Resnick / Reinhardt Debate

by Geoffrey Dorfman
Excerpted with permission from the author.

“There persists an embarrassed self-consciousness in regard to what art actually does”—that’s right; what does art do?—“and this may be the reason for the strain and suspicion.” Now that also seems to me straight. I would like that to be the reason for being here tonight. Now, in that sense I wouldn’t mind having to explain myself. I would like very much to try to explain what I’ve done. I would like it if it were the thing that everyone else would like to do. I wouldn’t like to do it alone because, of course, that’s very suspicious. But if it were the normal occupation of artists to explain what they’ve done, I wouldn’t mind at all doing that. As a matter of fact I think we should.

“Art is politically suspect. I mean from the liberal point of view. In short, the temptation of art to betrayal of the social conscience is irremediable.” A few more.

“In the past hundred years art has more and more conducted wars against its own nature under the banners of various truths or of the search for experience.” Now that means something to me. I think it’s a very important reason why artists are nervous and restless and somewhat irritated by their own natures or the nature of art or something like that. They are warring constantly against something they themselves are responsible for. I don’t know whether they are actually carrying banners proclaiming their reason for warring as truth or experience.I don’t really know whether I could really fight for truth or fight for experience. I really want to fight for something better said than that.

“Artist’s suspiciousness concerning art has led not to the abandonment of art but to radical experiment with form. It has produced anti-formal art.” Now this, I think, is important, not because of the article and where it’s come from, but because there is—I don’t think that anti-form is the best way of putting it—but that there is a kind of “anti-art” art that is based on those who would replace making art with having experiences. I think there’s a lot of new art that wants to be new and the one way they can be new quickly, without spending a lifetime at it, is to be anti what they consider good art. A good way of showing that would be something that happened some years ago when Rauschenberg asked Bill de Kooning for one of his drawings. He wanted, of course, a good drawing and he said, “I would like to have your drawing to erase it.” Then he did that and showed it as, Bill de Kooning Erased By Rauschenberg, and the point I want to make about that is that Rauschenberg couldn’t erase Bill de Kooning unless Rauschenberg thought that Bill de Kooning made good art. So it depends on someone doing something that people more or less recognize—agree to—as good art in order to be anti-art. I really don’t know what would happen if everybody became anti-art. It’d be a hard thing to be then. But it does change technically the way art is done. And that’s really the most important thing of all. If I mean anything at all, I mean there is a technical aspect to painting that is really the most fascinating part of art and it leads to all kinds of crises and problems and ideas, and this part of art is completely ignored. It’s no longer being printed or publicized or even thought about. It’s simply being replaced by people who say, “When I get to the studio that’s when I’m an artist and I know how to put it on and that’s enough for me.” It really has to do with experience—being personal—isolated from everybody else, and having these pure experiences that come from within you. They can’t come from outside; they come from within your guts, your heart. Somewhere. Not your brain. That’s a very suspicious place for art to come from because if it came from there it may be foreign to you. Somewhere the brain is susceptible to ears and things that come through the ears are not exactly your own. And so you really have to avoid using your hearing. I really think that’s why people with no brains like to look around so much.

“Artists in our time have become increasingly sensible of the other world of form as a check on, or distortion of, experience.” Now; how does someone know that something is meaningful to him? In that respect, I would like to read something I just received this morning. The only reason I’m reading it is that someone who is important in poetry has written me and explains himself—of course it isn’t fair to say that a short letter explains just how he would normally write about it—but it does occur to him to say it and I think it’s important. First he says about something, “It has the sting of the real thing.” And, “So much of the rest, despite zest and feeling just didn’t get under my skin.” It seems that I could make a case out of that; that in order to make art you have to penetrate somebody’s skin. You have to get past his normal resistance to what you’re making. And this is also about armored, hard-faced, difficult people who want an experience when they look at art. They want art itself to be an experience. So in some ways that word, experience can’t be avoided. I don’t know where it comes from. In my own experience, the word, experience has no meaning. Something must be wrong because I might be very isolated by nature—I’m not willingly so—and so this never got to me. It also might be something that is so prevalent throughout the country that it strikes a very important keynote. It means a lot to people to say experience. It probably means more in America to say experience than it means to say form. It probably means more to say form if you know something about art—if you’re an international kind of a person. It probably means more if you’re religious to say the word, experience. Most people see their experiences as a religious thing. In some way it’s gotten into art through a revival of religious feelings. And that is where I feel I’m being left out. I am not religious. If I felt more like being religious I’d naturally be a Jew. If I felt that wasn’t a good religion I would have to learn a new one. It would have to mean something to me. I imagine one thing I would have to learn to be a Protestant is the word, experience. I have a hint. I don’t know if I’m right or not but I just think so.

I think that more than whether it’s religious or not, it’s nationalistic. I think if someone says that he has had an experience or that he is real or that he is what he is if you say, “What are you?”—then the very fact that he is what he says he is ought to mean something to everybody else. Now, the only people who can ask that question, I think, are Americans. And if you’re not so sure then I don’t think it’s so good to ask those questions. I don’t think I could ask that question about myself and come up with a good answer. I don’t think I could ask that question of anybody else and find that his answer pleases me—or doesn’t please me. It never seems to me a good question to ask, but it’s being asked all the time and it’s asked in millions of ways. “Who are you? Find yourself. Be yourself. Be real.” And I’m just getting very jittery about it and maybe I just have to leave and go where it’s not being asked.

And that’s the nature of suspicion. It’s a savage form of life that says there’s not enough room here for everybody who wants to be here and some of you don’t even belong here and ought to go away—back where you come from. It may even be an impending feeling of doom, a feeling that everyone’s getting ready to go to heaven; the right people, of course, are going to get there, and they’re going to take the whole country with them—except they’re going to leave behind those who don’t belong.

I feel I’m hitting at a system of thinking. I feel I’m touching—hitting upon—and attacking—in 1961, a system of thought that is being nurtured—that is growing rapidly, with a lot of people and things behind it. What puzzles me is why a lot of people who I respect and who could never go to heaven under those conditions, want to speak like that. I don’t know why they want to join this America First Club. They’ll never get in!

So I think we ought to think about that. About being an alien. Maybe I’ll join any other aliens. I mean really, seriously join those artists who, ten years ago were saying, “Society won’t accept me.” I think they didn’t entirely mean that they weren’t selling pictures then. I think that they felt that art, considering the nature of business and politics and everything else, meant a lot to them and that it ought to play a part in the world. And, of course, it very evidently isn’t playing a part at all. But of course there were a lot of dumb ones who said, “I’m an artist and I’m not accepted by society,” and all they really meant was that they wish they could get a job teaching. Of course I don’t mean that. I mean there was a period of time when that word, “Avant Garde” came from Europe and it meant, of course, a whole group of painters and marvelous pictures that we began to see at the Museum of Modern Art, and we knew that it was Avant Garde art but it was already quite old—at least twenty or thirty years old. It would be hard for us then to say that we were Avant Garde. It was very clear that we didn’t really get it. And if we did, it was already too late. It couldn’t really be said that we were really Avant Garde. The most that you could say then was, “Society doesn’t accept us.” I think that’s what we said instead of saying Avant Garde. You couldn’t live here and say Avant-Garde, so you could easily say, “Society doesn’t accept us.” We were really honest people and all that but—you know.

So I have attacked a system of thought—no real target maybe—but I do really appeal to other artists to do something that will change things. That’s why I feel that talking about art is very important. To influence each other instead of acting like isolation booths; that would be very important. I think we ought to talk about how we make art, whether art is to be made or to be found or whether all these things don’t really matter at all, which is possible. And we ought to publicize ideas that excite art, that make it possible to want to do art. Being a revolutionary, I want to have other revolutionaries agree with me that art is not property; that whether business is really interested or not isn’t our reason for being critical about it. Whether someone buys or sells we really ought to leave to the nature of the world and not get to thinking that that is the way everything is going to be determined. That’s all.