Joel Resnicoff
Encyclopedia
Joel Hirsch Resnicoff was an American artist
and fashion illustrator
, who incorporated expressionistic
art into commercial fashion illustrations
, stating his belief that "commercial art is the art of the century." His work did not fit easily into any one category, and "the figures in his amusing illustrations defy stereotype and are posed in unexpected ways." Those figures reflected a mixture of cultures, with viewers seeing something familiar to their own background, mixed with something more distant: a combination of the "girl next door," and "the girl on the other side of the world." So, for example, a Japanese work describes "the influence of black African sculptures," mixed with a more Japanese look characterized by "lips like cherry blossom petals, and almond-shaped eyes." His work captured the new impact of multiculturalism
on art and the "standards of beauty" of the seventies, and along with artists such as Andy Warhol
helped "blur the line between commercial art and fine art."
Resnicoff died at the age of 38 as a result of complications linked to AIDS
.
. He studied art at the University of Miami
for one year, and then transferred to Greenwich Village
's Parsons School of Design
, settling in Manhattan
's East Village
. After two years at Parsons, he worked as a fashion illustrator for seven years on the staff of Women's Wear Daily
(WWD), the trade journal
often referred to as the Bible of fashion
, where illustrations were used more as commentaries on fashion and predictions of consumer reaction than as a means to advertise and sell products to consumers.
Art historians have noted that during the seventies, WWD proved to be a '"wonderful showcase" for artists including Resnicoff, and through his work, he quickly made a name for himself in the fashion industry. However, after seven years with that publication, he left in order to devote a year to experimentation with different art forms, take some classes in sculpture, and have a chance, as he put it, "to deal with reality after a life of illusion." During this year, he supported himself through street portraits, along with many fellow street artist
s whose work would collectively be remembered as part of the artistic hey-day of the East Village. Soon, his career as a freelance artist took off, eventually including works in water colors, charcoals, oils, and paintings; a series of fashion mannequin
s that were based on the style he had popularized in his illustrations; some overseas travel for invitational commissioned artwork, including billboard designs in Scandinavia
; and art he created for clothing and fashion accessories that included the international design brand, Esprit
.
In the early 1980s, his unusual displays for windows in such major New York department store
s as Macy's
and Bloomingdale's
caught the attention of both the public and the press, with an article in the New York Post
reporting that his 1983 Macy's window display literally "stopped traffic" on 34th St. The windows were part of Macy's campaign to publicize Resnicoff's new shop in its New York location. His work was not limited to any one store or chain of stores, and although his link to Macy's would continue for a number of years, his artwork was also used by Bloomingdale's in a number of ways, including a series of brightly colored beach towels, marketed as "Camp Bloomie's." In addition to artwork that appeared on apparel and accessories, he created and illustrated a series of postcards and greeting cards, called ResniCards, that gently poked fun at New York City
, its residents, and its tourists. In these cards, he contrasted often overweight women with the ultra-slim figures in the fashion world that he regularly used in his own illustrations. As one reviewer put it, his cards featured "pachiderm-sized dames in tacky-wacky get-ups...shattering la mode" He could poke fun at New York and New Yorkers because his love for both the city and its city-dwellers was well-known. When asked to describe New York in three words, he wrote, energy, variety, and creativity.
Resnicoff's fashion illustrations were well known and wide-ranging, including his years of work with WWD, and with other Fairchild Publications journals, including Footwear News, and the Daily News Record
; a variety of fashion advertisements in virtually every New York newspaper, from The New York Times
to The Village Voice
, including cover illustrations for some, such as the Soho News, and Art Direction; contributions to special publications such as the Manhattan Catalogue; illustrations and lay-outs for national and international periodicals, including Travel and Leisure
and Mademoiselle
; special brochures for stores and periodicals, including New York
magazine; and multi-color spreads for a number of foreign publications and journals, including some in Italy, like Vanity Magazine, and Japan. He was also featured as an illustrator in major campaigns for national and international chains and brands, such as Macy's, Charles Jourdan
, Intercoiffure, and Fong Leng International; independent stores and smaller "boutique" chains, such as Mr. Jay, Armadillo, and the designer boutique Riding High; and designers, including Regina Kravitz, Calvin Klein
and Yves St. Laurent
. His work gained special popularity in Japan as examples of American avant-garde
art, described by Japanese artist Pater Sato as work that "sends us messages of joy, peace, and humor. His comic style draws us to a new world." Resnicoff himself wrote that he "would like people to look at the world a little differently after looking at my drawings.""The whole idea of art is to inspire, to teach, to bring something to another level.... Commercial art is the art of the century, it's the most visible, it goes to the greatest number of people. Resnicoff's work always reflected his own unique style, but they also often brought to mind images from "fine art" or literature, such as in his well-known illustration for hosiery that "directly referenced the film poster, Six Girls Seeking Shelter, by Vladimir and Georgi Stenberg.. In some ways, along with artists like Andy Warhol and Antonio Lopez, Resnicoff's art helped "blur the line between commercial art and fine art."
Samples of Resnicoff's work that appeared in the magazine, Hit Parade, are on file as part of the New York Public Library
Collection.
In 1985, Resnicoff began working with Esprit
, and in 1986, two summer seasons of clothing, including brightly colored shirts and scarves, featured his designs—with his signature on each item. Using an unusual approach, the company commissioned Resnicoff to paint a series of "oversize summery murals," which Esprit then used as a basis for its "sassy...bold, and colorful" fabric designs. In fact, Resnicoff's artwork for the summer designs were so successful that he was invited to repeat his collaboration with Esprit for an additional season, but by then he had to decline the invitation due to his failing health. In addition to his work with Espirit, Resnicoff also designed a series of Tee-Hee Shirts--pullovers and sweatshirts, and "cooking apparel"--aprons, gloves, and pot-holders, illustrated with whimsical characters similar to those on his Resnicards illustrations.
+ in 1984, very early on during the onset of what would become the AIDS pandemic
that would take the lives of many of his friends and fellow artists, before his own death, in 1986. Earlier, as a young boy in 1961, directly in front of Beth Torah, the Maryland synagogue
where he had just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah, a car filled with out-of-town relatives who had come in for the ceremony was involved in a freak accident, resulting in the death of one of his uncles, and severe injuries to his aunt, who lost one of her hands.
Resnicoff's death, on December 28, 1986, brought to a halt a career that was already well-established, but also clearly on the rise. Still young the year of his death, he was already one of only a handful of illustrators and artists to be included in a collection that included such well-known names as Andy Warhol
, but he was recognized as early as 1972, shortly after his start at Women's Wear Daily, as an "upcoming illustrator," who "manages to avoid the look alike syndrome of fashion illustration with models that are always more than elongated clothes hangers.... He has created his own coterie of now Gibson girls
, who manage to combine both innocence and the decadent langour of fin de siecle
illustration. Five years before his death, in an article that appeared in the inaugural edition of the magazine, Hit Parade, the well-known artist and writer, Francis Toohey, predicted that, "in years to come, Resnicoff's art might be likened to the advertising triumphs of Mucha and Toulouse-Lautrec
or to the graphic abandon of advertising during its artsy heyday of the 30s."
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and fashion illustrator
Fashion illustration
Fashion Illustration is the communication of fashion that originates with illustration, drawing and painting. It is usually commissioned for reproduction in fashion magazines as one part of an editorial feature or for the purpose of advertising and promoting fashion makers, fashion boutiques and...
, who incorporated expressionistic
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
art into commercial fashion illustrations
Commercial art
Commercial art is historically a subsector of creative services, referring to art created for commercial purposes, primarily advertising. The term has become increasingly anachronistic in favor of more contemporary terms such as graphic design and advertising art.Commercial art traditionally...
, stating his belief that "commercial art is the art of the century." His work did not fit easily into any one category, and "the figures in his amusing illustrations defy stereotype and are posed in unexpected ways." Those figures reflected a mixture of cultures, with viewers seeing something familiar to their own background, mixed with something more distant: a combination of the "girl next door," and "the girl on the other side of the world." So, for example, a Japanese work describes "the influence of black African sculptures," mixed with a more Japanese look characterized by "lips like cherry blossom petals, and almond-shaped eyes." His work captured the new impact of multiculturalism
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
on art and the "standards of beauty" of the seventies, and along with artists such as Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
helped "blur the line between commercial art and fine art."
Resnicoff died at the age of 38 as a result of complications linked to AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
.
Life and work
Joel Resnicoff was born in Washington, DC, and raised in Hyattsville, MarylandHyattsville, Maryland
Hyattsville is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The population was 17,557 at the 2000 census.- History :The city was named for its founder, Christopher Clark Hyatt. He purchased his first parcel of land in the area in March 1845...
. He studied art at the University of Miami
University of Miami
The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...
for one year, and then transferred to Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
's Parsons School of Design
Parsons The New School for Design
Parsons The New School For Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is the art and design college of The New School university. It is located in New York City's Greenwich Village, and has produced artists and designers such as Marc Jacobs, Dean and Dan Caten, Norman Rockwell, Donna Karan, Jane...
, settling in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
's East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
. After two years at Parsons, he worked as a fashion illustrator for seven years on the staff of Women's Wear Daily
Women's Wear Daily
Women's Wear Daily is a fashion-industry trade journal sometimes called "the bible of fashion." WWD delivers information and intelligence on changing trends and breaking news in the fashion, beauty and retail industries with a readership composed largely of retailers, designers, manufacturers,...
(WWD), the trade journal
Trade journal
A trade magazine, also called a professional magazine, is a magazine published with the intention of target marketing to a specific industry or type of trade. The collective term for this area of publishing is the trade press....
often referred to as the Bible of fashion
, where illustrations were used more as commentaries on fashion and predictions of consumer reaction than as a means to advertise and sell products to consumers.
Art historians have noted that during the seventies, WWD proved to be a '"wonderful showcase" for artists including Resnicoff, and through his work, he quickly made a name for himself in the fashion industry. However, after seven years with that publication, he left in order to devote a year to experimentation with different art forms, take some classes in sculpture, and have a chance, as he put it, "to deal with reality after a life of illusion." During this year, he supported himself through street portraits, along with many fellow street artist
Street artist
A street artist is someone who creates and/or sells their art or craft in public for the pleasure of passers-by.Some people use the term 'street artist' more broadly and also refer to people involved in busking, such as musicians who sing and/or play instruments, acrobats, jugglers, living statues,...
s whose work would collectively be remembered as part of the artistic hey-day of the East Village. Soon, his career as a freelance artist took off, eventually including works in water colors, charcoals, oils, and paintings; a series of fashion mannequin
Mannequin
A mannequin is an often articulated doll used by artists, tailors, dressmakers, and others especially to display or fit clothing...
s that were based on the style he had popularized in his illustrations; some overseas travel for invitational commissioned artwork, including billboard designs in Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
; and art he created for clothing and fashion accessories that included the international design brand, Esprit
Esprit Holdings
Esprit Holdings Limited is a publicly owned manufacturer of apparel, footwear, accessories, jewellery and housewares under the Esprit label. The company is headquartered in Kowloon, Hong Kong, and Ratingen , Germany. In the 2007–2008 business year, Esprit Holdings Limited generated a worldwide...
.
In the early 1980s, his unusual displays for windows in such major New York department store
Department store
A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
s as Macy's
Macy's
Macy's is a U.S. chain of mid-to-high range department stores. In addition to its flagship Herald Square location in New York City, the company operates over 800 stores in the United States...
and Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's is an American department store owned by Macy's, Inc. .Bloomingdale's started in 1861 when brothers Joseph and Lyman G. Bloomingdale started selling hoop-skirts in their Ladies Notions' Shop on Manhattan's Lower East Side...
caught the attention of both the public and the press, with an article in the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
reporting that his 1983 Macy's window display literally "stopped traffic" on 34th St. The windows were part of Macy's campaign to publicize Resnicoff's new shop in its New York location. His work was not limited to any one store or chain of stores, and although his link to Macy's would continue for a number of years, his artwork was also used by Bloomingdale's in a number of ways, including a series of brightly colored beach towels, marketed as "Camp Bloomie's." In addition to artwork that appeared on apparel and accessories, he created and illustrated a series of postcards and greeting cards, called ResniCards, that gently poked fun at New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, its residents, and its tourists. In these cards, he contrasted often overweight women with the ultra-slim figures in the fashion world that he regularly used in his own illustrations. As one reviewer put it, his cards featured "pachiderm-sized dames in tacky-wacky get-ups...shattering la mode" He could poke fun at New York and New Yorkers because his love for both the city and its city-dwellers was well-known. When asked to describe New York in three words, he wrote, energy, variety, and creativity.
Resnicoff's fashion illustrations were well known and wide-ranging, including his years of work with WWD, and with other Fairchild Publications journals, including Footwear News, and the Daily News Record
Daily News Record
Daily News Record was an American fashion trade journal published by Fairchild Publications, Inc.. DNR started in 1890 when Edmund Fairchild used the wealth he had accumulated selling soap to purchase the Chicago Herald Gazette, a newspaper which focused on the men’s clothing business...
; a variety of fashion advertisements in virtually every New York newspaper, from The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
to The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, including cover illustrations for some, such as the Soho News, and Art Direction; contributions to special publications such as the Manhattan Catalogue; illustrations and lay-outs for national and international periodicals, including Travel and Leisure
Travel + Leisure
Travel + Leisure is a travel magazine based in New York City, New York. Published 12 times a year, it has 4.8 million readers, according to its corporate media kit. It is put out by American Express Publishing Corporation, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Express Company led by...
and Mademoiselle
Mademoiselle (magazine)
Mademoiselle was an influential women's magazine first published in 1935 by Street and Smith and later acquired by Condé Nast Publications....
; special brochures for stores and periodicals, including New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine; and multi-color spreads for a number of foreign publications and journals, including some in Italy, like Vanity Magazine, and Japan. He was also featured as an illustrator in major campaigns for national and international chains and brands, such as Macy's, Charles Jourdan
Charles Jourdan
Charles Jourdan was a French fashion designer known best for his designs of women's shoes starting in 1919. His name reached its greatest notoriety in the years since his death under the leadership of his sons, first with an emphasis on the use of innovative materials and later for more...
, Intercoiffure, and Fong Leng International; independent stores and smaller "boutique" chains, such as Mr. Jay, Armadillo, and the designer boutique Riding High; and designers, including Regina Kravitz, Calvin Klein
Calvin Klein
Calvin Richard Klein is an American fashion designer who launched the company that would later become Calvin Klein Inc. in 1968. In addition to clothing, Klein has also given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewelry....
and Yves St. Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent (brand)
Yves Saint Laurent or YSL is a luxury fashion house founded by Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Bergé. Today, its chief designer is Stefano Pilati. Yves Saint Laurent, founder of the brand, died in 2008.-History:...
. His work gained special popularity in Japan as examples of American avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
art, described by Japanese artist Pater Sato as work that "sends us messages of joy, peace, and humor. His comic style draws us to a new world." Resnicoff himself wrote that he "would like people to look at the world a little differently after looking at my drawings.""The whole idea of art is to inspire, to teach, to bring something to another level.... Commercial art is the art of the century, it's the most visible, it goes to the greatest number of people. Resnicoff's work always reflected his own unique style, but they also often brought to mind images from "fine art" or literature, such as in his well-known illustration for hosiery that "directly referenced the film poster, Six Girls Seeking Shelter, by Vladimir and Georgi Stenberg.. In some ways, along with artists like Andy Warhol and Antonio Lopez, Resnicoff's art helped "blur the line between commercial art and fine art."
Samples of Resnicoff's work that appeared in the magazine, Hit Parade, are on file as part of the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
Collection.
In 1985, Resnicoff began working with Esprit
Esprit Holdings
Esprit Holdings Limited is a publicly owned manufacturer of apparel, footwear, accessories, jewellery and housewares under the Esprit label. The company is headquartered in Kowloon, Hong Kong, and Ratingen , Germany. In the 2007–2008 business year, Esprit Holdings Limited generated a worldwide...
, and in 1986, two summer seasons of clothing, including brightly colored shirts and scarves, featured his designs—with his signature on each item. Using an unusual approach, the company commissioned Resnicoff to paint a series of "oversize summery murals," which Esprit then used as a basis for its "sassy...bold, and colorful" fabric designs. In fact, Resnicoff's artwork for the summer designs were so successful that he was invited to repeat his collaboration with Esprit for an additional season, but by then he had to decline the invitation due to his failing health. In addition to his work with Espirit, Resnicoff also designed a series of Tee-Hee Shirts--pullovers and sweatshirts, and "cooking apparel"--aprons, gloves, and pot-holders, illustrated with whimsical characters similar to those on his Resnicards illustrations.
Joy and Sadness
However his work was described, a strong sense of humor was always evident—others referred to "his comic style," and he himself described his work as "joy, love, and humor"-- but friends knew his life had more than its share of suffering and tragedy. He was diagnosed as HIVHIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
+ in 1984, very early on during the onset of what would become the AIDS pandemic
AIDS pandemic
The acquired immune deficiency syndrome pandemic is a widespread disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus .Since AIDS was first recognized in 1981, it has led to the deaths of more than 25 million people, making it one of the most destructive diseases in recorded history.Despite recent...
that would take the lives of many of his friends and fellow artists, before his own death, in 1986. Earlier, as a young boy in 1961, directly in front of Beth Torah, the Maryland synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
where he had just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah, a car filled with out-of-town relatives who had come in for the ceremony was involved in a freak accident, resulting in the death of one of his uncles, and severe injuries to his aunt, who lost one of her hands.
Resnicoff's death, on December 28, 1986, brought to a halt a career that was already well-established, but also clearly on the rise. Still young the year of his death, he was already one of only a handful of illustrators and artists to be included in a collection that included such well-known names as Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, but he was recognized as early as 1972, shortly after his start at Women's Wear Daily, as an "upcoming illustrator," who "manages to avoid the look alike syndrome of fashion illustration with models that are always more than elongated clothes hangers.... He has created his own coterie of now Gibson girls
Gibson Girl
The Gibson Girl was the personification of a feminine ideal as portrayed in the satirical pen-and-ink-illustrated stories created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States.Some people argue that the...
, who manage to combine both innocence and the decadent langour of fin de siecle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
illustration. Five years before his death, in an article that appeared in the inaugural edition of the magazine, Hit Parade, the well-known artist and writer, Francis Toohey, predicted that, "in years to come, Resnicoff's art might be likened to the advertising triumphs of Mucha and Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
or to the graphic abandon of advertising during its artsy heyday of the 30s."
Further reading
- Fashion Illustration in New York, Pater Sato, Graphic-sha Publishing Co., Ltd, Tokyo, Japan: 1985. Includes samples of Resnicoff's works in charcoal, plus illustrations from some of his work for Regina Kravitz, Macy's, Yves St. Laurent, The Village Voice, the Italian periodical, Vanity Magazine, and even an illustration for Kagome tomato juice, from a magazine in Japan.
- The Avant-Gardes in New York, Seiichi Tanaka, Tanaka Studio, Japan: 1986.
- WWD Illustrated: 1960s-1990s, Michelle Wesen Bryant, Fairchild Publications:2003.
External links
- Women's Wear Daily illustration, 1970s, on MaraisUSA.blogspot.com, Oct 18, 2008, labeled, "Okay...back to the real masters. I love, love, love this one by Joel Resnicoff!. From book, Women's Wear Daily: 1960s-1990s, 133.
- Photos on Shutterfly.
- Memorial website, created by Resnicoff's family.
- "Zone7Style: Style Focus," March 31, 2010. Includes photos of Esprit shirts designed by Resnicoff.
