No Afterlife! Ad Reinhardt's Refusal of the Material Alteration of His Works
Abstract
Ad Reinhardt’s rejection of the material alteration of his works over time led to conflicts with museum curators, which this essay proposes to analyse. The status attributed by his theory and practice of art to matter, materials, and materiality can be related to formalist universalism, and it indicates that the difficulties of conserving the works of the modern movement are rooted in the “achronic” dimension of modernism.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Art
Politics
and Modernism
Libraries and Information Services
Visual Culture and Art Theory
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Routledge eBooks
- Pages
- 143–158
- Publication date
- 4 February 2026
- Language
- EN
- Document type
- Book chapter