Untitled (N.Y. World's Fair) 1939

Ad Reinhardt made this 'Untitled (N.Y. World's Fair)' painting with a brush and paint, probably during or after visiting the 1939 or 1964 World's Fair. I can imagine him thinking about the architecture there. The color palette is pastel and cool. He was probably trying to figure out how to represent architectural space as an interlocking puzzle of shapes. I’m seeing the influence of Cubism, and maybe a bit of Stuart Davis, in how the shapes stack on top of one another. I think he's trying to evoke a sense of depth, but he's doing it in a really flattened-out way. The smooth surfaces and sharp edges create a sense of clarity, but the overlapping planes also make it kind of confusing. It’s like he's giving us a glimpse of a city, or a building, but he's also holding something back. Painters are always riffing off each other, and Reinhardt was definitely part of that conversation. He went on to make paintings with even less color, moving toward a more reduced, minimal aesthetic. I love how he embraces that ambiguity, leaving space for us to bring our own readings to the work.