Barbara Reise (1940–1978) was an American art critic and historian. The final dozen years of her life were spent in the United Kingdom.[1] She was closely linked to leaders of minimalism and conceptual art.[2] Of the American minimalist artists, she wrote "One must think to get the full effects of their work, which unfolds over time in conceptual richness."[3]

Life

Reise was born in Chicago, and studied at Wellesley College, a major in Art and Art History, from 1958 to 1962. Moving on to Columbia University, she received an M.A. in 1965 for a dissertation on Barnett Newman.[1]

Reise moved to England, and enrolled at the Courtauld Institute.[1] In London, she was one of the small group who worked for the reception of American conceptual artists, others being Lynda Morris and Anne Seymour.[4] The gallerist and curator Seth Siegelaub was a correspondent and friend.[5][6]

From around the beginning of 1968, Reise taught at Coventry School of Art.[7] She had no particular rapport with the Principal there, David Bethel, who left the following year to go to Leicester Polytechnic, nor with Anthony Francis Hobson who lectured on history of art, as she told Michael Kitson;[8][7] but the General Studies department headed by Hobson asked her that year to design a programme. The work involved in contentious but constructive discussion with the nascent Art & Language group.[9]

Reise attended the Mail Action performance on 5 April 1975 by Genesis P-Orridge, with Colin Naylor (1944–1992), Ian Breakwell and other "avant-gardistes".[10] At the time of her death in 1976 she was working with Naylor on the stalled first issue of a new magazine, ArtstrA, to feature COUM Transmissions (Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti) and Philip Glass.[11]

Critical views

Reise made an intervention in the debates on minimalism and conceptual art in an article "Greenberg and the Group: a retrospective view", published in Studio International. In defence of the artists, she took Clement Greenberg and his followers as a target. The piece was well received by Alan Bowness, and Peter Townsend (1919–2006), editor of Studio International, commissioned two further articles.[12] Reise became a commissioning editor for Studio International, and the reputation of minimalist art rose in the United Kingdom.[13] "Untitled 1969: a footnote on art and minimalist stylehood" by Reise in a minimalist art special issue of Studio International said of Robert Smithson[14]

Smithson's Non-Sites of photographs and material extractions from real-life stone quarries are consistently less interesting than stone quarries themselves.[15]

On the staff of the magazine Charles Harrison, a colleague and sparring partner, disagreed with Reise's emphasis on subjectivity in judgements.[16]

An article Untitled 1969: A Footnote on Art and Minimal Stylehood by Reise was important in establishing Sol LeWitt as a conceptual artist. It also argued against "minimal art" as a misnomer, introduced by Richard Wollheim in 1965.[17] On the significance of the Yugoslav conceptual art of Raša Todosijević and Marina Abramović, primed by Todosijević from 1968, she insisted on its importance. She rejected the reasoning of Achille Bonito Oliva, that the Serb group at the Belgrade Student Center was "marginal" rather than "alternative", as ideologically constructed, and set up to diminish the value of non-Western art.[18][19]

In a 1971 article on exhibitions by Hans Haacke and Robert Morris, Reise criticised Thomas M. Messer, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She compared unfavourably his attitude to public safety concerns that arose, to that of the Tate Museum.[20][21]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 "Papers of Barbara Reise - Archives Hub". archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk.
  2. ↑ "Archive Journeys: Reise: Art Movements, Tate". www.tate.org.uk.
  3. ↑ Hewison, Robert (3 February 2023). Too Much: Art and Society in the Sixties 1960-75. Taylor & Francis. p. 1934. ISBN 978-1-000-87336-8.
  4. ↑ "London's Art Networks and Marcel Broodthaers in the 1970s (London, 23 Jun 23)". arthist.net.
  5. ↑ "Seth Siegelaub Papers in The Museum of Modern Art Archives". moma.org.
  6. ↑ Herrera, María José; Newhouse, Kristina (16 September 2017). David Lamelas: A Life of Their Own. Getty Publications. p. 155. ISBN 978-1-60606-543-3.
  7. 1 2 Dennis, Mark (2016). "Strategic Anomalies: Art & Language in the Art School 1969-1979" (PDF). pure.coventry.ac.uk. Coventry University. p. 100 note 44.
  8. ↑ "Ex-city college head is No 1 at Leicester". Coventry Evening Telegraph. 10 January 1973. p. 17.
  9. ↑ Dennis, Mark (2016). "Strategic Anomalies: Art & Language in the Art School 1969-1979" (PDF). pure.coventry.ac.uk. Coventry University. pp. 110–111 and note 58.
  10. ↑ Applin, Jo; Spencer, Catherine; Tobin, Amy (23 October 2017). London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent, and Ephemeral Networks, 1960–1980. Penn State Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0-271-08136-6.
  11. ↑ "Archive Journeys: Reise, The Art Scene: Publications: ArtstrA, Tate". www.tate.org.uk.
  12. ↑ "Archive Journeys: Reise, Biography, Art Criticism, Tate". www.tate.org.uk.
  13. ↑ Melvin, J. C. (28 April 2013). Studio International Magazine: Tales from Peter Townsend's editorial papers 1965 -75 (Doctoral). UCL (University College London).
  14. ↑ "Archive Journeys: Reise, Timeline, Tate". www.tate.org.uk.
  15. ↑ Peabody, Rebecca (31 December 2011). Anglo-American Exchange in Postwar Sculpture, 1945–1975. Getty Publications. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-60606-069-8.
  16. ↑ Melvin, Jo (6 September 2009). "Charles Harrison: Art historian and critic celebrated for his work on". The Independent.
  17. ↑ "Sol LeWitt: the Mystic Conceptualist". www.studiointernational.com.
  18. ↑ Ilic, Marko (16 February 2021). A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia. MIT Press. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-262-04484-4.
  19. ↑ "Raša Todosijević". Avantgarde Museum.
  20. ↑ "Archive Journeys: Reise, Further Information, Tate". www.tate.org.uk.
  21. ↑ Floe, Hilary. "'Everything Was Getting Smashed': Three Case Studies of Play and Participation, 1965–71 – Tate Papers". Tate.
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