THE THRILL OF THE IDEAL Richard Tuttle: The Reinhart Project

Armin Kunz of C.G. Boerner first met Richard Tuttle when he was looking for prints by the German Romantics. Immersing himself in the art and the writing of the Romantics also triggered Tuttle's own writing. An insightful review by Tuttle appeared in the Brooklyn Rail on a comprehensive retrospective of the work of Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810) staged by the Kunsthalle Hamburg in 2011. The invitation to write on Johann Christian Reinhart (1761-1847), an artist from the small town of Hof in Franconia in Bavaria, came from F. Carlo Schmid, one of the foremost scholars on the artist who co-curated the first comprehensive museum exhibition of Reinhart's work for the Kunsthalle Hamburg and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich in 2012-13.

Schmid heads the German branch of C.G. Boerner in Düsseldorf and when the gallery was able to acquire a complete set of the Malerisch-radirte Prospecte von Italien, which includes 72 etchings by Johann Christian Reinhart, Albert Christoph Dies (1755-1822), and Jacob Wilhelm Mechau (1745-1808), it was obviously tempting to approach Richard Tuttle with this box of prints and ask him if he would be interested in curating a small exhibition at Pocket Utopia.

We are indeed thrilled that Richard Tuttle graciously agreed to this project. When visiting for the first time and meeting the gallery's owner Austin Thomas, Tuttle pointed out that art historians more and more act like artists when organizing exhibitions. Tuttle sees it as only a logical conclusion that artists can then act-at least occasionally-like art historians.