|
AMERICAN ABSTRACT ARTISTS |
|
|
Members Texts
|
Resnick/Reinhardt Debate New Years Day, 1961, at The Club by Geoffrey Dorfman Excerpted with permission from the book Out of the Picture: Milton Resnick and the New York School, Midmarch Arts Press, March 2003 (ISBN: 1877675474) part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | back to Texts page 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!! part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | back to Texts page
|
|
American Abstract Artists |
|