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Milton Resnick - Ad Reinhardt Debate Home About History ExhibitionsPublishing Contact 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Resnick / Reinhardt Debate

by Geoffrey DorfmanExcerpted 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 isnt really a paper. Its a kind of index; a short way ofputting down and covering all the things I would like said this evening. But Icant just leave it dry in an index form. I want to put it in a more formal way.Ill just read it. It wont serve to explain anything but it might put in mindwhat could be the subject for tonight. Since Im by nature unable to put thingsin 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 Icommitted? Involved? Passionate? Do I have experiences? By this time I have aguilty look. Here are some more questions. Where do I go summers? In whatgallery 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 putit on; painters who dont talk; there are no action painters. Abstract paintersare represented. The Image Painter is human. There is a new remote controlpainting kit on the market. The Museum of Modern Art is interested. Angels singat all openings from now on. Flying brushes bring new joy.I propose the following. We talk about art. We influence each other. We makeart. We publicize ideas that excite art. We agree that art is not property. Ipropose that critics be able, be tender, keep up to date, and file away thedead. I propose a system of thought without boundary, without geography, withoutthe 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 Im an alienthat I havebeen alienatedthat Ive been thrown out; Im not wanted. It is the result of asystem of thought, of thinking, and a way of presenting what artists have doneso everything is under suspicion. Suspect. Not that everything else isnt undersuspicion. Most people around the art world are progressive, are thinking of thefuture, are worried about it. They think they should take some responsibility

for what happens now because what happens now is something their children willhave to(pause)Now Im not attacking any single person. Im really attacking a system ofthought. I dont know whether anyone is really to blame. I have a feeling thatartists are most to blame, but not because they invented the system; theres notthat much unity among artists but I feel things that have been said by artistshave been made into a system and the system works against the artist. Some ofthe things that excited writers and the public and drew them closer to art andgave them an inkling of what art tends to be about were the very things that arenow being used in this systema set of rules, a set of implicit thoughts thathave 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

wasnt supposed to. It never occurred to me that I did anything at all thatcould land me in jail or make anyone a victim of what I thought or did. Exceptthat I had a long-range plan in that I painted pictures which, to my mind and to

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the minds of most people who painted, had something to do with the future. Atthat time I think we were quite clearly visualizing the future as, not a matterof 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 andfrozen. Anything that freed us from this oppressive feeling that art was

something done somewhere else, something done far from where we lived and madeus feel empty-handed and sick at heart and phonies, (although our intentionswere good), and made us seem hopelessly in the shadow, off the stage, withoutanywe couldnt explain ourselves! Why did we want to be artists? It was verydifficult. 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 usquestions. Nobody talked to us. Now without any of those questions really havingbeen answered everybody seems to have gotten the idea that there are none ofthese questions. Almost anyone could tell you in a manner of some kind thatthese are not important questions and youre just silly if you think like that.Now, I think I ought to have some way of telling you why I think Im under

suspicion. Although it isnt very difficult; most everybody has the samefeelings as I do because it only takes a little conversation and I see that

people think and feel exactly the way I domaybe not for the same reasons.Before I start, there are two things I could say are the editorial policy of ourtwo leading art magazines. One art magazine, in one way or another presents thispoint of view. I only mention it because its one reason why I feel the way Ido. How can art be true if it is used by the state?and that of course ismeant as propaganda in Brussels, against the Russians and things like thatandby Time magazine and by Life magazine? In other words, if the state and Timeand Life magazines feel sympathetic to most advanced and difficult ideas ofartists then something is suspicious by the very fact that they can make use of

such things, and they might be right. I mean, Im not saying that this is notjustified in having been said; Im only saying that this is one of the questionsthat makes me feel uneasy andperhaps it is a good question; perhaps itstrueHow 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 theres been asystem worked out in another magazine by which they can grade or tell which camefirst and who did whatever it is they did. They dont say what anyone everreally did. I never found out what someone was supposed to have done. But theyhave a list, more or less, telling who came first and what age and how manymonths apart. Now, the most recent editorial, and Im not quoting, is this: Wemust tell who the imitators are because now they are cashing in. Now that makesme feel very bad. I dont know how anyone else feels butIve been called animitator. Ive never really believed what anyone tells me and all that, but itisnt because of how I feel that I bring this up. I bring this up because itsimply is a way of saying that there is something about art in the last tenyears and only in the last ten years; because anything before then, if it entersinto the meaningful part of this, would probably destroy the idea that there areimitators; but if art was supposed to have begun ten years-or-so ago then thosewho started itif that is possibleto start art ten years ago, are given thecredit for having done something that gradually is being imitated by others whocome along who are supposedly the younger artistsand now money enters into itand it is being boughtthat now is the time that we must tell who the imitators

are because they are cashing in. Thats probably as close to a program ofreviews and articles and writings about art going on in one of our mostimportant magazines today. I may be wrong but thats my impression and thats

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one of the reasons I feel very bad.One of the reasons why I want to put everything into a nutshell is because someten years agosince that period seems to be so very importantten or twelveyears or so, there was Studio 35 and Ad Reinhardt, a few others; they did justthat. They put art into a nutshell. They said what art should not be. They saidno to probably all the ideas that were current then. They just said no. Theydidnt have police. They didnt have any way of enforcing their rulings, but

they did say no to practically everything. In the case of Mark Rothkoand Imnot attacking Mark Rothkohe was very explicit about the noes: no image, nocolor, no nostalgia. I dont know how long that list was; it was quite a longlist. No sadism. No imagery; no no, no no. On and on. Of course, the idea of theidea was that no one could do that but that it was worthwhile doing. It can besaid of Mark Rothko that he invented a process of thinking that has worked allthese years and has borne fruit. One nice thing about him is he had a show aboutthat time and someone and I spoke to him about his show and asked if he hadaccomplished all those things he wanted. He said, No. He didnt claim he didwhat he said should be done.

There are other reasons why I feel so bad. I dont mean to attack any singleperson but I do take what someone did write without saying who it is, and Im

not even saying that he means the things I say he means because I do take himout of context and, to tell you the truth, I dont know what he really means,but I simply take the words as printed and this printing is public and thispublic is, more or less, hearing this said all over the place. I will just pickout words. Im not attacking these words. Im not attacking their implicitmeanings or whether they have meaning or not. Im just saying I read this:[All of Resnicks subsequent quotations are from Literary Form and SocialHallucination by Harold Rosenberg, which had just appeared in Partisan Reviewin the Fall of 1960. Upon hearing himself quoted, Rosenberg, abruptly got up andleft.]

Art does not lead to truth. Im not saying those are the words someone wrote.Im reading something that doesntmaybe I invented itdoesnt matter, but itsaround.Art subordinates the facts to the emotions. Art subordinates both facts andemotions to arts own ends. Perhaps this is true. But what should art havedone? Thats the questionI ask.It is not by chance that the meaning of form and the meaning of hallucinationoverlap. There is a natural alliance between art and deception and one needs noprompting from modem radicalism to see this alliance as the ideal extension ofthe relation of the arts to their historic patrons: courts, priesthoods and inmore recent times, capitalists and bureaucrats. Well, in a way its saying thesame thing; that art now is suspicious because it is used by the state, Time,and Life.If it werent for art, mens belief would not be suspended. Would not curiositypress them then to chase after the hidden truth? Form/beauty calls off the huntby justifying, through the multiple feelings it arouses, the not-quite-real ashumanly sufficient. Considering the function of the arts in transferring intofamiliar experienceand in that sense I dont know really what itmeanstransferring into familiar experience the hallucinations bred in thecenters of authority, one might decide that the arts are, by nature,reactionary. Now that of course hinges on the word, reactionary. I dont reallyknow the rest of it because I dont know what a familiar experience is. I dontknow what experience is, in the end, because the word, experience has been madeto suit a technical form of art. Theres a way of reading experience into art

and it has something to do with what you actually see. In other words, its notsomething you bringsay you have a recollection of a bad experience; you didsome terrible thing and youre guilty and you committed an awful crime but no

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one caught you but you have this thing in youthis experienceand it comesthrough and is represented on the canvas. It isnt that really. If it were that,you could say art was a form of religious experiencea form of conscience. Itisnt really that anymore. I dont know what it is anymore. Its very difficult.It was just as difficult to say what form meant but the word, experience, isaround a lot more than the word, form. I dont know who uses the word, form. Thelast time I heard someone say form was somewhere up in Buffalo. (laughter)

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