How to Look: Ad Reinhardt's Black Paintings

Through Ad Reinhardt's 'Black Painting', the paper explores the meaning of artworks revealed by digital reproduction of paintings, and sheds light on the problems and implications that appear in the material formation of paintings based on various experiences. Today, paintings are mostly encountered through mobile phones and computers, which contrast with the reflections and absorbed surfaces of the light of actual paintings. The geological profundity or allusion revealed by the layers of paint in Reinhardt's paintings reveal meaning in the physical encounter that takes place through the medium of the time-given matière. Among the various theories dealing with the discussion of the dematerialization of art, it is worth noting Bruno Latour's agent-network theory (ANT). This theory explains the relationship between actors or participants in a network. The title of the paper is Reinhardt's satirical illustration series, published in 1947.

The symposium also featured paper presentations from UAL researchers: Professor Daniel Sturgis, Flat Paintings and Intimate Screens, The paper reflects on the implications, and ethics of encountering paintings digitally as reproductions on screens and on mobile devices. It explores the idea of the digital reproduction of a painting being a translation of an artwork, and considers the idea of the close-up as used by the British filmmaker Simon Eaves, in his film Portrait of a Painting (2022), and Anna Mossman's paper ‘Some Light in the Shadows - Touch, Time and Movement in Real and Digital Space’ which looks at the development of a new large painting Bathers (1), 2022.

• https://juanbolivar.com/
• https://www.danielsturgis.co.uk/about.ph...
• https://www.closeltd.com/news/37-anna-mo...
• https://www.dbpia.co.kr/journal/articleD...
• https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/...