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Texts Resnick/Reinhardt Debate
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 "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) "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. Ad Reinhardt: I'm going to try and approach the thing pretty much from a different point of view. I want to try and cover Milton's ideas and restate them in my own terms. Now the two of us originated that title a couple of weeks ago; it was a long time ago, anyway. I think we thought of it as kind of an impersonal thing that the audience would participate in. However, perhaps the two of us can pick it up. Now the word attack. That immediately calls to mind an article in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago on Sidney Janis and it was called, "Why Fight It?" I'm going to keep that in mind because I think that's a key term - "Why fight it?" Certainly the opposite of what attack would mean. Now, Milton brought up the idea of a system, a system of thought. I would perhaps call it, "the establishment." At any rate, "things as they are." If you think things as they are are fine, they don't make you unhappy, they don't outrage you, then I guess there is nothing to say; you be as happy as a lark then. Now suppose things aren't right, or maybe you don't like the word, "right." Perhaps they're rotten, or corrupt. Well then, what's rotten? What's corrupt? It's been very easy to say that the institutions are at fault, the critics, the collectors, the curators, the managers, or the middlemen are at fault. I think I would attack - and I'll be as specific as anyone wants me to be, for I think this is a way to be impersonal about it; however I'll be as personal as necessary too - I think the artists are responsible. If there's anything rotten or corrupt today it's the artist's fault. Now, what artists? Do you want to lump all the artists together? Do you want to separate them? Naturally, you'd have to say what artists. There have been some strong statements made lately but they've been made by other people rather than by artists. Now, I wonder why that should come up. For example, Thomas Hess has written over and over again about the "saturated mass communications mediums," the "taste bureaucracy," the "disgusting irresponsibility of that masquerade of good will, the ideas of enemies posing as the artists' friends," "This American power elite that is today as oppressive a force as the most monstrously philistine ogre." Is this true? These are all quotes. There's no question there's terminology like, "power elite," "taste bureaucracy," or "taste maker," the "genial society," the "affluent society," and that relates to the general social situation. But what about corruption and immorality specifically in the arts? It's easy to say commercialism or careerism or professional painting have become a racket like every other racket, a business like every other business. I haven't heard any artist for a long time raise the question of fine art as a useless art, or as an art that's not involved, or that's not a means of making a living or living a life. I think de Kooning once said, quite a long time ago that art was a style of living, etc. I think that's what curators wanted to hear. I think that was a way of indicating that art was to be mixed up with a great deal of things, that art could become something that was not a separate thing anymore, that it could be manipulated and read into and used in a number of ways. Now, if this is true than the artist is - might be - irresponsible. Now, if we have an agent of accommodation generally, what might it be in art? If there is any doubt that we have taste-making and hidden persuasion operating; all of these terms come from people who have been part of the system, part of the establishment. That's become a problem to deal with. As far as I can see. it is an oppressive situation and not free, not truly competitive. As Milton indicated, it may very well be closed down, or closed up. This has made for a real mechanical - and I borrow this phrase - an almost 'lobotomized unanimity' about everything. There's almost no challenging. Hardly anyone ever challenges, say, the Museum of Modern Art or ARTnews or Arts magazine. I wonder why that would be? Of course, the only ones who could challenge it properly are artists. Last week one of the artists said, "Someone else might raise these questions; they have nothing to lose." Well, it's precisely that artists evidently have something to lose. I wonder what? What would artists have to lose? And what are they losing now? There's no question there's a chorus and so many people live by other people's notions and ideas. There's a fantastic amount of parroting now and an attempt to settle everything. I don't know of any curator or critic or historian or collector who doesn't think he has a sure thing now. Because someone told them who the sure things are. Artists are guilty of contributing to that. Artists have contributed to a situation where things seem to be unquestioned. What is unquestioned is precisely this Life magazine art and probably Life magazine life, too; the lives of movie celebrities, the lives of living it up, affluence, money, commercialism. Now, I'm not speaking about having a good time or against someone having money or not, however I think everyone is familiar with what commercialism represents - at least to a fine artist. Milton brought up the question of art as property. We know we have art as a marketable commodity today and massified. The only way I can think of pinning down something wrong there is not payola or anything like that, but just the pay itself. I would object to art being a commodity at all, especially involved in pleasing and selling. Now, if we're involved in a profession of pleasing and selling, we ought to label it that. We ought to pin it down that way so that we know what that is. The trouble with this whole mechanism is that it does force everybody into a pattern, the whole dealer structure, the whole museum-dealer structure - whatever outlet - whatever relation an artist has, forces an artist into a pattern so that it's not only the process of consumption that's controlled by the mass media but the process of production as well. It works retroactively also. There's a tendency generally to leave matters in the hands of constituted authority, proper authorities. We've witnessed in the last couple of weeks artists who want to leave things up to someone else - philosophically maybe to some kind of fate, a lucky break, or circumstance. There was a real objection, a kind of excited objection, to an artist being responsible for his own meaning, his own content, and whatever happens to him and his work. This is the same question as, "Why Fight It?" Perhaps the feeling of oppression, a kind of despair, has resulted from this. There certainly is a resignation, and a passivity about artists today. "Why fight it?" is certainly the answer. Coming back to the artist, the problem of fault or guilt or shame; in this situation the artist has to somehow be an anti-intellectual, to stress unconscious or inarticulate ideas. Not only does the art become a manipulable thing, but the artist himself becomes a manipulated symbol. For example, the latest Life magazine avant garde art that I saw involved four artists: Kline, de Kooning, Still and Rothko; and they evidently permitted their work to be treated as pictures of flames, girders, grasses and sunsets. Does the art permit this? Does the art permit Life magazine making anything they want of it? This may make for a corrupt situation too; a kind of art that seems to excite, perhaps entertain. It certainly seems to be accessible and maybe involved in quickly exhausted values. There isn't anything I can think of that can't be read into those pictures: events, brutality, poetry, experience, streets, jazz, all sorts of associations and representations. I think that someone has mentioned that this is a kind of built-in obsolescence which has a quick turnover. I think we have to face the fact that the art work itself is a problem as well as the artist and let go the social situation for a while. The art work itself doesn't seem to have a limit to that which can be read into it. Now, I know this is always a problem with Romantic art; however, there's something wrong about an art that permits everyone to project their personal wishes into it. There's also something wrong about the image of an artist that permits everyone to think that they can do it too. If this jerk can do it than I can do it too. I think you're familiar with the artist as patronized idiot, a kind of everyday Joe, an ordinary fellow but a genius at the same time. It's part of that myth where the inarticulate rustic is also a sage or the wisdom of the bumpkin and so forth. It embarrasses me - apart from sometimes outraging me - embarrasses me, to see artists who follow along from period to period. I don't know what to think when I see someone who was so committed to a social protest point of view - social realist art - making abstractions now. I don't want to exclude the idea that maybe you learn or develop or progress but somehow it's a shame to give up such a strong commitment. The same with the abstract artist who moves towards the figure as if there was something that negates what they stood for. I don't want to call it an accommodation to the times but evidently that's what it is. There's naturally too much identification with success or fame. It's also a little embarrassing to see the hunger of artists for attention and the hunger over a period of years, as if this is what you wanted really; that Life magazine is what you wanted all along. There's certainly too much admiration for the ability to get publicity. And the admiration of, I don't know how many artists who practically made a career out of, "Me 'n Pollock", the expression, "Me 'n Pollock." (laughter) I want to attack the myth of the artist alone in his studio not knowing anything, not thinking anything and then finishing the picture and then the expression I mention lots of times, "Someone else does the dirty work." I don't think that's true. Any artist who says that he doesn't think about anyththing, that somebody else handles everything for him, is usually not telling the truth and I often wonder why it's said to other artists. It's certainly alright for business reasons to tell the public, but why should it be said to other artists when there isn't any truth to it? Except perhaps in the case of primitives, primitive painters. We witnessed an artist here a few weeks ago who was quite insulted because the question of the artists' responsibility came up - well, it was Larry Rivers - and he acted as if he was never involved with the public and never went on T.V. or anything else. He acted as if he was alone in his studio all the time and that something went on that didn't have anything to do with him. Well, I simply bring this up to indicate who has these ideas and who repeats these ideas. I wrote a series of quotations on a leaflet recently in which I quoted a lot of the artists fairly impersonally. There are a lot of artists who have been built up into symbols and I think their quotations are fairly significant, not because I've picked them up, but because they've been repeated dozens and dozens of times. Now, why should they be repeated dozens and dozens of times by curators and critics and catalogues? Why should those particular quotations have appeared over and over the last ten or fifteen years? Repeated by people who have never had any sympathy for art or abstract art in the last twenty years? Naturally the question of consciousness, control, and responsibility comes up. What the artist could do, I'm not sure. I know the idea of a pure art or a pure artist has come up as not manipulatable. It's part of that dichotomy of a free and servile art. Now, you can't talk about fine art in any other terms. The minute you open it up in some way, first, artists talk about, "having to eat." That begins it, as if artists have to eat any more or less than anyone else. But artists have to eat and that goes for critics too. Critics have to eat. But the next thing is for life or for some other-than-art idea; a house with children or things like that. I've mentioned a number of times how serious the shows, "Nature and Abstraction" and the "New Images of Man" were at the Whitney and at the Museum of Modern Art. Now it seems as if artists will show anywhere they can today and everyone is pleased to get anything at all. I don't know how to conclude this particularly, except with the portrait of the artist as a successful schnook or the portrait of the artist as a company man. I think the worst thing I could think of would be the artist as company man. Do you want to add anything? Resnick: Yeah. I want to present a case which puzzles me and I want to see what happens when you and I think about the same thing. It has to do with something you read there. Suppose an artist paints a picture and someone says it's really a girder. The point you're making is that something is corrupt. Now, what I would like to know is this. Is it corrupt because there is no girder? Is it corrupt because someone allows someone to speak of his painting as having a girder when you know the artist very well and you know of course, he never meant a girder? He's being misrepresented and that's what's corrupt? Is it corrupt - I mean suppose it were to change; suppose the artist says, "There is a girder. It's true." Now, would that change the meaning of corrupt? The reason I say that is I don't know where the corruption will slip me by. I don't know where to look. I know a fellow like Hélion once was showing me a group of his paintings - this was in Paris - and he had just received them from New York. They'd been in a crate and had been stored away here for many years. He, at that time in Paris was painting - well - he called his paintings an attempt at getting at humanity. It seemed a very important word to him - humanity. It was so important that at times when I would see him - he was a wonderfully-abled speaker and he liked to walk and he'd say, "Come walk," and it seemed to me that we'd walk for miles and all through it was this, humanity - this word that kept buzzing in my head. He was obsessed with the word. Although he didn't once mention it, I had heard from others that he had been a prisoner, held, escaped, been in concentration camps and something about his experiences there had changed him from an abstract painter, which he had been before the war - and not only was he an abstract painter but he was a very important abstract painter - many people considered him one of the best and at that time, and it was just that - that abstraction was very important; it held a position, it took a position; it took an attitude - and his attitude had changed. He received this crate and he opened it. He had invited me to come for some other reason, but I think he may have wanted me to see them. I don't know. It was a very big contrast to see the work on his walls, his easel, the things he'd been working on - and these paintings. He said, "What do you think of them?" and I began to smile. I don't think I could explain why I smiled, but he immediately said, "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that the things I said about humanity are ideas that I've only just now held and that I was different before," and, "It's not true. Even then I thought of man as being a symbol with his hands up in the air." Now, I don't think the point would be clear to you if you didn't know something about this man's painting. There was some kind of shape, amorphous shapes, and they had something of that look. And so I laughed and I said, "maybe so," and all that but what I was only thinking and smiling about is that they looked dated. They looked old. They looked much older than the paintings he had just been working on. Now, what I would like to get at is, where we could say the artist does the wrong thing? What is demanded of the artist? Is it demanded that he be explicit in such a way that what he says of a painting is exactly there? If that is incorrupt then he is being honest? You would say that of a man who says, "there is a girder," and there it is. Now, there may be a point at which you no longer recognize the girder and it looks something like a girder, but it could be something else and if you knew the artist you would say he never painted or saw a girder and if someone says it is a girder, why shouldn't he say it isn't a girder? There are things now that escape. There's an enormous ignorance and its been the most difficult thing to overcome. It's taken years of artists' endeavors, lifetimes and a great deal of suffering. I know, because all the artists I knew suffered. They still suffer and they will always suffer. Now, I don't know, Ad, why you suffer? (laughter) But I want you to tell me when the word "corrupt" finds itself to be at the point where you mean it completely, thoroughly. We could know. What is corrupt about a painting that isn't a girder? Reinhardt: Well, I was trying to speculate about what corruption means everywhere. Corruption in society would have something, I guess, to do with a loose moral code or something like that - a rigged T.V. or payola or - I'm sure you're pretty familiar with what corruption would be everywhere else. Now, what would corruption be in art? And my answer would be in a work that's too available, too loose, too open. It permits - too poetic, I'd say it permits too many people to project their own ideas in it. I don't like to see art that open. At some point almost anything goes. Almost anyone could do it. I think that whole idea is corrupt. I think the idea of the artist making believe he doesn't know what he's doing is a corrupt one. Resnick: Well, suppose the artist admits all those things that you say happen. Suppose the artist said, "I don't know what I'm doing. Art is open. You can read anything into what I do." He went to the trouble of stating exactly, and saying publicly, about his painting just what you've indicated is wrong with his painting. In other words, all the things that are wrong are exactly what the artist says he wants to do. His program is to do a wrong picture. What do we say? I don't know what to say. As a matter of fact, now the point is reached where a lot of art is being exhibited everywhere with the idea that it would cause the most amount of irritation to those who know something about painting. By the way, most people today who know very little about painting - and that goes for almost everybody today - applaud it. They go purposely out of the way to say what a lousy thing that was to do, but they only talk about the things that operate against the idea that painting is difficult. The whole feeling between those who attack art or who don't attack art is that they agree that the target is what they think art really is. I think it's true that people who know the most about art, know least about how to get rid of it - and that's what they're trying to find out. I think one of the most important revolutions in this country was when Life magazine showed pictures of Jackson Pollock and his paintings, and the first thing that occurred to millions of people is that he looked like everyone they know. He didn't look like a foreign type, a strange man, a Jew; he really looked all right. He looked like Saturday night. And the paintings he did, they thought anyone could do it. And that's the first time it occurred to them that painting is something that anyone can do. But artists knew that all the time. That seems to be the part that caught on in this country; that art is something anybody could do if they wanted to. You didn't have to learn perspective; you didn't have to go to a foreign school; you didn't have to be anti-American. You could do it. It would not have been enough without other things; I'm not saying that's the end of it, but something very important happened here. Maybe that's what happened ten years ago. Because I don't feel that artists - at the very moment that people write about what happened then - thought that anything happened. Mostly we were getting rid of a lot of things we didn't know how to get rid of. We got rid of words that made us sick. We didn't know how to get away from those words but we had a lot of fun when we started to. Once we got the hint, we really did a good job. So that Bill Litton, an anthropologist, said, " You artists have just gotten rid of your own language. You have no more terminology. I've been thinking about it and I think it's very bad to be speechless, so I've gone to the trouble of making up some new ones. Can I come here and talk to you about it?" "Sure," but it didn't work. It just sounded silly. New words did come about. They really did. That word, involvement. To be involved. To go all the way, as if you're a young girl who went past kissing. All this feeling that you really were more than on the surface - that you were through and through what you thought you were. That seems to be the most important thing to have happened as far as terminology goes. Whether this ever really had to do with painting or not, I don't know. I'd like to bring it up now. What is this stuff, involvement? I never saw it! I don't know what the fuck it looks like! I'm sick of it! I'm not involved! I'm not committed! I shit on those fucking, lousy, stupid words!! They're not mine and I hate every sonofabitch who uses them: Now, that's who I attack!! Reinhardt: Well, I don't know how, uh - (Iaughter) I don't know how to, uh, make that - specific. There's no question about the idea of commitment and all those terms. What I would like to ask is, what would be corrupt if the ideas that I brought up weren't so? Where would the corruption lie? What makes it rotten? Does it get corrupt by its own steam? I know it's a great trick of artists - and I'm not accusing Milton of doing this - to search out some other kind of straw man to hit out at. It's easy to attack a curator and critic, however somehow an artist doesn't do that unless he's left out or alienated or something like that. I don't really know one artist who seems to have managed the acceptance in any way. Now I don't know what he should have done. I bring all these things up as questions. It's very easy to say that all artists are alike, we're all artists, we're all in the same boat, and that outside is corrupt and everything that goes on there. This is not true in the first place. It's usually insiders telling outsiders what happens. So I'd like to keep asking: Is the proper thing to say, "Why Fight It?" especially if you're in the position of the author - Resnick: That's corrupt. Reinhardt: - of the statement? I think it's a little unfair to call a dealer corrupt in a situation in which he functions effectively. It's the artist that permits or allows it. (pause) If the corruption is not in the using and the exploitation and the accommodation and in the availability and in the openness and looseness, then I'd like to know where it is? This is in the artist, in his actions and in his work. Resnick: Well, I want to put it another way. The invisible is not corrupt. The things I can't see, I can't see the dirt on them. It doesn't show. If I bend down to pick up something dirty I can get to it. I can get rid of the dirt. I can shine it up; I can sparkle it; I can do something about it. What can I do about this invisible stuff? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to feel about something I can't see? Why is it that I must live with corruption being implicit? There's nothing that I can do about it. Now, that's why I really feel so bad, Ad; all your words recall to me the things that I can do nothing about. It doesn't matter what I might try and do. I can't overcome it. It's this saying, "What are you, really?" "Why aren't you more open?" "Why aren't you more pure?" It's come through the years, Ad, that you and I are both in the same position, strangely. You know, because we weren't. I didn't ever agree with anybody and certainly not you. But we are in the same position about something and that is the thing you said the last time when you had some people here with you, and you said the most important thing is that we talk - here - about our art or anything. Doesn't matter whether it bores you or doesn't. It's more important that we persist; we have it out. I think I only agree with you about the words. To have it out is a feeling for the future - an anticipation of what you'll do, what you can do. Those who want that to be closed, to prevent it from possibly happening - the status quo - are corrupt. The future is the thing new. It's a little baby's ass, the future; there's nothing dirty about it. It's the only thing I can see about it; it's tender. I think all thoughts that have to do with the future are tender thoughts. They're not savage, they're not slaughterous, they're not murderous. Murderers have nothing to do with the future. I think art has to (pause) live. I don't want anyone to give me anything, because I want art to live. I don't want - because I'm an artist - anyone to give me anything. Reinhardt: I think we can come back to the title. How can the structure or the system or the establishment be attacked? I don't know but I have a feeling that artists have sold out. I know that these words are kind of old fashioned, they're maybe out of the Twenties or Thirties, but is it true that art has been sold out? I'm saying it would be all the way down the line, too. I don't know how to separate one thing from another anyway. Is it self-abasement? Has it been an accommodation from within? Or has it been an influence from the outside? Sometimes when I've brought this up, especially out of town where I've been invited sometimes to talk - and I'm always a disappointing speaker - everybody wants to know how to make it; how to become a success. Usually, I have to take the position of - and this isn't my idea - it's some sociologist's - of failure; the idea of the nervous failure; not only the failure of nerve but the nervous failure; the refusal to compete; the possibility of complete withdrawal. Now, that makes for all kinds of personal dilemmas and I think all artists have this to some degree. I think we've witnessed in the last decade the artist moving around from gallery to gallery until you get to the right gallery or - well, that kind of opportunism isn't any different than what goes on in jobs in advertising and anywhere else. It's hard to criticize anybody for making his way, however if this business of being on the make all the time - of trying to get in on it - well, it may be an illusion. It may be tragic if you really desire that and don't get it. It makes for martyrs and for some kinds of heroes too in this society. I don't know what the answer is. I haven't said one thing about what anybody should do. I'm trying to find out why things aren't very good for a fine artist. Voice: Could I - Resnick: Just a minute. Alright. Suppose it is important to now know what to do. We begin by saying that we - Reinhardt: Don't know. Resnick: - don't know. What could it be that we could do if we began now? Let's settle a few things to begin with. If I were a jealous man, if I wanted to hog the stage of art - to be the only one - to shine more brightly than anybody else - if that were supposed to be the thing I was to try to do - the one thing I would be nervous about would be someone who says, "Look at me." There's something about art that's so complicated that to be able to see through the painting - the thing done - to the person, the man who did it, is impossible. If anything would make me nervous it would be some guy running around stealing every goddamned thing he could lay his hands on, and doing it better. Making me nervous would be coming from behind. It would never occur to me that someone could naturally be in front. It can't happen. Now, on the other hand, the point you bring up as corrupt is that they're on the make. Which means there are things other than painting that can be visible and apparent and indicate a hustling nature of a lot of artists. Well, the strange part about it is that I think they're not very good at it and the other thing is that they want something that is, well, not important to me. Certainly not important to me if what I jealously regard as important - what I think about art - in other words - if my mind is on what I did, if I'm dancing in my studio and saying, "look at that," and no one happens to be witnessing me; that's the attitude of art somehow; that I did something and I'm gloriously shining, and the whole world is lit up; then the idea that someone is busy giving a cocktail party just doesn't occur to me as being corrupt. It's maybe besides the point. It shouldn't occur to me, maybe; in other words it does occur to me as it occurs to you and to everybody, and that's what I'm getting at. That we're living within a system and this system is hostile. This system demands that you make yourself understood in a way that artists can't be understood. Reinhardt: I have one suggestion that's a good idea and if it isn't, then I think we might just as well clam up and let things take care of themselves. It's a situation where artists can stress their differences. A situation in which artists are free to attack each other, especially artists who publicly represent something, who've been made into something apart from their person. Since then they'd represent ideas they'd be more discussable. I think Milton and I dove into this trying to transcend the personal thing, otherwise you're just an individual beefing like everybody else. Artists then ought to attack each other. That would be something - Resnick: Ideal. Reinhardt: - that would free a lot of things; the emphasizing of differences. There's been too much togetherness. There hasn't been togetherness but openly there's been a fear and a kind of smothering of restlessness and resentment that legitimately should come out in the open. Now the problem is here at the Club and there is no reason for the Club to exist unless you want it to continue introducing new artists, or artists about to embark on their career - which it's been doing the last two or three years. However if it's going to remain some sort of an open forum or a free debate, and there's something about the Club that's free from institutions. You know, the Club was invited two or three years ago to take place in the Museum of Modern Art auditorium. I don"t know what it would have been if it had moved up there. There's something about writing for ARTnews or Arts - official publications saying things - that's not free. Sometimes an editor confronts you, saying, "If you have something to say, the pages are open," but the fact that it's published in a publication does something to it, too. That's why a publication like Scrap is welcome, but I think you'll agree with me it's a pretty timid publication. I only read the first issue but there was no real attack on anything. Irving Sandler: I'd like to ask a question. If you feel that art is corrupt, well, that's one thing having to do with art, but if you feel that the scene is corrupt, that's something else and that "something else" took place after an art that you think was corrupt wasn't really being looked at. In other words, that specific thing took place before this corrupt scene you're talking about, existed. Now, the thing that may have changed is selling. But I really don't know whether that's so important. Is selling really a sellout? Reinhardt: The corruption you're talking about has always existed. It's just become a mixture of forms; some people call it a dilution, a popularization of abstract art. Sandler: Would that go into the making of it? Reinhardt: There was a kind of selling out that artists did in the Thirties. The art of political content was certainly an accommodation, certainly the art of the synagogues later on, but the attempt to move an abstract art into the market and into the world is what you're talking about, and the problem is - is art the same? Is it a reflection? Or does it go hand in hand with the general situation, or not? Some writers, Harold and this fellow, felt that everything was corrupt and pretty awful, except the Museum of Modern Art, which was an oasis in all this terrible corruption. Well - is it? Or is it part of the same activity that goes on everywhere? You know my answer; that it's even worse than the outside situation. It's even more corrupt because it doesn't have the economic or political contingencies immediately. I think art can have some kind of political meaning. Somebody has called a certain kind of abstract art representative of the Eisenhower administration. Well, maybe that's so. We all agree the time isn't any good but if you think it's great then you ought to continue doing so. I'm sure you're familiar with Bill Maslin in the Village Voice writing about one of those wonderful parties, and somehow the idea creeps in that at the party there's a fellow outside in the cold and snow walking around with a watchtower sign or something like that - spoiling the party. Spoiling the fun. Somehow, everybody knows that maybe he's alright, but home is where the liquor and the good times are. Well, I don't mind sounding like a puritan. Milton and I are both part of that Hebraic/Christian tradition (laughter) and that's against all the pagan and Hindu/Buddhist metaphysics and perhaps we moved back to what we originally were. Resnick: I'm not party to that. I left it when I was seventeen. That's why I became an artist; anti-Jew, anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-love and all that; anti-raising kids and sacrificing. Artist means not - not that. Reinhardt: Well, I was only making an anti-Hindu and Buddhist statement. (Iaughter) Wolf Kahn: I heard this story about Mark Tobey, out west. He was approached by Life magazine - Reinhardt: Is this a beatnik story? Wolf Kahn: He was approached by Life magazine for that article that you're so hard on, and he said he didn't want to have his picture reproduced, only in trade journals. So, maybe that's an instance of non-corruption? Resnick: You mean his face or his painting? Wolf Kahn: His face and his painting. Reinhardt: Mark Tobey? Wolf Kahn: Mark Tobey. Reinhardt: Well, the trade journals, I think we have two, don't we? Resnick: I think that was Edwin Dickinson. Voice: Yeh, Edwin Dickinson. Tobey wasn't - (inaudible) Resnick: It was Edwin Dickinson. Reinhardt: What I'm trying to say has been said by a number of sociologists, by a number of psychiatrists; I think there was one [David] Susskind "Open End" program, forgive me for bringing it up - but also some religious leaders like Tillich and Pike. The objection of those people to their field is exactly the same objection that I have in my field. Now. I don't like to call it a trade. I'll bring up Dean Pike who is maybe a successful man but he doesn't like all the business and all the activity, the Billy Graham activity; and he objects to religion being another gadget, another pleasure, another activity, another thing for use -for good living or whatever. The thing I like about some of the psychiatrists on some program is that they thought that the uses that psychiatry were put to in recent decades set the whole idea back fifty or a hundred years. Freud and the others were involved in an intellectual adventure, and the whole field was now reduced to a method or a means of curing; a practicality. What art has also been reduced to, is a way of making a living, a means of living a life, moving into all the areas of everyday practicality and everyday experience. Now, I'm not saying art is religion, but there is something else besides the ridiculous everyday activity. What's corrupt about the situation is that most artists know it. There is a climate of maybe even fraud, or dishonesty in which everyone expects to be exposed tomorrow, as if you might as well get it while you can because it's not going to last. Why shouldn't it last? Why shouldn't you get it if it's proper? It was a cliche once, years ago when you had artists objecting and talking, attacking - but, the expression was, after they joined Kootz {gallery}, they clammed up. This is not true of one gallery; it's true of any gallery. Why should that be? Is that all there is? The artist wants to be liked. He wants to live a good life like any other human being; especially eat. Well, all that sounds good but it's absolutely corrupt; All those ideas about the artist wanting to be a celebrity - be in the world of everyday activity - all those artists involved in institutions have those ideas; they wanted those ideas. The attempt to move art into the world was always a favorite idea of Bob Motherwell's. One time it forced me to pick a title, "Out of this World" simply because - not that I was advocating that - but that that movement had something wrong - I'm not afraid to use the word, "wrong" about it. Voice: Ad, maybe it's because we believe in democracy. Reinhardt: Well, the justification for everything is that we're all sinners, we're all human, and we're like everybody else. Voice: Say, Ad, since you're such an expert on corruption, will you give us a definition of your own honesty? Resnick: Listen - Voice: You want to make a personal attack - Reinhardt: Look, I don't mind that - Resnick: Let me get at something I want to talk about - Reinhardt: I'll let Milton answer that. Resnick: Yeah. How did religion get back? It was gone. It was done for, a hundred years ago, really. How did it get back? Now, I have a theory. I think it just suited something said about art; something started by the ideas of avant gardism. And by accident. I think that when Kierkegaard, in his beautiful way of writing, spoke about "how would he find the knight of infinite faith?" How would he find the man who truly has faith? He said, "I would exchange that - finding such a man - with the most incredible monsters of Africa." Now, that would be a real find. In other words, a man with faith, according to Kierkegaard, was a very rare person. He went on and elaborated upon that, but the idea being that he didn't count churchgoers or anything like that as very religious at all. He thought this thing like an act of faith was so rare, so highly improbable - almost impossible - that it could only exist in a form that you'd never recognize it. That's how it got back. It was something that was rare, It was something that you didn't recognize. Only one-of-a-kind. And I think when Heidegger, and people like him, with their looking for hard work, for a lifetime of hard work - it always occurs to them that if something is impossible then it could take their lifetime and it would be well-occupied, they'd be Herr Professor, and have credit for at least trying -I think in art now this religious feeling - this feeling of guilt - no one says why they're guilty. If you ask them, "What did you do?" they answer - "Well, it's this feeling I have." All this religious feeling doesn't mean you have to get up in the morning and go to church; as a matter of fact, most people don't get up early in the morning. Most people assume that someone else does and they figure "He's going to church," so they're a little respectful about it, but they wouldn't be caught dead in church. They're not like that. They want it to be single; only one-of-a-kind. It seems that's historically the role of the great art; that there's only one-of-a-kind. Well, I think that's bunk. I think it's never been true. It's always been a short synopsis, a short way of presenting a lot of very complicated facts and ideas in the person, one. It's been a way of getting rid of that long list that nobody can remember. And I think that we suffer from it terribly, right now, when we ought to feel free in every sense. We're the most victimized by historians, by system makers, by corporations; I don't know what they are but they bother me. And the only freedom I have is among artists. I want to live among artists. I want to be in and out when I feel like it, to go back to my studio and come out. But to come out means that everyone's willing, that everyone likes the idea. It doesn't mean that I have to be running around nagging, saying, "Lets talk about art." I didn't come here to do that. I just really came here to speak my mind. And attack. My idea is that I'm attacking everybody. Ad Reinhardt is much more particular; he's only attacking corrupt people, but I'm attacking everybody. Reinhardt: Let me say almost the same thing Milton's saying. For somebody to question somebody about honesty or corruption; if you think for a minute how dopey that is. What would it prove if you proved that I was a little corrupt? Or the most corrupt guy in the world? We're talking about an idea here. That exists. Now that doesn't exist because I said it, personally. lt exists and it exists perhaps among everyone. Now, to bring it up is just - well, its just dumb, that's all. Resnick: Sure is dumb. Elaine de Kooning: I'd like to ask one question about it. If you're so against the artists who appeared in Life magazine, how come you were posed so carefully with seventeen other men in 1951? You were very carefully posed - Voice: pantheism - about three years ago. Reinhardt: Are you implying that we posed ourselves? Voice: The deities were set up at that time. That's a mild corruption that rubs off on everyone. Reinhardt: That's right. It was a sin. I have to admit - (laughter) (clapping) - I think that was a very ambiguous time and there were two or three artists, for example, who swore that they would never appear in Life magazine. Now, I never thought about it that way - just like that - but they absolutely swore that they wouldn't - and they Voice: The deities were set up at that time. That's a mild corruption that rubs off on everyone. Reinhardt: That's right. It was a sin. I have to admit - (laughter) (clapping) - I think that was a very ambiguous time and there were two or three artists, for example, who swore that they would never appear in Life magazine. Now, I never thought about it that way - just like that - but they absolutely swore that they wouldn't - and they showed up too; now I - Voice: They wanted to have a little fun, I guess. Reinhardt: Well, I don't know what it was. It was the activity of two galleries. You know, it's become a kind of symbolic picture, a symbolic activity. Perhaps going back ten years before that - that was 1950 - in 1940, the American Abstract Artists picketed the Museum of Modern Art. I think that was a very important gesture. Voice: Representational artists picketed it last year. Reinhardt: Yeah. That only goes to show that even attack and protest is a problem. I think we indicated before that, even in the general situation, the people who write the most devastating attacks on society now are people who spent twenty or thirty years on the staff of Time and Life. The guy who wrote the book, "The Operators," or something like that. He was a Life editorial writer. There's a book called the "Waist High Culture," and it was written by a Time - now, that's curious. Now, of course, protesting and attacking can be a racket. I don't know how many careers have been built on artists hard to get dirty. You know, just biding your time; not showing, waiting and suddenly cashing in; well, that's an old stock market trick. Voice: Why are you doing it? Reinhardt: Not selling until the right time. You're always faced with that. Resnick: The question is why are you doing it? What are you doing? (Laughter) What are we doing?! What did we just do? Reinhardt: One thing we know is that both Milton and I are trying to articulate something we think is not right. It's something for all of you to think about as much as we've thought about it. Milton has also said to me, we're involved in discussing this thing, not only between ourselves but with our own selves. The fact that we're human like any other artist doesn't make it any better or worse; that's like bringing up the same question before. I guess we're involved in the same things other people are, but at least Milton and I are not very happy about it - Resnick: Miserable. (laughter) Reinhardt: - and we decided not to clam up about it. Voice: But hasn't there always been corruption in periods of intense activity? You read Benvenuto Cellini and - Reinhardt: Of course, but that doesn't make it any better. Voice: What's that got to do with great art or not great art? I don't think it makes it any better but why is it so important? Wolf Kahn: I think we want to sound a dirge - Reinhardt: Anybody who gets tired of talking - Milton and I are going to talk here anyway for a long time. Now, if anybody wants to go they're perfectly entitled to go; they're perfectly welcome to go because we're not here to entertain anybody. Voice: Is there a question and answer period? Or have I made a mistake? Resnick: No, you have to know me to get anywhere. (laughter) Louis Finkelstein: You've attacked the situation by talking freely. What would happen? What do you envision would be in terms of your success? How would you know if you made any headway? What would you produce? What would occur? Resnick: Well, maybe we shouldn't do it if that's the point. Louis Finkelstein: I didn't say you shouldn't do it. Resnick: Well, you sure put it in a funny way. (Iaughter) (exclamations) Voice: No he didn't. Resnick: I don't know what l could produce. What could I produce? Louis Finkelstein: Under what circumstances would you be less miserable? Resnick: I don't know. I give up. Louis Finkelstein: Ad? Reinhardt: I brought up once the Thirties, but I didn't bring it up as an ideal situation, or the work that was being produced particularly, or that I wanted everybody to be on the W.P.A. again. But there was a very light feeling in the Thirties that artists have something to say about who they were and what they did, so that there was a better debate, a better feeling among artists then. Now, I'm not suggesting a return to any period in the past. If things get worse and worse there isn't any place to return to, any golden age. There are a number of people now thinking of the early Forties as a golden age as if everything that was corrupt started last year. That means younger artists. That's become a real racket among someone. Everyone thinks, well, there is a kind of a parroting going on. Hess, for instance, has talked about history as a full kind of racket - I can't say that he, himself is free of it, however. That comes up all the time and it's a ticklish thing to deal with. Resnick: I have an answer. (to Finkelstein) The thing I can produce is contrast. I'm suffocating. It's all the same. It seems as if it's an endless amount of disappointment. If I can produce some contrast wouldn't that be worthwhile? Louis Finkelstein: Well, you were saying that you would like conscious talk, open difference, exploration, and you laid the lack of it, by implication, to some sort of conspiracy in which everybody participated by following their own motives. it seems to me that part of the serious discussion of why there isn't that kind of talk you want might also regard things other than corruption itself - Resnick: Yes. Other things than corruption. Louis Finkelstein: - which are probably very much in the matter of painting. I just asked the question to elicit whether you thought - Resnick: I don't know whether I quarrel with Ad Reinhardt about the word, corruption. Because it's his word for it. Now, I do agree with Ad Reinhardt. That's why we're here. So I don't want to be the guy who picks up the word and throws it back and has some fun with it. I want to be the guy who's a little artistic about something or other. And I know more about that - this getting rid of things. I'd rather just leave it alone. I said the other day when Larry Rivers spoke about, "What are we supposed to be doing?" I mean, as if, I don't know why it occurred to me that I hated him for saying it, because that seems like a very sensible question. It could be said with a spirit and we could - but the way he said it, boy, - I could've smacked him. There is the nature of what I am supposed to feel like, or be like. It isn't a matter of being deprived, or living in a system that I don't like. I think it's much more true about feelings around art that you could leave almost anything. Easily. It wouldn't occur to me that I couldn't. Except that I would have to find a place for it. When I was living at home, a boy, art seemed to be something I'd like very much to do. When I couldn't do it because my father said, "You can't be an artist as long as you live in my house," it seemed very easy to leave. I like the idea that he said that, as a matter of fact; after all these years of bitterness, I feel that he was a terribly wonderful man for sticking to the ideas he thought he wanted. But I left because he didn't become a mealy-mouthed sonofabitch who wore me out, who gave me a car or some other shit that I didn't want but forced me so I couldn't leave. Now, I want to do something so that it's possible (pause) it's possible to leave corruption. It should be easy. I'm not swallowed. I'm suffocating - Voice: That wouldn't stop you. Resnick: Fuck yourself, you sonofabitch! Other voice: What you're saying - Resnick: Fuck you, too. You rotten egg! Reinhardt: You want to say something? Kyle Morris: Other than these petty attacks; I appreciate what you've both been saying. I think what it comes down to, in very specific terms, is like we're here to say "uncle". Art - abstract art - abstract painting, has been accepted. We have to give our own individual insights into what we're doing. And this is the next step, for clarification and identity. That's very important and that's all I wanted to say. Insight is the next step. Resnick: Very good. I agree. I think so too. Reinhardt: The problem comes up though, after you've looked inside yourself, about the possibilities of what to do about the outside world. Morris: No, that's already accomplished. Reinhardt: No, it isn't already accomplished. It goes on all the time. Morris; No. Art, in general. Every painting has been accepted - Reinhardt: One doesn't know about, uh -one has to question that acceptance; everything has been accepted, not only abstract art. Everything has been accepted. Thomas B. Hess: Individual insight, particularly in terms of painting; well, to some extent, Ad, but people who have that usually become the leaders. At the same time the ones who are imitative or influenced and are crowding the scene, pardon me, are - Resnick: Not enough room in this world! Thomas B. Hess: -corrupt. Resnick: Not enough room, huh? You mean there's only so much room? Thomas B. Hess: In that respect, yes. Resnick: You're a businessman! Every businessman thinks there's just so much room in this world; you're a Republican! (laughter) Thomas B. Hess: What are you saying? Resnick: A Republican in art; that's what you are! Thomas B. Hess: Could be, but that still doesn't negate the idea of individuality. I think the Republicans could have won the election if they'd only understood what they were talking about. Resnick: You're a businessman looking for a trademark. You want to be an individual businessman. You want a little shop where there's only one of a kind; your own. Thomas B. Hess: What's wrong with that? Resnick: Nothing. You're not an artist. Thomas B. Hess: And how do you know? Resnick: Then maybe you are, but that idea is not an artist's idea. My original contribution to this discussion is that you're not very original if you want to be an individual!. Thomas B. Hess: Well, what you're talking about is a contradiction. You've been talking (inaudible) all night! (whistles, boos) Voice: -feel crowded. You feel that the system - you feel crowded; You want to get away from - Resnick: Yeah, I want to get out of the "original" gang! Voice: Your original objection to what he said. What are you objecting to, Milton? Resnick: I object to you, too! (laughter) Reinhardt: The whole idea of individuality is also a racket. Voice: No it isn't. We've got our own individual in us. Voice: All of us are living and dying by ourselves. And this is our individuality. Reinhardt: Well, I've never compiled any kind of social theory, but I certainly wouldn't go along with any individualist notion. Thomas B. Hess: It has to be done! Resnick: I like "insight" better. Why don't you stick to insight; then you'd be all right here! Resnick: Oh, you mean insight is a capital letter word, a capital "I". You don't mean insight. Voice: Insight! Resnick: You mean that's what you've got. You don't mean that there is such a thing as insight - Voice: Oh, I don't know if I've still got it. Resnick: You don't mean that there's something in this world such as insight that people could aim for. You mean that's what you've got! Voice: I may mean it. Maybe I do! But that's not the point. Resnick: That's right; Now you know what you mean. Voice: No, the idea is this; that people can spread-eagle themselves all over a kind of a fad; a small community - they almost drown out the individual who has been doing something. Resnick: Tell me, are you an individual? Voice: Uh - Woman's Voice: Yes, he is! Voice: Probably. Resnick: Probably? You're not even sure! Voice: Sure. Now, what good would it do me to say yes or no to that - Resnick: You're to some degree an individual. Well, it's all measure. It's all measure again. Well, what the hell is measure? Individual means One. Indivisible! Voice: So? Yeah? Resnick: There's no measure! Just say so! Reinhardt: There's a problem about individuality and insight. It isn't as unique or as isolated as you might think. I'm sorry Harold Rosenberg went home because he again brought up this idea that's come up several times; when you make a work of art, whatever that is, an insight or individual activity, it moves out of your hands and becomes a great many things to a great many people and it acquires all kinds of other things that react back to you again. When you talk about insight in that situation you're just not very realistic about it. Also someone who talks about individualism is immediately suspect. You know that the people who talked about rugged individualism all the time were the most anonymous, mechanical, uniform men. All the time. It was part of the Hoover period. Hoover represented individualism. Voice: Are you comparing politics to art? Reinhardt: Yeah. Resnick: How about you? Woman: (possibly Elise Asher): I'd like to talk about what you said last year about corruption. You remembered a great line, I thought. First you do it for mom, then for somebody else and then for money. But actually, in the final analysis, it's the guy, the painter, or gal, for herself or himself. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference to me, or you really, if de Kooning or somebody sees girders in my work. That's his problem. I'm already busy with the picture I'm going to do tomorrow. Reinhardt: But that isn't true. I'm sure you don't work that way. You don't have idea after idea and you let the paintings go and anybody can do what they want with them. Woman: Why? My kid says, "Jesus Christ, ma, that's great!" I think he's a great critic! Reinhardt: Well, then already someone's influenced you, already! (laughter) Resnick: Are you waiting for your children to tell you you're all right? Are you spending the rest of your life waiting for someone to tell you that? Never mind!Reinhardt: Suppose a curator of a great museum bought a picture of yours? Woman: Well, I just wouldn't tell that story. Reinhardt: Well, I just think you'd have to think about why somebody would like it that much. Woman: It doesn't matter what he thinks. Lucien Krukowski: I'm dispirited about all the involvement we've had in these panels with the question of the socially corrupt business around art. Not that I don't think it's important but somehow, especially the way Ad plays with it, it seems that you have a very clear idea of what is not corrupt in art. Then you are somehow free to talk about everything that is corrupt around art. I'm not so sure that all of us are so clear of what is corrupt in art, or at least, not as clear as Ad. The question is - if we assume that what we really should be talking about is art - painting, how would one go about that here? How could we get away from this stuff? Really start talking about painting; how can we do it? Resnick: Everyone ought to have his conditions, everyone makes his demands. Whoever has anything to say about art from now on ought to demand what he lays down as the minimum condition for painting, or art, or sculpture, or anything he likes to have. And stop acting as if he doesn't get it. As if that's the end of it all. That's really what I mean; that artists ought to know and think and say what they're doing. Artists ought to make their demands on themselves, and then on their friends, and then tell what their demands are as well as they can. In order to get someone interested - because if they can't say it, then no one's going to get interested. If someone who isn't an artist feels there's something wrong and is interested in art, it would be easy for him to set up conditions for art that he feels are important to him - and say so. I would like to see a few demands made upon me. It may suit or may not. It may occur to me to change, or not. I would have a chance! Reinhardt: I want to warn about an idea that crept in here; the idea that everyone is entitled to his self-expression and that everybody is entitled to do what he wants to do. In a real democratic situation and so forth, this is good for everybody's therapy, gestalt, or psyche, but you know that that's not true at all. Every artist who's not a primitive knows that everybody doesn't make something in accordance with his self-expression that's equal with everybody else's expression. That's not true. 1 know you can make the opposite statement and say that everybody's not an artist and everything everyone does is not art, it sounds like you're dictating or limiting it. Every professional artist, and I'm using professional artist a little differently than someone involved in a profession of making a living with it; you all know that - it's not that open. That everybody is not an artist. And that there are very severe criteria everywhere - and you know that. Everybody knows that! Voice: That's a lot of bullshit! Reinhardt. Well, if you don't know it, you don't know it. Voice: l know it and you know it too, that it's not that way at all. Resnick: You don't look like an artist. Finkelstein: Let's see the "everywhere" that this criteria is. Reinhardt: Well, I'm not so sure it's fixed and standardized but, for example, every curator, every critic, and every collector has a standard and whether it's right or not - Voice: Not their standards, how about your standards? Reinhardt: Part of the melancholy situation today is that it's thrown back into everyone according to his tastes and it's pretty depressing to think that an artist is in the hands of everybody's individual whim or taste. Make your way. No one is preventing you from doing anything you like - Voice: You're trying to pigeonhole us. Krukowski: l don't think that too many of us are naive enough to think that all a guy's got to do is sit around and admire himself in his own studio. There are more issues than that, certainly, but I think we're also not naive enough to feel that perhaps artists sitting week after week after week talking about the ethical implications of an art act with nobody talking about the art anymore, here, is also bad. Reinhardt: We're talking about the art all the time. Voice: No, you've got a good idea. Voice: - talking about the marketplace. Voice: No, we're talking about our feelings. Resnick: That's exactly right! That's what we're talking about. Attack. We weren't talking about art. We're political. We're all political here. Reinhardt: I brought up Rosenberg's idea that art is social, political, and ethical now all the time. Resnick: We're not artists today, we're politicians. I can't stand those people. Wolf Kahn: I think what we're really talking about, what we're trying to do here, is to set up a next - I really mean it, Ad - you have so much to say to us, but you've a lot more to show us. Voice: He's got an awful lot to show. Voice: How about you? (more voices) Woman: What have you got to show? Resnick: Look who is talking! Wolf Kahn: That story you told about your father is a very good one because I think that's what we're all talking about tonight. We're all trying to reconstruct a set of enemies out of chaos where friend and enemy are all inextricably mixed up together and we don't know who we're against anymore. Resnick: Yeah. Wolf Kahn: In that sense this is the first community effort that I've seen in the Club in a long time. Voices: Very good. Resnick: Okay. Reinhardt: I want to bring up, for example, Tom Hess' dilemma, and I bring him up the way l bring up Rosenberg, because I think I have a great deal of respect for them; however, the only way that I can respect them is to attack them. I don't say anything about a critic that I don't respect. Now, Hess was in a dilemma in which he did commit himself to one artist, pretty much, and he was in a position of introducing and explaining and elaborating all the meanings, and then, suddenly everybody else in the world liked this artist, too. And he was in a position of saying " Well, they picked it up, but they don't understand, really, and they don't know," you know, he had to defend himself because the whole idea of the artist - I don't know why I should keep it anonymous - it's de Kooning - he tried to keep - de Kooning: Wait a minute. I mean - Reinhardt: something for himself - de Kooning: I've taken a lot of shit here! Reinhardt: I'm talking about Hess. de Kooning: Don't mention my name here! Don't give me that shit. I've taken a lot of shit here! What are you worried about, Ad? I don't know what the hell you're so worried about - your socialistic, lousy, old-fashioned ideas! Reinhardt: Well, if you want to get personal, I don't - Woman: You've been personal enough! de Kooning: Hey! You worry about art or ethical ideas, about a personality or a character, you must be out of your mind! I (applause) Shit! Smearing good artists! Don't give that lousy diluted socialism of yours! Reinhardt: (pause) Well, it was anarchism. (Iaughter) However, you know, if it is personal, then it is. I just want to indicate the possibility, here, of it not being personal; now - de Kooning: Don't mention any names! Don't mention any names. Reinhardt: If there is a possibility of it not being personal - de Kooning: You keep saying that but don't mention names! It's something else, the dealer - yeah - Reinhardt: If I mention names it's because there's been a great deal written and a great deal in terms of ideas, however the ideas don't seem very clear - and this is true about art critics - I'll mention Hess again - it's not clear about what he's saying unless you know specifically who he's talking about. Now, there's been any number of names and I'm not mentioning de Kooning as de Kooning. I'm talking about some kind of - de Kooning: I did a little work back there too, you know. Reinhardt: I know. de Kooning: And don't you ever forget it! I don't like your corrupt, sick - Reinhardt: All right - de Kooning: - implications! Ethical implications! Reinhardt: All right. de Kooning: And don't do it! Reinhardt: I'm talking about - de Kooning: You're talking about a lot of shit! Reinhardt: I'm talking about a series of names: Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, so on and so forth - de Kooning: They're good artists. Yeh, they're very good artists. Reinhardt: Well, that's what I'm talking about. I'm not separating you from those at all. I'm talking about all of you in a straight line - de Kooning: What are you worried about? Reinhardt: with an etc. on the end. de Kooning: Aw, fuck you: (laughter) He plays that like the Salvation Army. (laughter) and Resnick, you too! Resnick: What can I say - de Kooning: What the hell you worried about all the time? Resnick: I'm not worried about you! I don't give a shit about you! de Kooning: You used to worry a lot about me! Resnick: I did! de Kooning: Oh boy, you did! (uproar) Resnick: I did! I swear I did! And I don't anymore. I don't give a shit about him! Reinhardt: I, uh, want to get away from de Kooning, I - de Kooning: You bet: (laughter) Reinhardt: (pause) I'm not afraid. (laughter) But - Voice: This is an open forum and I've had my hand raised for twenty minutes and haven't said a four letter word yet- Reinhardt: Right. Right. Right. There is a curious - Resnick: You'll never get it! You'll never get it! You'll never get it! Voice: What? What? Be honest. What? You're just a bureaucrat! Reinhardt: I just wanted to say - Resnick: I don't want him to talk. Reinhardt: There is a problem here of artists thinking that other artists begrudge them their fame and fortune, but I'm trying to say something in terms of the number of people who identify with an artist who's publicized so much - and we've had speakers up here who talk about this great movement and this great activity, and we're all part of it, and we're all in it, you know, and so on. And - we're not all in it! And, you know, I don't want to be part of that "e.t.c." This is primarily the thing. If this is not the establishment, if this is not the system, then what is? This has replaced what used to be a system that began with Shahn. Ben Shahn and the whole list of names after him. There was a great deal of objection to that in the early days of the Club. Now, what have we done? Have we just replaced this series of names with this series of names? Now, if this series of names is not oppressive then what the bell is? That is all I ask. And of course, if you're not oppressed - de Kooning: Ethical and moral ideas - Reinhardt: If you're happy and everything is great then there's no point in listening to us. Voice: Now you're referring specifically to painting? Reinhardt: Of course. Voice: Ad, you've mentioned several times the difference between primitives and painters. I didn't get the difference. Reinhardt: There's something attractive about a primitive painter that's corrupt and that's the idea that he doesn't know what he's doing, and he's a babe, and he can be infinitely more patronized than anybody else. He's terrific. You can make anything you want out of him. Voice: Like Goya. Reinhardt: Well, no. Goya was not a primitive. Voice: stain of blood - Voice: To be naive is one way of not being corrupt. Reinhardt: I guess not. I would say that anything childlike or insane, like Milton says - the lunatic fringes or primitives, or farmers; I don't know what. There was a whole list of primitives as if they had some special insight like women's intuition, like Irishmen; Irishmen were supposed to have something. There is a notion anyway, that someone from a farm is uncorrupted and, of course then all the sins lie in the city. That's about as old an idea as I can introduce. Well that's where the idea comes from: sophistication, civilization, any intellectual activity is somehow corrupt, and that there's something wise about the unschooled fellow somewhere. Voice: What happens when you go to the studio, to the easel; you're alone. You're definitely alone. Resnick: Maybe you're not. Reinhardt: Your mind isn't. Voice: No, I mean you're really alone with your work, your canvas. Resnick: Not me! Never. Voice: Wouldn't that be the isolation - Reinhardt: Don't you think about Goya? Voice: I didn't say it. Voice: I did. Resnick: Did you want to say something? Goodbye. |
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