Milton Resnick - Ad Reinhardt Debate Home About History Exhibitions Publishing Contact 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Resnick / Reinhardt Debate by Geoffrey Dorfman

Excerpted with permission from the author. Dorfman, Geoffrey. Out of the Picture: Milton Resnick and the New York School. New York: Midmarch Arts Press, March 2003. ISBN: 1877675474. New Years Day, 1961, at The Club Milton Resnick: This isn t really a paper. It s a kind of index; a short way of putting down and covering all the things I would like said this evening. But I can t just leave it dry in an index form. I want to put it in a more formal way. I ll just read it. It won t serve to explain anything but it might put in mind what could be the subject for tonight. Since I m by nature unable to put things in a hard way I do it by making a story. (begins to read) I dream I am in a police lineup. I am innocent but everyone I see is in uniform. They have hard faces. Here are the questions they ask me. Am I real? Am I committed? Involved? Passionate? Do I have experiences? By this time I have a guilty look. Here are some more questions. Where do I go summers? In what gallery do I show? Am I a new artist? There are more questions but I give up. Here is a list of my associates: Image Painter, Personal Experience Painter, Scenery Painter, American Flag Painter, Nothing Painter; the painter who can put it on; painters who don t talk; there are no action painters. Abstract painters are represented. The Image Painter is human. There is a new remote control painting kit on the market. The Museum of Modern Art is interested. Angels sing at all openings from now on. Flying brushes bring new joy. I propose the following. We talk about art. We influence each other. We make art. We publicize ideas that excite art. We agree that art is not property. I propose that critics be able, be tender, keep up to date, and file away the dead. I propose a system of thought without boundary, without geography, without the mark of obedience; art as a feeling for the future. I ask of business not to trick us. You will miss the fun if you hire company artists. I curse the stupid, the smiling, the strong. I want to live in a large world without suspicion. (finishes reading) The purpose of my attack comes from my feeling that I m an alien that I have been alienated that I ve been thrown out; I m not wanted. It is the result of a system of thought, of thinking, and a way of presenting what artists have done so everything is under suspicion. Suspect. Not that everything else isn t under suspicion. Most people around the art world are progressive, are thinking of the future, are worried about it. They think they should take some responsibility for what happens now because what happens now is something their children will have to (pause) Now I m not attacking any single person. I m really attacking a system of thought. I don t know whether anyone is really to blame. I have a feeling that artists are most to blame, but not because they invented the system; there s not that much unity among artists but I feel things that have been said by artists have been made into a system and the system works against the artist. Some of the things that excited writers and the public and drew them closer to art and gave them an inkling of what art tends to be about were the very things that are now being used in this system a set of rules, a set of implicit thoughts that have by this time done something like brainwash; a form of brainwashing. Ten years ago the only thing I felt illegal about was that I lived in a loft. I wasn t supposed to. It never occurred to me that I did anything at all that could land me in jail or make anyone a victim of what I thought or did. Except that I had a long-range plan in that I painted pictures which, to my mind and to

the minds of most people who painted, had something to do with the future. At that time I think we were quite clearly visualizing the future as, not a matter of preserving our paintings or anything like that, but that the future was open, the future was free, the future would not become impossible and unbearable and frozen. Anything that freed us from this oppressive feeling that art was something done somewhere else, something done far from where we lived and made us feel empty-handed and sick at heart and phonies, (although our intentions were good), and made us seem hopelessly in the shadow, off the stage, without any we couldn t explain ourselves! Why did we want to be artists? It was very difficult. But no one bothered to question us. Nobody troubled us about it. Nobody said, Well, why do you want to be an artist? ; Nobody asked us questions. Nobody talked to us. Now without any of those questions really having been answered everybody seems to have gotten the idea that there are none of these questions. Almost anyone could tell you in a manner of some kind that these are not important questions and you re just silly if you think like that. Now, I think I ought to have some way of telling you why I think I m under suspicion. Although it isn t very difficult; most everybody has the same feelings as I do because it only takes a little conversation and I see that people think and feel exactly the way I do maybe not for the same reasons. Before I start, there are two things I could say are the editorial policy of our two leading art magazines. One art magazine, in one way or another presents this point of view. I only mention it because it s one reason why I feel the way I do. How can art be true if it is used by the state? and that of course is meant as propaganda in Brussels, against the Russians and things like that and by Time magazine and by Life magazine? In other words, if the state and Time and Life magazines feel sympathetic to most advanced and difficult ideas of artists then something is suspicious by the very fact that they can make use of such things, and they might be right. I mean, I m not saying that this is not justified in having been said; I m only saying that this is one of the questions that makes me feel uneasy and perhaps it is a good question; perhaps it s true How can art be true if it is used by the state and by Time and by Life? Another question and another reason why I feel so bad is that there s been a system worked out in another magazine by which they can grade or tell which came first and who did whatever it is they did. They don t say what anyone ever really did. I never found out what someone was supposed to have done. But they have a list, more or less, telling who came first and what age and how many months apart. Now, the most recent editorial, and I m not quoting, is this: We must tell who the imitators are because now they are cashing in. Now that makes me feel very bad. I don t know how anyone else feels but I ve been called an imitator. I ve never really believed what anyone tells me and all that, but it isn t because of how I feel that I bring this up. I bring this up because it simply is a way of saying that there is something about art in the last ten years and only in the last ten years; because anything before then, if it enters into the meaningful part of this, would probably destroy the idea that there are imitators; but if art was supposed to have begun ten years-or-so ago then those who started it if that is possible to start art ten years ago, are given the credit for having done something that gradually is being imitated by others who come along who are supposedly the younger artists and now money enters into it and it is being bought that now is the time that we must tell who the imitators are because they are cashing in. That s probably as close to a program of reviews and articles and writings about art going on in one of our most important magazines today. I may be wrong but that s my impression and that s

one of the reasons I feel very bad. One of the reasons why I want to put everything into a nutshell is because some ten years ago since that period seems to be so very important ten or twelve years or so, there was Studio 35 and Ad Reinhardt, a few others; they did just that. They put art into a nutshell. They said what art should not be. They said no to probably all the ideas that were current then. They just said no. They didn t have police. They didn t have any way of enforcing their rulings, but they did say no to practically everything. In the case of Mark Rothko and I m not attacking Mark Rothko he was very explicit about the noes: no image, no color, no nostalgia. I don t know how long that list was; it was quite a long list. No sadism. No imagery; no no, no no. On and on. Of course, the idea of the idea was that no one could do that but that it was worthwhile doing. It can be said of Mark Rothko that he invented a process of thinking that has worked all these years and has borne fruit. One nice thing about him is he had a show about that time and someone and I spoke to him about his show and asked if he had accomplished all those things he wanted. He said, No . He didn t claim he did what he said should be done. There are other reasons why I feel so bad. I don t mean to attack any single person but I do take what someone did write without saying who it is, and I m not even saying that he means the things I say he means because I do take him out of context and, to tell you the truth, I don t know what he really means, but I simply take the words as printed and this printing is public and this public is, more or less, hearing this said all over the place. I will just pick out words. I m not attacking these words. I m not attacking their implicit meanings or whether they have meaning or not. I m just saying I read this: [All of Resnick s subsequent quotations are from Literary Form and Social Hallucination by Harold Rosenberg, which had just appeared in Partisan Review in the Fall of 1960. Upon hearing himself quoted, Rosenberg, abruptly got up and left.] Art does not lead to truth. I m not saying those are the words someone wrote. I m reading something that doesn t maybe I invented it doesn t matter, but it s around. Art subordinates the facts to the emotions. Art subordinates both facts and emotions to art s own ends. Perhaps this is true. But what should art have done? That s the question I ask. It is not by chance that the meaning of form and the meaning of hallucination overlap. There is a natural alliance between art and deception and one needs no prompting from modem radicalism to see this alliance as the ideal extension of the relation of the arts to their historic patrons: courts, priesthoods and in more recent times, capitalists and bureaucrats. Well, in a way it s saying the same thing; that art now is suspicious because it is used by the state, Time, and Life. If it weren t for art, men s belief would not be suspended. Would not curiosity press them then to chase after the hidden truth? Form/beauty calls off the hunt by justifying, through the multiple feelings it arouses, the not-quite-real as humanly sufficient. Considering the function of the arts in transferring into familiar experience and in that sense I don t know really what it means transferring into familiar experience the hallucinations bred in the centers of authority, one might decide that the arts are, by nature, reactionary. Now that of course hinges on the word, reactionary. I don t really know the rest of it because I don t know what a familiar experience is. I don t know what experience is, in the end, because the word, experience has been made to suit a technical form of art. There s a way of reading experience into art and it has something to do with what you actually see. In other words, it s not something you bring say you have a recollection of a bad experience; you did some terrible thing and you re guilty and you committed an awful crime but no

one caught you but you have this thing in you this experience and it comes through and is represented on the canvas. It isn t that really. If it were that, you could say art was a form of religious experience a form of conscience. It isn t really that anymore. I don t know what it is anymore. It s very difficult. It was just as difficult to say what form meant but the word, experience, is around a lot more than the word, form. I don t know who uses the word, form. The last time I heard someone say form was somewhere up in Buffalo. (laughter) next page Top American Abstract Artists Home Support AAA Site Map Contact