise the artists living costs. As such, the artists were no longer working just for patrons, but had become part of the economy in which their work was sold, part of the market, and as such were expected to either buy or rent their houses and studios from those within the artistic community. As a result, artists’ studios were being absorbed into a larger economic system that they needed to support Fig. 24. them, since not all of them were earning as much as, say, Rodin24 or Picasso25, who could afford comfortable places in which to work and live. Reinhardt’s studio, however, was not his home (it would take a long fight with the ATA -Artists’ Tenants’ Association-26 before living and working in lofts would be legally permitted – although this didn’t stop many people from breaking the rules). Once loft living did become legal, its once economic and aesthetic virtues would later be redefined by a more bourgeois, chic living ideal. Reinhardt, however, believed ideologically in the division between the home and work place; indeed, he strived to keep his life and his art separate, despite acknowledging how difficult this was to do: Fig. 25.

‘To be part of things or not to be part or having been part of things as they’ve become, to part from that part that was part of things as they are not to part?

Part of life is more than life. Part of an artist is more than an artist.

Everyman in the everyday today part of things lives like everyman. So do I. Part of myself is separate from several selves. Painting is special, separate’27

23 24 25 26 27

13

Sharon Zukin, Loft Living, Culture and Capital in Urban Change, p 112.

Look at Fig 24. Photograph of Rodin’s studio.

Look at Fig 25. Photograph of Picasso’s studio.

Sharon Zukin, Loft Living, Culture and Capital in Urban Change, p. 116.

Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, To be Part of Things…, p 126

Fig. 28.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

Reinhardt put his philosophy into practice. Like ‘everyman in the everyday’, he commuted from his family apartment in 209 East 19th Street28 to his studio in Broadway. His persona was defined not only through his artwork but also the image that he constructed of himself inside his studio, in fact by the negotiation of ‘several selves’, as he describes in the quote above. He was a parent and a husband, a teacher at The Brooklyn College, an artist, part of a group known as ‘The Irascibles’2930, part of the navy31, an American Citizen32 and also engaged with numerous other clubs and organizations. All of these aspects constituting a habitus and determining his position and ‘identity’, not only within the context of the art world, but within society as a whole.

Painting, however, was separate from all these other different ‘parts’: ‘One paints when there is nothing else to do. After everything else is done, has been ‘taken care of,’ one can take up the brush […] After the mail has been read and answered, bills paid, the place, the studio cleaned and swept, children packed off to school or camp, wives released for shopping, after one has eaten, gone to the john, has taken a morning, noon or afternoon nap, free from anxiety, all pains, pleasures, all distractions, obstacles, hindrances.’33

Fig. 31.

Fig. 29.

Fig. 32.

28 Look at Fig 28. Photograph of Ad Reinhardt’s home.

29 Look at Fig 29. Photograph of the ‘Irasicbles’ 30 This was the name given to a group of artists to which Reinhardt belonged. They wrote to the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in which they rejected what was presented as ‘American Painting Today’. A photograph of the members would be published, again, in Life Magazine, which first used the term Abstract Expressionism 31 Look at Fig 31. Ad Reinhardt’s Navy Identification Card.

32 Look at Fig 32. Ad Reinhardt’s Passport.

33 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Routine Extremism, p 127

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The quote above is reminiscent of Machiavelli’s words on entering his studio. Although Reinhardt does not describe the entering of his studio, or the taking up of his brush, or the clothes he is wearing (even though he might have done, as he always wore a suit outside the studio and either a white or black shirt and a pair of trousers when inside).

Instead, in his studio he is ‘free’ of all the ‘duties’ of the ‘everyman’, which would get in the way of his painting, as it was not until all these duties had been fulfilled that he could finally start to paint. ‘There is nothing worse than a fine artist who has something to do, a ‘job’ or ‘commission’’34. For Reinhardt, to paint is something personal and private. It is detached from the standard, conventional social rituals, which for him represented ‘everydayness’. In his studio, Reinhardt had a space in which he could not only create his own set of rules, but also create art that questioned the rules governing the outside world.

Can the habitus, then, be understood as the ‘form’ or the set of rules and qualities that shape an object or person, such as the way in which one might name the object or even the elements that one might use to describe it, similar to the various elements that one might study in an image? Are these forms actually visible? Is it a language?

What is the punctum, then, if one were to think about in spatial terms, this element that makes a space mutable and unstable, this element that, as Barthes says, is contained within the stadium but also breaks it? The practicing of these rules seems to be what determines the position in which one stands within or without the system, not just the acknowledgment of its existence or even our physical presence within a space but the actual practice; ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule privately’’ 35. Even though these studio spaces might communicate an idea of absolute isolation and are to some extent anarchical they are also intrinsically bound to a larger system: an outside. It is in fact the way in which these spaces engage with an ‘outside’ that defines them, as we have seen with Reinhardt, St Jerome and Machiavelli, in which the study is contained within another space. The habitus is not just a conceptual apparatus but also a method, a tool that is used to engage and transform what surrounds us. A constant interaction between life and rule, agency and structure.

In his book The highest Poverty, Giorgio Agamben studies the relationship between life and rule. He looks into the history of the monastery to uncover the ambiguity or tension between a life-in-common and a solitary life. He compares cenobites (living in common) and anchorites (who live alone in the wilderness), Cenoby and hermitage.

While cenoby (koinos bios) by definition means common life, hermitage refers more to the house of the hermit or a retreat or hideaway. Agamben points out that by contrasting these two types of monks we might discover a tension between the private and the common. A tension that is evident in Reinhardt’s photograph. What Agamben

34 Ibid.

35 Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, p 58 (A quote from Wittgenstein I, pp. 381-82/87-88)

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

identifies is that ‘what is in question is not the opposition between solitude, so much as the (so to speak) ‘political’ opposition between order and disorder, governance and anarchy, stability and nomadism’36 and while St Jerome was a hermit, his form-of –life would later on become a model for how to live in a community. As Agamben points out ‘It can appear surprising that the monastic ideal, born as an individual and solitary flight from the world, should have given origin to a model of total communitarian life’37. In fact, to ‘inhabit’, for the monk, meant to share, not simply a place or a style of dress, but first of all a habitus. The monk is in this sense a man who lives in the mode of ‘inhabiting’ according to a rule and a form of life38.

The word studio already embodies this conflict, this political opposition that Agamben describes (between order and disorder, governance and anarchy, stability and nomadism). It originates from the same Latin route (and the same word Barthes uses to describe the intent of an author) studium: ‘for zealous learning, functions both as a noun and as transitive and intransitive verb. Both affiliated terms suggest a special space as well as a contemplative activity or a concentrated frame of mind’39. The studio, then, is the space of a solitary thinker, unlike the English ‘workshop’ or the French ‘atelier’ (which both refer to spaces that accommodate a group of people working together) it is a place of ‘isolation’ that has both a private and a public goal. While in some instances we find the studio embedded within the home, sometimes we find it somewhere completely separate. While sometimes people think of the studio space as being away from the city, somewhere in a field, others such as Ad Reinhardt’s, use the infrastructure of a city to carve this space of solitude. In other words, the studio is a space that uses an existing infrastructure to start a form of dialogue between individuality and collectivity, the private self and the public persona - to challenge what might be considered or understood as ‘the social order.’

FORM AND LIFE When one looks at the architecture of a monastery, for instance, these relationships between individuality and collectivity are clearly laid out. The Plan of St. Gall40, a plan for a monastic compound produced around the 9th century, is currently preserved in the Abbey Library of Saint Gall in Switzerland. This image might help us visualise Agamben’s tension more clearly. Even though we see that the space is partitioned into a series of rooms, in which different activities might take place, it is their relationship to each other that determines the value and meaning of each space individually. What ties them together is the everyday practice of the monk’s life at particular times of the day: horologium (‘clock’) the ‘attention to articulating life according to hours, to constituting

36 37 38 39 40

17

Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, monastic rules and form of life, p 12 Ibid, p. 9.

Ibid, p. 16 Caroline A. Jones, Machine in the Studio, p. 3.

Look at Fig 40. The Plan of St. Gall.

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Fig. 40.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

the existence of the monk as a horologium vite (‘clock of life’)’41. It is the repetition of these activities that begins to inform the overall material and spatial configuration of the monastery. In a similar way in which the form of the monk’s vests is informed by an internal way of being, the interior of the monastery as an architectural artefact is defined by this collection of spaces and the daily rituals that connect them – a whole interior way of life. In fact, it has been argued that ‘the Plan’ was designed to promote meditation upon the very meaning and worth of the monastic life.42 Interestingly, the plan itself was not drawn for a particular site – St. Gall was never meant to built.

Instead, the plan was used more as an apparatus through which to visualise the spatial manifestations of the monastic rule and one that could potentially become a model for a real monastery.

How is the role of this plan, one might ask, any different from the role the painting of St Jerome in his Study might have played? St Jerome himself was conceived of as a role model; besides translating the Bible into Latin, he also devised through his extensive writings approaches to life for Christians living in cosmopolitan centres like Rome and also focused on how devout women should live their lives. The painting

by Da Messina of St Jerome in His Study, however, is only one representation of many that have been produced by various artists over the years. All of them repeat specific patterns that convey a very particular image of the personality of the Saint, but these inevitably get appropriated, interpreted and ultimately transformed by the cultural paradigms of each era. The Fig. 45. image has even been replicated without the figure of the Saint himself, as is the case with the painting of ‘The Cardinal43 Albrecht of Brandenburg as St Jerome in His Study’44 (by Lucas Cranach the Elder German), in which the figure of St Jerome is substituted for that of The Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, inspired by the depiction of St Jerome in His Study45 by Albrecht Dürer. There are in fact two versions of this same picture of The Cardinal,

41 42 43 44 1525.

45

19

Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, Monastic Rules and Form-or-Life, p 19 Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe, p. 46.

The ‘habitus’ he is wearing is that of a cardinal, such as St Jerome’s in da Messina’s painting.

Look at Fig 44. The Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg by Lucas Cranach the Elder German in Look at Fig 45. St Jerome in His Study by Albrecht Dürer, 1514.

the first version dating from 1525 and the second produced merely a year later46. In the second work, the cardinal is surrounded by more animals and objects than in the one before. This was at the request of the Cardinal himself: that Cranach add more elements, so that the painting not only depicted him as St Jerome, but would also speak of his own luxurious life.

By appropriating these conventions and the use of a normative figure, the conventional and the normative in fact become mutable and unstable. Nevertheless we still tend to associate form with aesthetic principle, rather than notions of perception - the construction and reconstruction of a ‘model’.

‘Incorporating agency, and not fully determined by structure, habitus represents a constant interaction between structure and agency where both reside within the habitus, mutually shaping one another.’47

Fig. 44.

Fig. 46.

As is the case in both Da Messina’s painting and The Plan of St Gall (which does not instruct the material composition of a building but rather the arrangement of different ‘functions’), habitus are communicating the very meaning behind the life of the monk or holy man, becoming an abstraction of the way in which the monk actually lives. The form in both cases is intrinsically tied to a very particular meaning that, as we’ve seen, has changed and transmuted over time. Even the objects that surround

46 1526.

47

Look at Fig 46. The Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg by Lucas Cranach the Elder German in Garth Stahl, Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration, p. 50.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

St Jerome, some of which are of a metaphysical quality, are there not simply to stay true to a stylistic quality but a way of being. With this in mind, we might look at the photograph of Reinhardt and ask: what is it promoting? A form or a style? And, if any, what might be the difference between the two? While form appears to be constantly changing by the way in which people appropriate or interact with certain ‘rules’, a style seems to be a cultural register of these forms. Even though history (or rather historians) might tend to draw precise limits on the extent to which forms can change, as Meyer Schapiro, a tutor of Ad Reinhardt’s, argued: ‘Precise limits are sometimes fixed by convention for simplicity in dealing with historical problems or in isolating a type…But the single name given to the style of a period rarely corresponds to a clear and universally accepted characterization of a type.’48 ‘It must be said, that form elements or motives, although very striking and essential for the expression, are not sufficient for characterizing a style. The pointed arch is common to Gothic and Islamic architecture, and the round arch to Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, and Renaissance buildings. In order to distinguish these styles, one must also look for features of another order and, above all, for different ways of combining the elements’49

FORM-OF-LIFE VS. LIFESTYLE Again, we might ask: What is the photograph of Reinhardt promoting? Is it a form-of-life, a habitus or solely the image of a lifestyle?

The photograph would be published in Life magazine on the 3rd of February 196750. The same magazine Reinhardt once accused of being corrupt for describing the paintings of De Kooning and Rothko as ‘flames, girders, grasses, and sunsets’51 in a previous article.

He would also accuse Kooning and Rothko of allowing their work to be treated in terms of representation in order to make it, as he put it, ‘accessible’ to the public and ‘allowing everybody to

Fig. 50.

48 Donald Preziosi, The Art of Art History, Meyer Schapiro, Style 1953, p 144 49 Donald Preziosi, The Art of Art History, Meyer Schapiro, Style 1953, p 143 50 Look at Fig 50. Whole page of Life Magazine showing the context of how and where the photograph was published.

51 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, What is Corruption?, p 155

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project their personal wishes into it’ 52. The article dedicated to Reinhardt, which was written by David Bourdon under the title ‘The Master Of The Minimal’, wouldn’t be all that different. When talking about one of his early paintings in which colour was still ‘permitted’ Bourdon described it as ‘A 1949 gouache appears to be all sunlight and pulsation, as luminous and variegated as an impressionist painting’53. Not only a ‘flame’ but ‘an impressionist painting’. Perhaps, as this wasn’t one of his so-called ‘ultimate’ paintings, Reinhardt didn’t care so much.

Fig. 55.

He further explained his problem with representation in his essay ‘Paintings And Pictures.’ According to Reinhardt, a ‘painting which functioned as a picture prevented people from seeing its basic meanings and reduced painting eventually to a wall decoration’54. Even though one of Reinhardt’s paintings would come to be treated in just such a way, as one can see in the photograph of Charles H. Carpenter, Jr. standing before one of Reinhardt’s works hung on one of the walls of his house55. Carpenter also furthered the institutionalisation of Reinhardt’s persona by proposing to make a museum in his

Fig. 56.

52 Ibid.

53 David Bourdon, Life Magazine, 3 February 1967 54 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Paintings and Pictures, p 118 55 Look at Fig 55. Photograph of Charles H. Carpenter, Jr. in his house with one of Reinhardt’s ultimate paintings hanging on the back wall.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

name56.

Now, considering the article within the context of Life Magazine, as a piece it might have appeared to fundamentally contradict Reinhardt’s ‘ideological’ position. In the article, not only his art, but also his life would be presented as a Style, or even a commodity. Not only something that could be consumed but also imitated, and ultimately commercialised. The role the media played at the time was crucial; its portrayal of the ‘canon’ was both influential and formative and Life magazine - one of the most popular magazines at the time - was not Fig. 57. marketed towards art critics, art historians or architects as, for example, The International Style was. Rather, it was addressed to a much broader audience. Besides acting as a photo journal that documented historical events and ‘facts’ it also focused on important ‘historical’ figures and to some extent promoted their life as a sort of model or paradigm, treating these figures as icons in their own right. Such articles found in these publications were, in a way, attempts to peel off the masks of these public figures; to ‘uncover’ a more intimate impression of their persona, one with which society at large could potentially identify. In fact, the leading article of the same February 3rd edition of Life examined in detail the lives of the three astronauts of Apollo 157 that died during a training exercise. These astronauts were not only depicted as heroes in their field, but also as role models for the masses.

The same effect could be seen to follow from Reinhardt’s article. Whilst it was on the surface a simple summary of the artist’s professional trajectory, the use of these images of him in his studio could also have been seen to glorify the level of his (then, but not before then) success. Unlike what we see in the article on the crew of Apollo I, however, Reinhardt is presented as being in opposition to the stereotypical lifestyle, that of the domesticated family home, as if to signal a break in these traditions (despite the fact that, as we have already seen, Reinhardt was also a family man). So, the magazine was not only showing him at work, but also introducing a new form of inhabitation.

Showing how one could work (and even, potentially, live) inside an industrial space, inside the machine, the gallery, the museum, next to art, in a storage space. A space in which life can be modelled at will, free from the constraints imposed by the standard measurements of the average family house.

56 57

23

Look at Fig 56: Charles H. Carpenter Jr. sketch of Ad Reinhardt’s Museum.1962 Look at Fig 57. Image of the cover of Life Magazine published on February 3rd 1967.

‘Today it is the architects’ Reinhardt said in an interview with Bruce Glaser,‘The architects, along with the city-planning staffs. They have their lawyers and politicians and economic advisors, committees, statisticians, sociologists, psychiatrists. If they build a house for you, you get psychoanalysis of your family. You get an analysis of your political and economic life and then the architect will tell you how to live. Or the city planners’58 And so, as Reinhardt describes above, the idea of ‘the loft’ becomes idealised through Loengard’s photograph (even though, as we know through the building’s history, Reinhardt’s studio was more of a residential house-turned-loft). However, in the late 1960’s, the idea of actually living in a Loft was yet to become socially acceptable or, often, legally permitted, which may well have made these spaces even more desirable to artists like Reinhardt. The division of living space and work place was absolute.

At the time, zoning regulations imposed on the urban fabric would not allow one to inhabit a loft. Working was to be contained within the premises of an office building, while one would dwell in the domestic sphere.

‘Until the 1970s, living in a loft was considered neither chic nor comfortable - if the possibility was considered at all. Making a home in a factory district clearly contradicted the dominant middle-class idea of ‘home and ‘factory’, as well as the separate environments of family and work on which these ideas were based. Since the 1950s, suburbia had so dominated popular images of the American home that it was almost impossible to imagine how anyone could conceive the desire to move downtown into a former sweatshop or printing plant’59

THE STRUGGLE TO BE AN INDIVIDUAL Nevertheless, the appearance of these photographs in Life magazine – a publication that was particularly popular amongst the middle-classes – would have begun to promote the image of the urban dwelling artist and the loft as a future middle-class Lifestyle60. By simply publishing these images, the magazine made the idea more acceptable. Even though from outside one would have ‘recognised’ these spaces as being very far from the idea of home, within the interior of the loft one could project an air of suburbia: air, light and open space, but with one big difference: that the loft was not outside the city but intimately intertwined within the urban fabric. This lifestyle, however, begins to become appealing for another kind of user, one that was not based on the stereotypical family unit. Single people (as Reinhardt was portrayed)

58 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Monologue, p 26 59 Sharon Zukin, Loft Living, Culture and Capital in Urban Change, p 58.

60 Artists were also becoming part of the middle-class through their entry into the market. ‘Artist’ was becoming just another named profession.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

or couples without children began to move to these spaces within the city, seeing in them an opportunity to reinvent their lives outside of the predictable social norms (the traditional family). In a sense, this is why the publicity that the artist’s studio gained through magazines and newspapers was so important at the time. It was promoting a Lifestyle that was not prescribed or superimposed or dictated, by zoning regulations, social norms or architects. It informed the wider public how one could live outside the social standard at a time when, as Meyer Shapiro points out, ‘The pathos of the reduction or fragility of the self ’ was at stake ‘within a culture that becomes increasingly organised through industry, economy and the state’61.

If we take into consideration what Shapiro describes here, what we might conclude is being promoted in Reinhardt’s photograph is not just a new lifestyle but also a new way to conceive of individuality, something that would have resonated at a time when the notion of the self appeared to be under threat. Indeed, three months after the article on Reinhardt was published, Life magazine would dedicate an entire publication to this same issue on April 21 1967, with a front cover warning its readers in big white lettering of: ‘The Struggle To Be An Individual’62. Behind the title, we see an illustration of the most generic form of high-rise building, with the shadow of three human figures (all of them men) floating across the façade. Two arrows: one red and the other green, pointing in different directions, suggest some sort of confusion. It plainly infers a sense of urban anonymity; the building could be anywhere and the human figures could be anyone.

‘The Struggle to be an individual’ was divided into three sections, each of them addressing the ‘crisis of individuality’ in different ways. The first was entitled ‘Challenge for free men in a Mass Society’, the second ‘An Uneasy Sense of Emptiness and Anonymity’ and the final, ‘The problems of having so much to choose from’. If one flicks through the pages of these sections now - paying close attention to the images in particular - the whole thing becomes more interesting. We see a series of photographs taken somewhere in the city: one of two men walking through a tunnel or a dark, interior urban space63. There is little light. All one can make out is the men’s shaded profiles – no faces or features are visible. To add to the impression of anonymity and uniformity, we can see that both are dressed in businessman’s clothing (or, we might say that they are wearing the same ‘habitus’). The architecture surrounding these bodies appears monumental in comparison to their human frames. It is impossible to distinguish the beginnings or ends of this structure.

The next pages display images not of individuals or pairs, but masses. We see the interiors of huge, open-plan office spaces crammed with data processors in New York64. Beneath the image sits a satirical note: ‘don’t tell yourself that your work is not

61 62 63 64

25

Meyer Schapiro, Recent Abstract Painting, 218 Look at Fig 62. Image of the cover of Life Magazine Look at Fig 63. Photograph published in Life Magazine of men walking on the tunnel.

Look at Fig 64. Photograph published in Life Magazine of Data processors in New York

aa

Fig. 62.

Fig. 63.

Fig. 64.

Fig. 67.

Fig. 66.

Fig. 68.

Fig. 69.

Fig. 70.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

important. Imagine all the clerks, all the machines and big, high-static offices needed to process all the cards of your life.’ 65 We can compare this image to the drawing of a group of Clerks in ‘The Paperholder’ by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin66 in 1749, except two hundred years later, the space is filled with hundreds of desks, arranged in straight lines, facing the same directions, processing ‘the cards of your life’. Nothing changes along these rows of desks. The workers all sit in the same position, all of them fully immersed in their work (like Reinhardt is, but this is no ‘private’ room belonging to any one individual).

They are hypnotised by their typewriters and, this time, they are all women…Next, we see a photograph of people by the side of the pool at the Miami Beach Hotel, lying on sun loungers, one right next to the other with almost no space in between, hundreds of them67. Then follows a more solitary image: a woman stood at the end of a street with no one else around. There is a lamppost beside her and some neon signs in the background. Here, the lack of people in her urban surroundings seems to insinuate her vulnerability68. We then move on to a picture of people queuing to register somewhere in Berkley69 and lastly some photographs of typical family houses in suburban America70, all lined one after the other, all identical.

The accompanying text is intriguing: ‘The greater size of things does not make your size less, however it may make you feel. Every building has a door, just as every tunnel ends in light.

Remember: all things built by man are made for persons just like you.

Engineers have worked out all your problems; your quick eyes, your strength and wits are what they use for measures. How many steps can you take in 60 seconds? How fast can an elevator fall without hanging your heart in the shaft? How much weight can you carry? How far will you go before you give up? You may not know the answers to these questions, but someone trained to please you does (provided that you are average). Your part is easy. Just move with the forces that aim you, move in the current of the crowd. Reach out and push your button. Wait for the pneumatic hiss, trust the electric sigh. But avoid stopping others to ask direction: plans for pedestrian flow do not include

65 Life Magazine, The Struggle to be an Individual, 1967 66 Look at Fig 66. ‘The Paperholder’ by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1749) This drawing would be produced for “Mémoire sur la Réformation de la Police de France.” An illustrated manuscript by French police officer Jacques François Guillauté to convince King Louis the 15th to implement a new and radical plan to reform the existing police system. The drawing itself presents similarities to the photograph of Data Processors as we see on Fig 64. ‘The Paperholder’at it’s time appeared as an utopia, although, as we have seen, has become a reality. One could argue that the ‘iconography’ of the interior was used to visualise a new technology of power, one that as Grégoire Chamayou says ‘new technology of control based upon a principle of a generalized traceability. Its motto is not “I can always see you”, but “I will always keep track of you. I will always know what you have done and where you are now.’’

67 Look at Fig 67. Photograph published in Life Magazine of people lying on sun loungers at the Miami Beach Hotel.

68 Look at Fig 68. Photograph published in Life Magazine of a women walking by her self.

69 Look at Fig 69. Photograph published in Life Magazine of people queuing to register.

70 Look at Fig 70. Photograph published in Life Magazine of images of some suburban housing in US.

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time lost to strangers who have lost their way.’71 Not only your desk at work, your house, your car, but your very self was perceived as a standardised object and everything was conceived of in terms of the ‘average’, including the self. Schapiro talks of how precise limits in history or in categorising styles are introduced for simplicity, categories had to be invented into which people could conveniently fall in order to be counted.72This not only introduced a way in which one could consider his or her self in relation to society at large, but also would lead to one question: into which category do I fit? As a result, this would effect ‘not only the ways in which we conceive of society, but also the ways in which we describe our neighbour.’73 In this respect, Reinhardt held a very strong opinion on wider society and how it was divided into class systems. Although his paintings often seemed to evade any interaction with or comment on society whatsoever74, in his cartoons75 we find an explicit reflection on the social and spatial fragmentation brought about by the division of labour within modern capitalist society.76

Fig. 75.

71 Life Magazine, The Struggle to Be an Individual, April 211967 72 Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance, page 3 73 Ibid. p. 3.

74 Although they clearly did since this notion of ‘abstraction’ as represented on Reinhardt’s painting was clearly a political view of the context he was living at the time. Although ‘abstraction’ as such, on the essence of the word is not a style what the ‘Abstract Expressionists’ where doing at the time can now be considered a style.

75 Look at Fig 75. Ad Reinhardt’s Cartoon for a text written by Bill Levner called ‘...is it true what they say about Cohen?’ published in 1948.

76 Michael Corris, Ad Reinhardt, p. 36.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

TO BE OR NOT TO BE A PART OF THINGS… If we return to the photo of Reinhardt and consider it in light of this ‘struggle to be an individual’, we can guess that the ideals of interiority and individuality embodied by the artist’s studio would have held great appeal to many, a place in which you could be the artist of your own life, the maker of your self-portrait. Saul Steinberg, a contemporary of Reinhardt’s, who also used the medium of the cartoon as a political weapon, illustrated this point very effectively through his cartoons. In his book ‘The Art of Living’ (published in 1949), which inspired Georges Perec’s famous ‘Life: Fig. 77.

77 A Users Manual’ , Steinberg satirised the current state of affairs in America through his drawings. As an exile living in the US (he was born in Romania and studied architecture in Milan), his view was that of an ‘outsider’. He was therefore able to observe the nation through the lens of a different set of cultural traditions. When looking at his cartoons, Deidre Bair points out that ‘The viewers first response may be to smile, but almost always it is followed by emotions that might begin with perplexity but ultimately lead to recognition of something personal’78. Steinberg’s ridicule tended to target the middle-class - but the artist studio was soon to become associated with this very class of society.

Steinberg came to mock both ‘The Abstract’ crew and those who were still painting more traditional ‘pictures’ (as Reinhardt would have cynically called them). If we observe Steinberg’s depiction of the traditional artists - still painting their ‘pictures’ - they appear to be drawing objects from around their studio or the studio itself. But if we look closely, ‘The Abstract’ artist actually appears to be doing much the same. Steinberg could have been Fig. 79.

77 78

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Look at Fig 77. Drawing by Saul Steinberg that inspired Georges Perec. ‘Life: A User’s Manual’ Deirdre Bair, Saul Steinberg: A Bibliography, p 391

thought to have been making fun of ‘pictures about nothing’, as Reinhardt labelled his own paintings. But those ‘pictures about nothing’ would eventually come to mean something, and Steinberg does seem to predict this in one of his cartoons: it portrays an abstract artist that appears to be working on a painting of the very easel upon which the canvas he is using sits upon79, ‘painting the painting’. If we were to recreate Reinhardt’s photograph in a similar style to one of Steinberg’s cartoons, we could easily imagine the drawn image of Reinhardt in his studio, re-painting the same ‘old painting’80, endlessly painting and re-painting the objects around his studio, as if falling into a black hole of representation. As self-referential as it may seem, Steinberg’s abstract artist is placed inside what appears to be a home in which the walls are covered in paintings. We might wonder whether Steinberg was satirising the same issue that concerned Reinhardt – the domestication of art – the turning of paintings into ‘pictures’ to be hung on walls. We might also notice that, even though the artist has a muse posing before him, he has opted to re-paint the paintings that are on the wall – almost ignoring the human subject available to him as if blurred around the portraits81.

Reinhardt was consciously positioning himself against the idea that a painting is either

Fig. 81.

a representation of one’s environment or of the emotional desires of an artist. The matte black of his paintings was repeated as an intentional aesthetic, as he believed that ‘the glossy black’ would behave like a mirror in which the paintings physical surroundings would be reflected and highlighted. As such, the interior would not be understood as a mirror or an image of yourself but rather an interior way of being,

79 80 81

Look at Fig 79. Cartoon by Saul Steinberg published in ‘The Art of Living’ in 1949 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Art-as-Art, p. 58.

Look at Fig 81. Cartoon by Saul Steinberg published in ‘The Art of Living’ in 1949

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

something that might not have a particular shape or aesthetic, a sense of meaning that has nothing to do with appearances. For Reinhardt, ‘every individual is his own artist, his own architect’82 , but not in the way an artist was conventionally understood as a practitioner of visual creation, but more as a spiritual condition, something that is not provided or superimposed, but that one needs to craft for themselves. One could argue that the accumulation and the multiplication of black upon canvasses might not have been an act of filling the space but rather of emptying it, trying to talk to the essence of the viewer without allowing them to relate the image back to themselves.

Understanding the notion of the interior and interiority not as an opportunity ‘to leave traces’83 through objects (as it was described by Walter Benjamin when examining Bourgeoisie interiors of the 19th Century)84 but rather using the object itself to actually erase any trace of life which, for Reinhardt, also meant erasing any trace of his own hand from his paintings85. His works would not then be seen as a foreground, background or centrepiece, but a void: a space devoid of any meaning or trace of life.

But, as Reinhardt recognised, even though he could create this void in his paintings, he couldn’t prevent meaning and traces of life from forcing their way on to them through both the interpretation of those that viewed them and the inevitable human marks that ‘ruined’ his works once they had left the safety of his studio:

‘The painting leaves the studio as a purist, abstract, non-objective object or art, returns as a record of everyday (surrealist, expressionist) experience (chance spots, defacements, hand-markings, accident-happenings, scratches), and is repainted, restored into a new painting painted in the same old way (negating the negation of art), again and again, over and over again, until it is just ‘right’ again’86

The studio, then, becomes a space of purification, removal and restoration, a space in which any trace of everyday life, any trace of consumerist culture (which he would have been able to observe in motion from his window) would be erased. Reinhardt said that: ‘The one freedom is realized only through the most conscious art discipline and through the most regular studio ritual.’87For Reinhardt this would lead to only painting ‘one’ type of

82 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Paintings and Pictures, p. 120.

83 ‘To live means to leave traces’ says Walter Benjamin on ‘Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century’. See Walter Benjamin, Reflections, Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century, p. 155 84 Walter Benjamin explains this: ‘The interior is not only the universe but also the etui of the private person. To live means to leave traces. In the interior these are emphasized. An abundance of covers and protectors, liners and cases is devised, on which the traces of objects of everyday use are imprinted. The traces of the occupant also leave their impression on the interior […] The criminals of the first detective novels are neither gentlemen nor apaches, but private members of the bourgeoise.’ Walter Benjamin, Reflections, Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century, p. 155-156.

85 One of the reasons why Reinhardt painted horizontally rather than vertically was to avoid any dripping of paint, since the dripping would mean ‘leaving a trace.’ This technique was also employed by other artists during that time such as Agnes Martin, who was highly influenced by Reinhardt work and ideologies.

86 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, The Black Square Paintings, p. 83.

87 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Art-as-Art, p. 58.

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painting for the last decade of his life, when he only produced his trademark black, squared pieces. However, as easily as we might be fooled into thinking that they are all more or less exactly the same, each of them are in fact different to one another, which was something Reinhardt acknowledged and presented as one of the reasons he believed repetition was such a powerful process to adopt; because by constantly sticking to the same form, within that form something new could emerge. As he explained, once the paintings were returned from the outside world to his studio, the painting could be restored into ‘a new painting’, painted ‘in the same old way’, but nonetheless totally new.

‘These paintings […] present no clear understanding, no precise ground plan for our labours to follow. They represent only bricks and mortar materials awaiting use in the shaping of our own individual understanding. Until that time they remain but random comments’88 In the same quote Reinhardt reveals one of his main methodologies as ‘negating the negation of art’ and this idea of negation was intrinsic to most of his work. For Reinhardt, negation was in itself a form of freedom and Reinhardt found this freedom in blackness. As he put it: ‘Black is negation’89. Colour, on the other hand, ‘is always trapped in some kind of physical activity or assertiveness of its own; and colour has to do with life’90. His famous concept of Art-as-Art in itself could be understood as a form of negation, in which only by relation to art can art be free from being mixed up with anything else, ‘absolutely absolute.’ This idea he further explained in an interview with Bruce Glaser and, as we can plainly see, Reinhardt repeatedly responds to his interviewer’s questions with negative statements.

Reinhardt: If you’ve noticed, I don’t think I’ve made a positive statement.

Glaser: Why is that?

Reinhardt: The painting, which is a negative thing, is the statement, and the words I’ve used about it have all been negative statements to keep the painting free.

Glaser: But after the painting is done, isn’t it positive?

Reinhardt: Yes. But it says and one doesn’t have to say anything about it. And I never say anything about my paintings. I never explain them or interpret them.

Glaser: How do you feel about people who do interpret and explain them?

Reinhardt: I give them no encouragement. […]91 Having read these words of Reinhardt’s, we can go on to identify how he put his ideas into practice within the confines of his studio. In these photographs, we get a glimpse

88 89 90 91

Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Art-as-Art, p. 58.

Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Black as Symbol and Concept, p. 87.

Ibid, p. 87.

Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, An Interview With Ad Reinhardt, p. 14.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

of the artist at work. In this image, we see that the painting he is working on has been positioned at an oblique angle, the only element in the room that breaks a sense of continuity between the room’s interior and the axis of Waverly Place outside. The pattern of the wood planks in the floor follows the direction of Waverly Street, giving the illusion that the street continues on from the room and that the room expands onto the city, but the painting disrupts this continuum92. We might also notice another painting in the background standing on a piece of wood, again at an oblique angle to the camera93. When looking at this photograph, we might wonder how much of the image itself has been constructed for photographic purposes – whether the room was arranged precisely for this shot, which would also be published in Life magazine, part of the same series taken by John Loengard for the February 3rd Issue.

If one were to pursue this question (of whether the photographic scene had been pre-prepared), one could compare a large number of photos taken of Reinhardt in his studio, by various other photographers, to see if there had indeed been a particular method to Loengard’s composition. But, as we can see, the same ‘pattern’ does appear again. In fact, in almost every single photograph that one can find of Reinhardt at work in his studio there is always an element that is either oblique to the camera or the overall ‘grid’ of the room layout94. There is always an object oblique to us the viewer and, although this could just be coincidental, the position in which Reinhardt is seen to be painting is always oblique to the view from his studio95. We see the same arrangement again in these photographs96, where the introduction of a stoppage or a ‘negative’ marks the painting as detached or opposed to its surroundings. The work is not to be lost amongst the cityscape, but instead is set to stand apart from it.

So, although Reinhardt’s studio was laid out in such away as to blur with its urban surroundings, the work he produced within it was something that stood apart. As Reinhardt said: ‘Painting is special, separate, a matter of meditation and contemplation, for me no action or physical sport’97. He insisted that painting is separate, ‘a matter of meditation and contemplation’, a sort of space of its own.

92 Look at Fig 92. Ad Reinhardt painting one of his so called ‘ultimate’ paintings inside his studio in Manhattan, positioned oblique to the grid of the city 93 Look at Fig 93. Zoom into Fig 1.

94 Look at Fig 94. Ad Reinhardt in his studio painting oblique to the camera view.

95 Look at Fig 95. Ad Reinhardt in His studio in which you can see how he always positions his paintings oblique within the room.

96 Look at Fig 96. Collection of photographs of Ad Reinhardt in his Studio (see list of figures) 97 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, To Be Part of Things… p. 127.

33

Fig. 92

34

Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

aa

Fig. 94

Fig. 95

Fig. 96a

Fig. 93

Fig. 96b

35

aa

Fig. 96c

Fig. 96e

Fig. 96d

Fig. 96f

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

CONTEMPLATION AND THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE If we look at the primary photograph again98, Ad Reinhardt is seen posing not only like an artist, but also like a thinker or philosopher. In a similar posture to the famous sculpture of Auguste Rodin ‘The Thinker’99, Reinhardt is sat at the ‘Gates of Hell’, posing as a universal embodiment of every artist—every creator—who draws new life from the imagination. The city of Manhattan is framed behind his work by a large floor to ceiling window, yet he remains focused on the painting, deep in contemplation.

We might imagine that for Reinhardt the painting comes to represent the city in truer terms than the view outside might — that his abstractions made the chaos of the outside world manageable. The picture plane is not only the starting point from which the artist defines the concrete, but the interior of his studio becomes the laboratory with which to test it out. The inside is then determined by its relationship to several entities: his various selves, his work and the outside world. The interior of his studio is constantly negotiating a sense of identity, through a process of exclusion and inclusion.

What constitutes the inside and what constitutes the outside.

Fig. 99.

Fig. 98.

We might see the painting as the central element that Reinhardt is using as a means of negotiation or meditation. He is not looking at the city outside his window but rather at his painting. Indeed, the act of looking and what this involves was something Ad Reinhardt was obsessed with throughout his life. In his series of ‘How to look at’ cartoons which were published in the daily newspaper PM between 1942 and 1947, he would visually demonstrate ‘How to Look’ at different subjects. ‘How to Look At Space’100, ‘How Too Look At a Spiral’101, ‘How To Look At Iconography’102 or even

98 99 100 101 102

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Look at Fig 98. Zoom into Fig 1. Ad Reinhardt posing as ‘The Thinker’ Look at Fig 99. Photograph of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin.

Look as Fig 100. How to look at Space, Cartoon by Ad Reinhardt.(1942-1947) Look as Fig 101. How to look at Spiral, Cartoon by Ad Reinhardt. (1942-1947) Look as Fig 102. How to look at Iconography, Cartoon by Ad Reinhardt. (1942-1947)

‘How To Look At Looking’103. Reinhardt’s cartoons were mostly satires that made fun of the way one normally looks at something, but ‘how to look’ beyond the surface was certainly a very serious concern for him, something that could function as a means of interiorisation. In this respect, his black paintings can be seen to be of the same genealogy of his ‘How to Look at’ cartoons. If one does not look properly, one might gain the false impression that his series of ‘black’ paintings (or his ‘ultimate’ paintings) are totally black. The cross formed out of layers of black that features in most of these ‘ultimate’ paintings was a tool he employed to direct the gaze of the viewer towards a certain point, the intersection between the vertical and the horizontal. When one looks and concentrates for a length of time, one realises that there are multiple shades of black, maybe even other colours behind that black, but it is not until one has properly looked that these things become noticeable104. Looking, one could argue, or instructing us how to look, might also be the message behind Loengard’s photo.

The same might apply if we look back to the image of ‘St Jerome in His Study’. We see that the saint is reading quietly within the confinements of his study. However, not only the saint but the whole studio seems centered around the book he is reading, as George Perec points out in his analysis of the work: ‘The whole space is organized around the piece of furniture and the whole piece of furniture is organized around the book’105. Similar to what we see in the photograph of Reinhardt, in which the furniture seems to be there enclosing the painting. We might consider these two objects to be the punctum, as described by Barthes. The book depicted in da Messina’s painting, like the painting in Reinhardt’s photograph, perhaps more than the studio setting itself, might represent a metaphor of containment, a place into which, like a studio, one can withdraw. It may be the case that both the Saint and Reinhardt are not just in a contemplative and calm state but are actually training their minds, (‘meditating’, as Reinhardt would say), using the object as the medium from which to craft thought. The act of reading itself, as we seem to see it in St Jerome’s case, was a practice towards meditatio, not meditation understood in the modern sense but in a monastic sense (meditatio). As Agamben tells us, meditatio ‘designates originally the (solitary or communal) recitation by memory of the Scriptures as distinct from reading (lectio).’106Or as Hugh St. Victor says in The Didascalicon: “[Meditatio] delights to range along open ground, where it fixes its free gaze upon the contemplation of truth, drawing together now these, now those ideas, or now penetrating into profundities, leaving nothing doubtful, nothing obscure. The start of learning, thus, lies in lectio, but its consummation lies in meditation.”107

103 104 105 106 107

Look as Fig 103. How to look at Looking, Cartoon by Ad Reinhardt. (1942-1947) Look at Fig 104. Ad Reinhardt, one of his ‘ultimate’ paintings (1960-1966) Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, p 88 Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, p 25 Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon (I.V. #87), 3.7–10 (trans. J. Taylor, 92–93).

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

Fig. 100.

Fig. 102.

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Fig. 101.

Fig. 103.

Fig. 104.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

Hugh of St. Victor describes meditation as the point at which the text has been memorized, when there is no further need for lectio. ‘because by this point the text is available in the memory for an uninterrupted and in any case solitary recitation, which can thus accompany and temporally articulate from the inside the entire day of the monk and become inseparable from his every gesture and his every activity’108. In other words, the activity of meditation for the monk is not necessarily to be practiced within the enclosure of the cell but anywhere and everywhere, even while doing manual labour or when walking from one place to the other. ‘When the monk leaves the collecta, he must meditate while he walks to his habitation, even if he is doing something that concerns the convent’109 The role of the study or studio in these terms becomes more of a mental space, in which one ‘withdraws from all the worry and confusion of the crowds’110 to train the body and the mind how to live outside the confinements of a room, becoming a tool that works more as a projective device in the outside world, rather than an enclosed place in opposition to the outside. In the architecture of the monastery this is very clear, that the training of one’s mind and one’s behaviour should have directly informed the way in which to live within the building and the community. One ‘did not cultivate a fine memory for its own sake, or merely as a vehicle for accurate information recall, but as the essential mental equipment for the formation of one’s character.’111 Looking back through the history of the studio to the studioli of the Renaissance, the architecture of the room again played a crucial role in the craft of thought that, once conceived, could act as a point of inspiration for the formation of one’s character.

The room itself was designed as a memory-making machine, meaning the architecture itself was meant to function as an instructive and educational device.

Fig. 112.

The studiolos of the ducal Palaces of Urbino112 and Gubbio113 might be the best examples to illustrate this.

Built in 1473 by the orders of the duke Federico da Montefeltro, the walls of the rooms were not filled with physical objects on shelves but were instead covered in mock-objects in a trompe-l’oeil effect, meticulously carved out of veneer intarsia wood paneling. These carvings would depict, for example, what was known traditionally as a ‘book press’114, or a ‘cabinet’ as we would call it today. The ‘doors’ that would give access to the cabinet were made of latticework, and while some of them appear

108 Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, p 25 109 Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty, monastic rules and form of life, p 25 110 Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and The Making of Images, 400-1200, p 73 111 Robert Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory, The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro, Chapter three, section 8 of the Gutenberg-e book.

112 Look at Fig 112. Photograph of the interior of the studiolo at Urbino.

113 Look at Fig 113. Photograph of the interior of the studiolo at Gubbio.

114 See Robert Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory, The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro of the Gutenberg-e book.

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closed others have been left ajar115. Within them you would find a selection of various kinds of object: books, scientific instruments, weapons and armor. Some served a bibliographical purpose. However, these were not just for ornamental purposes; they were also used for the stimulation and crafting of thought. As he passed by, the duke’s mind would be induced into creative associations between the various images depicted on the walls. This process of ‘creative thinking’, however, was not as we might understand it today, as an act of ‘self expression’. It was instead something carefully thought out, through the selection of very particular images, objects and books intended to direct the eye and the mind of the duke in very particular ways. In the case of Federico this was important; he was not only a ‘thinker’ but a leader, and as such his studio needed to be designed with governmental purposes in mind. As Robert Kirkbride better labels it, his studioli was more like an ‘Engine of Governance’ and, in order to govern well, Frederico would begin with the training of his own mind and character.

Fig. 113.

Fig. 115.

115

Look at Fig 115. Photograph of one side of the walls at the studiolo in Urbino.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

Working in this way, as an ‘engine of governance’, the functions of the studioli were various. It would not only be a space for contemplation but also a space for ‘matters of civil justice, political negotiation, and leisurely conviviality. Each activity reflected a different facet of Federico’s brand of governance as duke of Urbino and the underlying influence of a well-rounded, or “mixed,” humanist education.’116 Even though contemplative activities might not be immediately associated with governmental ones, the two are completely intertwined.

As we can see in this painting of ‘Federico da Montefeltro and His Son Guidobaldo’117, not just the tools of knowledge but also the tools of war surround the duke in his studiolo.

He has not only been portrayed as an intellectual reading a book, but as a militaristic leader of men and a role model. This is why we also see his son stood next to him: he too must be taught and trained, for he will eventually take his father’s place. His habitus, as condottiero118, and his armour, represent Federico as a warrior.

Fig. 117.

The figure of the thinker, the philosopher, the monk or the artist within his or her study or cell, however, has not always been an image of calm meditation and total control of mind. In these other two paintings of St Jerome in his study, one by Marinus Van Reymerswaele119 and the other Pieter Coecke van Aelst120, we see the saint in a state of unease, his hands no longer on his book or on his chin like a composed thinker, but touching his head, a lost expression on his face, looking up to the ceiling or the sky: restless, uncertain and confused. He stares upwards as if in need of some sort of divine answer. Or, as another example, we might examine another cartoon by Steinberg,

116 Robert Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory, The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro, 6.2, 15. From Gutengberg-e edition 117 Look at Fig 117. ‘Federico da Montefeltro and His Son Guidobaldo’ 1475 118 Leader of mercenary soldiers 119 Look at Fig 119. St Jerome in His Study by Marinus Van Reymerswaele (1600) 120 Look at Fig 120. St Jerome in His Study by Pieter Coecke van Aelst.

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Fig. 119.

Fig. 120.

Fig. 121.

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where we see the artist looking down at the floor, his back unnaturally curved, sitting in his stool with an empty canvas before him, as if in despair at not knowing what to paint, not knowing how to proceed121. In Augustine’s Confessions there is a passage in which Augustine describes himself in a moment of internal conflict. He is in the garden in Milan debating with himself, or rather as he puts it, his ‘various selves’, as to what he should do and where he should go… Augustine writes: ‘For if there be so many contrary natures as there be conflicting wills, there shall now be not two only, but many. If a man deliberate whether he should go to their conventicle or to the theatre, these Manichees cry out, Behold, here are two natures: one good, draws this way; another bad, draws back that way.

For whence else is this hesitation between conflicting wills?122 Before this, Augustine describes himself adopting different bodily postures that reflect his anxiety: ‘Thus if I tore my hair, beat my forehead, if locking my fingers, I clasped my knee; I did it. But I might have willed, and not done it’. Augustine continues after a long episode of confusion and many changes of posture: ‘So was I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my hearts, when lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and of it repeating ‘Take up and read; take up and read’123 The ‘solution’, as described in this passage, is given by ‘a neighbouring voice’, that of a child: ‘Take up and Read, Take up and read’. Reading within the monastery was seen as a remedy to what was then understood as a ‘terrible sickness’124, known as acedia, defined by ‘The dictionary of the Christian Church’ as a ‘state of relentless inability either to work or to pray’125, which was considered to be one of the ‘seven deadly sins’, better known today as ennui or spleen. What Augustine seems to be describing in this passage is a moment of ‘composure’, which in itself was one of the elements of ‘inventional practice in monasticism’126. This process of composing one’s self from an attack of ‘restlessness’, an inability to ‘work or to pray’, is also a vital skill demanded of the artist.

Indeed, this kind of mania that Augustine describes is one we can easily imagine effecting the artist within the studio space, this exceptional cell where so much is created, recorded and produced, but also a place defined by an immense pressure to create and, as a result, a great deal of ‘creative blockage’, to use Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s words (taken from their explanation as to why they produced the cards from which this thesis takes its inspiration: ‘Oblique Strategies: Over a Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas.’)127 They would use these cards precisely in these moments of ‘conflict’ produced by creative block. Like the words of the child chanting to Augustine, ‘Take

121 122 123 124 125 126 page 175.

127

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Look at Fig 121. Cartoon by Saul Steinberg published in ‘The Art of Living’ 1949 Augustine, Confessions, book VIII Ibid.

Ibid.

The Dictionary of the Christian Church Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and The Making of Images, 400-1200, Look at Fig 127. Photograph of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt cards

up and read; take up and read’, Eno and Schmidt would write down and refer to this series of aphorisms, that would instruct to ‘‘Discipline self-indulgence’, ‘Turn it upside down’ or ‘Instead of changing the thing, turn the world around you’ . These instructions would inspire new perspectives and encourage lateral thinking, allowing them to pursue ideas that had previously seemed like dead-ends. By introducing a new element (much like the punctum) that ‘has […] potentiality, a power of expansion. [Whose power] is often metonymic.’128 , they could continue to create under new conditions.

The studio itself can be seen as an ‘oblique strategy’; a means of inspiring creation, a place to gain new perspectives. For Reinhardt it was the ‘duties’ of the ‘the everyman in the everyday’ that blocked his creativity. His studio became his sanctuary or the ‘card’ through which he could block out these duties, a space in which they could be suspended. For Reinhardt, this would mean to completely remove any sign, code, trace or pattern that could potentially remind him or link him back to that world he had left suspended. Even though the view of the city might have been present within his room he would always position his paintings and, in a way, his very self at an oblique angle to it – so as not to get seduced, confused or misdirected by the view outside his window. For Reinhardt, the method was to detach himself, to prevent his life and his work from being mixed up or associated with anything else ‘The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else.’129 For Federico, on the other hand, the studio functioned in the opposite way: he used signs, objects, codes and symbols specifically for and in order to make associations, to stimulate and craft a new vision or a new strategy (depending on how he might have associated one code to another). But of course creative block also happens within the studio. So we might ask: what does one do then? ‘Take up and read; take up and read’ Augustine’s child might chant back to us. But what if there is no child? What if you are alone in your room with nothing and no one else around you? You would then do as Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt and return to a known ‘truth’, or an old habit we might say. You would then return to your habitus and continue to paint black squared paintings for the rest of your life.

Fig. 127.

One can imagine Reinhardt going through a similar process, especially if we look at ‘The’ photograph in relation to this other version130. The background paintings have been moved, rearranged around the room, but more importantly the artist’s gaze is no longer directed at his painting but instead outwards - into the city. The fingers of his hands are no longer wrapped around each other, now his palms are open. A couple of black paintings in the background that we know from

128 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 45.

129 Ad Reinhardt, Art-as-Art, Art-as-Art, p 53 130 Look at Fig 130. Ad Reinhardt looking at The City of Manhattan. Photograph by John Loengard.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

the first shot can be seen covering the heater, but they are no longer the focal point, revealing more of the internal structure of the room, a ‘sign’ we might say. But again his gaze is now pointed towards the city. One might imagine the photo shoot, the testing of all these different postures to represent the artist contemplating, which composition might better illustrate the article, which might look better aesthetically, or which might present Reinhardt to the public in the best way. We could imagine a dialogue between Reinhardt and the photographer as to which positions the paintings should be placed around the room or how he should be posing: ‘stare at the painting’, ‘now to the camera’ or, perhaps, ‘just look outside the window’ – which may in fact have given us a more truthful image of the artist, surveying the world from within his studio, taking inspiration from the city before painting his black paintings, possibly a view like the one Saul Steinberg drew for the cover of the New Yorker in 1976 ‘A View of the World from 9th Avenue’131, the artist looking West, taking in the view of the world. But ultimately, Reinhardt might have preferred not to be mixed up. He might not have wanted the city to be one of the signs we read in this shot: a sign of duties, a sign of an ‘everyday’ life as performed under the rules and rhythms of the world of ‘pictures’. He would rather turn away from this world and go back to the ‘old habit’, back to the ‘old painting’ - and keep looking at it.

Fig. 130.

131 Look at Fig 131. ‘A view of the World from 9th Avenue’ by Saul Steinberg 1976, published in the cover of The New Yorker.

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Fig. 131.

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Photograph from magazine. Life Magazine, John Loengard (1967). Ad Reinhardt in His Studio, No 732 Broadway, New York, NY. [photograph].

Figure 10. St Jerome in His Study by Antonello da Messina. About 1475. Available from: http://www. nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/antonello-da-messina-saint-jerome-in-his-study Figure 17. Fragment of plan drawn for the NOHO Historic District Designation Report 1999. Showing in Black 732 Broadway (black rectangle added by the author) Figure 18. Photograph of No.732 Broadway taken from Broadway. Photograph by Thomas Weaver 20 July 2015 Figure 19. Photograph of Ad Reinhardt in His Studio. Available from: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/b9/cf/81/b9cf8138d2bab38459836350158b411e.jpg Figure 20. Photograph of No.732 Broadway taken from Waverly Street. Photograph by Thomas Weaver 20 July 2015 Figure 22. Photograph of façade finish of No. 732 Broadway. Available from: http://www.panoramio. com/photo/87911687 Figure 24. Studio of the Master Meudon. Available from: http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/museum/ musee-rodin-meudon Figure 25. The artist in his studio with Brigitte Bardot during the 1956 International Cannes film festival. Photograph: Jerome Brierre/Getty Images. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2010/may/09/big-picture-brigitte-bardot-picasso Figure 28. Ad Reinhardt with his family. Available from: https://theoldmistressesandme.wordpress.com/ tag/ad-reinhardt/ Figure 29. The Irascibles. Available from: http://www.mwpai.org/assets/museum/MA-The-Irascibles-2014-2015/MA-The-Irascibles-940-x-582-web.jpg Figure 31. Ad Reinhardt’s Navy Identification Card. Available from online archives at: http://www.aaa. si.edu/collections/ad-reinhardt-papers-5659/more#section_1 Figure 32. Ad Reinhardt’s Passport. Available from online archives at: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/ad-reinhardt-papers-5659/more#section_1 Figure 40. Plan of St Gall. Available from: https://c3.staticflickr.com/3/2147/2068780980_9b222d3abe.jpg Figure 45. St Jerome in His Study by Albrecht Dürer. Available from: https://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/farberas/arth/Images/ARTH_214images/Durer/durer_st_jerome_300dpi.jpg Figure 44. Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg as Saint Jerome in His Study by Lucas Cranach the Elder 1525. Available from: http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer_m/z.html Figure 46. Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg as Saint Jerome in His Study by Lucas Cranach the Elder 1526. Available from: http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer_m/z.html Figure 50. Image of a full page 50 of Life magazine. Available from: Life Magazine, February 3 1967.

Figure 55. Charles H. Carpenter Junior posing in his house. Available from the cover of: Carpenter, C. and Larson, K. (1996). Charles H. Carpenter, Jr.. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Carnegie Museum of Art. Figure 56. Drawing by Charles H. Carpenter Junior, 1962. Available from: Carpenter, C. and Larson, K.

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(1996). Charles H. Carpenter, Jr.. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Carnegie Museum of Art. Page 48 Figure 57. Page 20 of Life Magazine, April 21 1967. Available from: http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1960s/1967/april-21-1967-life-magazine.html?q= Figure 62. Cover of Life Magazine April 21 1967. The Struggle to be and individual. Available from: http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1960s/1967/april-21-1967-life-magazine.html?q= Figure 63. Airline terminal, New York published in Life Magazine, April 21 1967. Available from: http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1960s/1967/april-21-1967-life-magazine.html?q= Figure 64. Data processors, New York published in Life Magazine, April 21 1967. Available from: http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1960s/1967/april-21-1967-life-magazine.html?q= Figure 66. The Paperholder, drawing by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1749), in: M. Guillauté, Mémoire sur la Réformation de la Police, soumis au roi en 1749 http://thecityasaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/serrepapier.jpg Figure 67. Miami Beach Hotel, New York published in Life Magazine, April 21 1967. Available from: http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1960s/1967/april-21-1967-life-magazine.html?q= Figure 68. Women walking alone, New York published in Life Magazine, April 21 1967. Available from: http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1960s/1967/april-21-1967-life-magazine.html?q= Figure 69. People queuing in Berkeley published in Life Magazine, April 21 1967. Available from: http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1960s/1967/april-21-1967-life-magazine.html?q= Figure 70. Photographs of Suburban homes, New York published in Life Magazine, April 21 1967.

Available from: http://www.oldlifemagazines.com/the-1960s/1967/april-21-1967-life-magazine.html?q= Figure 75. Ad Reinhardt’s Cartoon for a text written by Bill Levner called ‘...is it true what they say about Cohen?’, published in 1948. Available from Ad Reinhardt’s Online Archives: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/ad-reinhardt-papers-5659 Figure 77. Saul Steinberg’s Cartoon. Available from: Steinberg, S. (1949). The Art of Living. United States of America, New York: Harper & Brothers.

Figure 79. Saul Steinberg’s Cartoon available from: Steinberg, S. (1949). The Art of Living. United States of America, New York: Harper & Brothers.

Figure 81. Saul Steinberg’s Cartoon Available from: Steinberg, S. (1949). The Art of Living. United States of America, New York: Harper & Brothers.

Figure 92. Photograph from magazine. Life Magazine, John Loengard (1967). Ad Reinhardt in His Studio, No 732 Broadway, New York, NY. [photograph].

Figure 93. Crop of figure Figure 1. Edited by author.

Figure 94. Ad Reinhardt painting in studio, New York, 1962. Photograph by Marvin Lazarus.. Available from: http://www.brooklynrail.org/article_image/image/12573/flam-web1.jpg Figure 95. Photograph of Ad Reinhardt in his studio by John Loengard. Available from: http://cache1.asset-cache.net/gc/80637019-american-abstract-painter-ad-reinhardt-at-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=GkZZ8bf5zL1ZiijUmxa7QewvE75nNI%2B4mWHEYBSOBCahKBhr5zkrf80D432JuCnzhT%2F2ksI2g963e%2Fq2PrYHenostS3r60mwEtMxazz4H68%3D Figure 96a. Ad Reinhardt in his studio, New York, 1966 Photograph by Marvin Lazarus. Available from: http://www.artnews.com/2013/11/13/the-semi-secret-history-of-modernist-comic-artist-ad-reinhardt/ Figure 96b. Ad Reinhardt hangs his paintings to dry in a studio, New York, 1966. Photo by John Loen-

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gard/The LIFE Picture Collection. Available from: http://publicdomainreview.org/2015/04/09/black-on-black/ Figure 96c. American Abstract artist Ad Reinhardt (1913 - 1967) at work in his studio (at 732 Broadway), New York, New York, March 1, 1961.Credit: Fred W. McDarrah. Available from: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/american-abstract-artist-ad-reinhardt-at-work-in-hisstudio-news-photo/484575929 Figure 96d.Ad Reinhardt in his studio. Available from: http://workfortheeyetodotoo.com/2012/05/01/ad-reinhardt-black-paintings-1951-1967/ Figure 96e.Ad Reinhardt in his studio by John Loengard, 1966. Available from: http://www.everythingelse.de/2011/01/09/ad-reinhardt-letzte-bilder/reinhardt_portrait_1966/ Figure 96f.Ad Reinhardt in his studio, 1955 / Walter Rosenblum, photographer. Thomas Hess papers, 1937-1978. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Available from: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/items/detail/ad-reinhardt-his-studio-7944 Figure 98. Crop of figure 1 by author. framing more of the artist and the painting that he is looking at.

Available from: Life Magazine, John Loengard (1967). Ad Reinhardt in His Studio, No 732 Broadway, New York, NY. [photograph].

Figure 99. The Thinker. Available from: http://store.metmuseum.org/sculpture/rodin-the-thinker-sculpture/invt/80010981 Figure 100. How to Look at Space by Ad Reinhardt. Available from: http://www.brooklynrail.org/article_image/image/12488/ar-space-web1-large.jpg Figure 101. How to look at a Spiral by Ad Reinhardt. Available from: http://p7.storage.canalblog.com/75/49/1037357/85442173_o.jpg Figure 102. How to look at Iconography by Ad Reinhardt. Available from: http://collection.spencerart.ku.edu/eMuseumPlus?service=DynamicAsset&sp=SU5mxm4Yx%2FVbg9LVP7MZLDqo6z5lhONBxez%2FYx5EhVSCZjU0bcvvsnPxkoLiFJnF9QzRY98OZwV3L%0ATpwyJeR7NMPvp3RRP61q%2FZaOrpMIarWkfTZ6eTO9uCyJGqnlNVpn&sp=Simage%2Fjpeg Figure 103. How to look at looking by Ad Reinhardt. Available from: https://www.google.com/ search?q=Ad+Reinhardt+how+to+look&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMI4tPU3vDTxwIVx2tyCh1osw1K&biw=1189&bih=637#imgrc=qSiI4KK_-fx7iM%3A Figure 104. Ultimate painting by Ad Reinhardt. Available from: http://i1.wp.com/eyes-towards-the-dove.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/IMG_04511.jpg Figure 112. Photograph of the Studiolo in Urbino. Availabe from: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/h2/h2_39.153.jpg Figure 113. Photograph of the Studiolo in Gubbio. Available from: http://www.aparences.net/wp-content/uploads/studiolo_urbino.gif Figure 115. Giuliano, benedetto da maiano e bottega, tarsie dello studiolo di federico II.. Available from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giuliano,_benedetto_da_maiano_e_bottega,_tarsie_dello_studiolo_di_federico_II.jpg Figure 117. Federico da Montefeltro and His Son Guidobaldo (c. 1475), by Justus van Gent or (and) Pedro Berruguete. Available from: http://old.post-gazette.com/images/19990123HOMontefeltrom.jpg

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Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority

Figure 119. St. Jerome in his Study – by Marius van Reymerswaele. Available from: http://www.richardharrisartcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/LI-RHC-KK-080c.jpg Figure 120. Saint Jerome in his Study, ca. 1530 Circle of Joos van Cleve Tempera and oil on panel Purchase, Friends of the Vassar College Art Gallery Fund, 1985. Available from: http://pages.vassar.edu/fllaceducation/files/2011/10/image1.jpg Figure 121. Saul Steinberg’s Cartoon. Available from: Steinberg, S. (1949). The Art of Living. United States of America, New York: Harper & Brothers.

Figure 127. Image of one of the cards of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt of his ‘Oblique Strategies Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas’ Available from: Eno, B., Schmidt, P., White, P. and Norton, P. (1996). Oblique strategies. [Santa Monica]: Peter Norton.

Figure 130. Photograph of Ad Reinhardt in His Studio. Photograph by John Loengard 1966. Available from: http://cache4.asset-cache.net/gc/80637032-american-abstract-painter-ad-reinhardt-sits-gettyimages. jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=GkZZ8bf5zL1ZiijUmxa7QbMmjPlSXVWfaOwvkeoM5%2B5AQ9MLqT0cuYrrbozCYtd8C5apAvOVAHz2lHFmETedvivZr%2Fo3NBCuGOq3AnpvYHQ%3D Figure 131. Saul Steinberg’s March 29, 1976 “View of the World from Ninth Avenue” cover of The New Yorker. Available from: http://imgc-cn.artprintimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/60/6076/EBVD100Z/posters/saul-steinberg-the-new-yorker-cover-view-of-the-world-from-9th-avenue-march-29-1976.jpg

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ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE SCHOOL PROGRAMMES COVERSHEET FOR SUBMISSION 2014-15

PROGRAMME: History and Critical Thinking in Architecture TERM:

Dissertation

STUDENT NAME(S): Elena del Carmen Palacios Carral

SUBMISSION TITLE Oblique Strategies: Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority.

COURSE TITLE

HCT

COURSE TUTOR

Marina Lathouri

SUBMISSION DATE: 18/09/15

DECLARATION: “I“I certify certify that this piece of work is entirely my/our own and that any quotation or that this piece of work is entirely my/our own and that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of othe paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of others is duly acknowledged.”

Signature of Student(s):

Date: 18/09/15

Oblique Strategies, Under One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas of Interiority