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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 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. (Everyone talking at once) 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. Voice: Well, maybe you ought to find out about them. 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! 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. 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 - (everyone talking - laughter) 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. part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | back to Texts page
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American Abstract Artists |
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