'''Barbara Reise''' (1940–1978) was an American art critic and historian. The final dozen years of her life were spent in the United Kingdom.<ref name="JISC">{{cite web |title=Papers of Barbara Reise - Archives Hub |url=https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/46997c53-6831-30c5-b50f-e903166ca569 |website=archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk}}</ref> She was closely linked to leaders of minimalism and conceptual art.<ref>{{cite web |title=Archive Journeys: Reise: Art Movements, Tate |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/movements.htm |website=www.tate.org.uk}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hewison |first1=Robert |title=Too Much: Art and Society in the Sixties 1960-75 |date=3 February 2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-87336-8 |page=1934 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PB2rEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1934 |language=en}}</ref> She has been called "an inspirational figure in the movements of minimal and conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Barrett |first1=Michèle |last2=Baker |first2=Bobby |title=Bobby Baker: Redeeming Features of Daily Life |date=17 October 2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-06689-6 |page=7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CtR9AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA7 |language=en}}</ref>
==Early life and education== Barbara Marie Reise was born on February 21, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, to Eveline Laugman and Harold Reise. Barbara attended New Trier Highschool in Winnetka, Illinois.<ref name="JISC"/>
At Wellesley College, Reise took 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, supervised by Theodore Reff. At this period she studied with Robert Rosenblum of New York University.<ref name="JISC"/><ref name="West54">{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=54 |language=en}}</ref> Another New York contact was Meyer Schapiro.<ref name="ObituaryLM">{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Lynda |authorlink1=Lynda Morris |title=Barbara Reise |journal=Studio International |date=February 1978 |volume=194 |pages=139–140}}</ref>
In 1966, on the Fulbright Program, Reise moved to England, and enrolled at the Courtauld Institute. She began a doctoral dissertation on ''Turner and Venice'' under Rudolf Wittkower, which she did not complete.<ref name="JISC"/><ref name="West54"/> According to John McEwen's obituary notice in ''Art Monthly'', she had retraced all of J. M. W. Turner's Italian journeys.<ref name="McEwen">{{cite journal |last1=McEwen |first1=John |title=Barbara M. Reise, 1940–1978: A Footnote. |journal=Art Monthly |date=March 1978 |issue=15 |page=3 |url=https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/40425/page/3 |language=en}}</ref>
==London and its art scene== Reise was one of the small group in London who worked for the reception of American conceptual artists, others being Lynda Morris and Anne Seymour.<ref>{{cite web |title=London's Art Networks and Marcel Broodthaers in the 1970s (London, 23 Jun 23) |url=https://arthist.net/archive/38317 |website=arthist.net}}</ref> The gallerist and curator Seth Siegelaub was a correspondent and friend.<ref>{{cite web |title=Seth Siegelaub Papers in The Museum of Modern Art Archives |url=https://www.moma.org/research/archives/finding-aids/Siegelaubb.html |website=moma.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Herrera |first1=María José |last2=Newhouse |first2=Kristina |title=David Lamelas: A Life of Their Own |date=16 September 2017 |publisher=Getty Publications |isbn=978-1-60606-543-3 |page=155 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N44wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA155 |language=en}}</ref> She promoted ideas for exhibitions of contemporary American artists to Norbert Lynton, and had through Barnett Newman an introduction to E. J. Power, businessman with Murphy Radio and significant modern art collector.<ref>{{cite book |title=Archive Journeys: Reise, The Art Scene, UK/US relationships, Tate |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/scn_ukus.htm}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Mundy |first1=Jennifer |title=E.J. Power: A Pioneering Collector of American Art |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/modern-american-art-at-tate/essays/ej-power |website=Tate}}</ref> Her position as a leading contact for American artists in London in time was substantially taken over by Jack Wendler.<ref name="West80">{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=80 |language=en}}</ref>
In London, Reise lived for a time in Belsize Park, at 10 Eton Garages.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=80 |language=en}}</ref> She then bought a house in Kentish Town, at 30 Alma Street, which she had renovated to a design by Rick Mather.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=80 |language=en}}</ref>
==Academic and activist== From around the beginning of 1968, Reise taught at Coventry School of Art.<ref name="Dennis1">{{cite web |last1=Dennis |first1=Mark |title=Strategic Anomalies: Art & Language in the Art School 1969-1979 |url=https://pure.coventry.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/41875646/Dennis2016_PhD.pdf |website=pure.coventry.ac.uk|page=100 note 44 |publisher=Coventry University|date=2016}}</ref> She had met Michael Sandle, who taught there until 1968 — she later thought the encounter was at a dinner given by E. J. Power, while he recalled it being at a Larry Bell exhibition.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bury |first1=Stephen |title=Benezit Dictionary of British Graphic Artists and Illustrators |date=21 June 2012 |publisher=OUP USA |isbn=978-0-19-992305-2 |page=329 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=05C02RhJZCkC&pg=RA1-PA329 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=55 |language=en}}</ref> 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;<ref>{{cite news |title=Ex-city college head is No 1 at Leicester |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000769/19730110/171/0017 |work=Coventry Evening Telegraph |date=10 January 1973|page=17}}</ref><ref name="Dennis1"/> but the General Studies department headed by Hobson asked her that year to design a programme. The work involved her in contentious but constructive discussion with the nascent Art & Language group.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Dennis |first1=Mark |title=Strategic Anomalies: Art & Language in the Art School 1969-1979 |url=https://pure.coventry.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/41875646/Dennis2016_PhD.pdf |website=pure.coventry.ac.uk|pages=110–111 and note 58 |publisher=Coventry University|date=2016}}</ref> Reise resigned her position at Coventry at the end of the 1972–3 academic year, and applied for other academic positions, but without success.<ref name="West97">{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |pages=97–98 |language=en}}</ref>
The Art Workers' Coalition (AWC) was set up in early 1969, to lobby for reform in art museums and galleries, following a protest by Takis.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bryan-Wilson |first1=Julia |title=Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era |date=2009 |publisher=Univ of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-26975-0 |page=15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y7MwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA15 |language=en}}</ref> Reise was one of many artists and critics who gave the AWC public support. At the open hearing held by the AWC on 10 April 1969 at the School of Visual Arts, she read out a statement by Barnett Newman, not able to attend.<ref>{{cite thesis |last1=Melvin |first1=J. C. |title=Studio International Magazine: Tales from Peter Townsend's editorial papers 1965 -75 |url=https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1396004/ |publisher=UCL (University College London) |date=28 April 2013|type=Doctoral |page=256}}</ref> It has been argued that conceptual artists took on the method of institutional critique from the AWC.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Conceptualism and Art's Commodification |first=Dave |last=Beach |journal=Art Monthly |date=April 2017 |pages=12–13 |url=https://www.artmonthly.co.uk/Art-Monthly-Missing-Issue.pdf}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |title=Archive Journeys: Reise, Further Information, Tate |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/furtherinfo.htm |website=www.tate.org.uk}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Floe |first1=Hilary |title='Everything Was Getting Smashed': Three Case Studies of Play and Participation, 1965–71 – Tate Papers |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/22/everything-was-getting-smashed-three-case-studies-of-play-and-participation-1965-71 |website=Tate}}</ref> Her article contained an interview with the Guggenheim associate curator Edward Fry, dismissed as a result of the Haacke show cancellation, and then supported by the AWC.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Glueck |first1=Grace |title=Ousted Curator Assails Guggenheim |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/01/archives/ousted-curator-assails-guggenheim.html |work=The New York Times |date=1 May 1971|page=22}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Archive Journeys: Reise, The Art Scene, UK/US relationships, Tate |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/scn_ukus.htm |website=www.tate.org.uk}}</ref>
==Later years in London== Reise ran seminars in London art college. Bobby Baker recorded the impact on her of two, a week apart, in November 1972, with a diary entry ("an incredible experience").<ref name="West97"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Barrett |first1=Michèle |last2=Baker |first2=Bobby |title=Bobby Baker: Redeeming Features of Daily Life |date=17 October 2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-06689-6 |pages=6–7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CtR9AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA6 |language=en}}</ref>
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".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Applin |first1=Jo |last2=Spencer |first2=Catherine |last3=Tobin |first3=Amy |title=London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent, and Ephemeral Networks, 1960–1980 |date=23 October 2017 |publisher=Penn State Press |isbn=978-0-271-08136-6 |page=191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a-rDEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA191 |language=en}}</ref>
==Last years and death== Reise had an exhibition catalogue for Sigmar Polke rejected. She turned the work into a series of three articles in ''Studio International''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |pages=106–107 |language=en}}</ref> Keith West noted in 1977 that she was struggling with financial and drink problems.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=110 |language=en}}</ref> That year her participation as curator in a Carel Visser exhibition was turned down.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |pages=115–116 |language=en}}</ref>
Barbara Reise died at home in January 1978. A coroner's inquest ruled that she had died between 16 and 25 January, and returned an open verdict.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=118 |language=en}}</ref> A physician she had consulted stated that she was an "episodic drinker".<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=119 |language=en}}</ref> At the time of her death she was working with Colin 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.<ref>{{cite web |title=Archive Journeys: Reise, The Art Scene: Publications: ArtstrA, Tate |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/scn_artstra.htm |website=www.tate.org.uk}}</ref> John McEwen's obituary stated:
<blockquote>Barbara's legacy of accurate and often innovatory articles on some of the international avant-gardists of the day, her two or three ventures into reportage, is the evidence of a witness we can trust.<ref name="McEwen"/></blockquote>
Barrie Cook was of the opinion that Reise was "ahead of her time", one reason for her relative isolation at Coventry.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=56 |language=en}}</ref>
==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.<ref name="AJ">{{cite web |title=Archive Journeys: Reise, Biography, Art Criticism, Tate |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/bio_rescrit_artcrit.htm |website=www.tate.org.uk}}</ref> Alison Lee Bracker summed up Reise's issue with the associated theory of modernism as "Greenberg's faith in objective critical judgment within art history depended upon the critic's subjective version of that history".<ref>{{cite thesis |last1=Bracker |first1=Alison Lee |title=A critical history of the international art journal Artforum |url=https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3870/ |publisher=University of Leeds|page=32 |language=en |date=January 1995}}</ref>
"Greenberg and the Group" was understood to include also Jane Harrison Cone, Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss and Sidney Tillim, who were not spared her strictures.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Frascina |first1=Francis |title=Art, Politics and Dissent: Aspects of the Art Left in Sixties America |date=1999 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-0-7190-4469-4 |page=142 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QTq8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA142 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=5 |language=en}}</ref> Julia Bryan-Wilson points out the disrespect Greenberg was showing at the time for "lady art critics", in particular Lucy Lippard, and the emerging group of Krauss, Annette Michelson, Barbara Rose from 1965, and Amy Taubin, with Reise, as significant in the critical reception of minimalism.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bryan-Wilson |first1=Julia |title=Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era |date=2009 |publisher=Univ of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-26975-0 |page=115 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y7MwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA155 |language=en}}</ref>
The piece was well received by Alan Bowness, and Peter Townsend (1919–2006), editor of ''Studio International'', commissioned two further articles.<ref name="AJ"/> At this period Townsend was actively seeking out women contributors: besides Reise, Lynda Morris and Lippard, there were Dore Ashton, Rosetta Brookes, Suzi Gablik, Catherine Lampert, Jasia Reichardt, and Jeanne Siegel. Reise became a commissioning editor for ''Studio International'', and the reputation of minimalist art rose in the United Kingdom.<ref>{{cite thesis |last1=Melvin |first1=J. C. |title=Studio International Magazine: Tales from Peter Townsend's editorial papers 1965 -75 |url=https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1396004/ |publisher=UCL (University College London) |date=28 April 2013|type=Doctoral |pages=xvii and Chapter 3 }}</ref>
On the staff of the magazine Charles Harrison, a colleague and sparring partner, disagreed with Reise's emphasis on subjectivity in judgements.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Melvin |first1=Jo |title=Charles Harrison: Art historian and critic celebrated for his work on |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/charles-harrison-art-historian-and-critic-celebrated-for-his-work-on-the-journals-artlanguage-and-studio-international-1782951.html |website=The Independent |language=en |date=6 September 2009}}</ref>
The article "Untitled 1969: a footnote on art and minimalist stylehood" by Reise in a minimalist art special issue of ''Studio International'' 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.<ref>{{cite web |title=Sol LeWitt: the Mystic Conceptualist |url=https://www.studiointernational.com/sol-lewitt-the-mystic-conceptualist |website=www.studiointernational.com |language=en}}</ref> The article presented a group of five American minimalists, including LeWitt, in a positive light. In contrast, Reise selected five more artists also classified as minimalists, for denigration.<ref name="ObituaryLM"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=198 |language=en}}</ref> She said of one of those, Robert Smithson:<ref>{{cite web |title=Archive Journeys: Reise, Timeline, Tate |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/archivejourneys/reisehtml/timeline.htm |website=www.tate.org.uk}}</ref>
<blockquote>Smithson's Non-Sites of photographs and material extractions from real-life stone quarries are consistently less interesting than stone quarries themselves.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Peabody |first1=Rebecca |title=Anglo-American Exchange in Postwar Sculpture, 1945–1975 |date=31 December 2011 |publisher=Getty Publications |isbn=978-1-60606-069-8 |page=157 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H3bSM4MD8toC&pg=PA157 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>
In a 2014 interview, Nicholas Serota commented that the nascent view Reise developed, dividing off "conceptual artists" in the minimalist group, had some common ground with the demarcation used by the "Art & Language" group.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |page=125 |language=en}}</ref>
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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ilic |first1=Marko |title=A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia |date=16 February 2021 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-04484-4 |page=146 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=omcWEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA146 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Raša Todosijević |url=https://www.avantgarde-museum.com/en/museum/collection/authorsrasa-todosijevic~pe4525/ |website=Avantgarde Museum}}</ref>
==Legacy== Barbara Reise left six filing cabinets of research notes, for example detailed accounts of performance art by Gilbert and George, and correspondence. Nicholas Serota had the Reise family lawyer, in London to deal with her estate, agree to a donation of this archive to the Tate Gallery. There it was catalogued by Adrian Glew. Material from the Reise archive is now posted on the Tate website.<ref>{{cite book |last1=West |first1=Keith |title=Light Under a Bushel: A Memoir: Coventry College of Art and Barbara Reise |date=2021 |publisher=Another Fine Mess |isbn=978-1-9168770-0-9 |pages=125–128 |language=en}}</ref>
A request from Jack Wendler to write Reise's biography was rejected because of animus against him on the part of her family.<ref name="West80"/> For related reasons, an effort in the 1990s by Wendler and Liam Gillick to republish writings by Reise failed.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Karen Di Franco and Jo Melvin on Barbara Reise: Connections |journal=Art Monthly |date=April 2017 |page=6 |url=https://www.artmonthly.co.uk/Art-Monthly-Missing-Issue.pdf}}</ref>
==Notes== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [https://www.studiointernational.com/the-stance-of-barnett-newman Barbara Reise, ''The stance of Barnett Newman'' (1970)]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reise, Barbara}} Category:1940 births Category:1978 deaths Category:American art critics Category:American art historians Category:People from Chicago Category:20th-century American historians