Milton Resnick
Encyclopedia
Milton Resnick was a major abstract expressionist
painter
and teacher
known for his mystical
, abstract and figurative paintings. Born in Bratslav, Russia
, he emigrated to the United States
in 1922.
Evening School of Art in Brooklyn, but a teacher there suggested he switch to fine arts, so the next year he enrolled in the American Artists' School in New York City. Ad Reinhardt
, future Abstract Expressionist, was a classmate, and they shared a budding interest in abstraction.
However, Resnick father forbid any expression from his son of wanting to be an artist and faced with this disapproval of his commitment to painting, Resnick moved out in 1934 when he was 17. He supported himself as an elevator boy and continued at the American Artists' School, where he was given a small studio room and each day provided with materials left behind by students attending night classes.
During the Great Depression
, Resnick was in the Easel and Mural Division of the WPA of the Works Progress Administration
. By 1938, he had his own studio on West 21st Street, and there was nearby Willem de Kooning
with whom he formed a close friendship in the 1940s. However, Resnick's art career was interrupted by World War II, and he served five years in the Army, stationed in Iceland and Europe. After the war he lived for three years in Paris, where among others, he associated with modernist sculptors Alberto Giacometti
and Constantin Brâncuşi
. He endured near-starvation during this period only to have the one show of his work created in Paris canceled by an unsavory dealer.
In 1948, Milton Resnick returned to New York, and used his G.I. benefits to enroll in abstract expressionist painter Hans Hofmann
's school. He also took a studio on East 8th Street, near Jackson Pollock
, de Kooning, and Franz Kline
, and in September through de Kooning met artist Pat Passlof, whom he married in 1961. Passlof was also an accomplished abstract expressionist painter and remained married to Resnick until his death in 2004. Passlof died of cancer in November 2011.
In the late forties
he debated painting with his friends and colleagues Willem de Kooning
, Lee Krasner
and Jackson Pollock
, sometimes at The Club, a regular meeting of modern artists working in and around Tenth Street in New York. Like them Resnick was striving for an overall quality for his pictures, a way to unite foreground and background, in order to achieve a resolution of opposites, a metaphor for all dialectics. While the others moved toward throwing or dragging quantities of paint across the face of the canvas, Resnick retained a particularly personal and impassioned confrontation with brush painting. Sometimes his work was referred to as Abstract Impressionism
because of his all over style.
Coming into prominence just as Pop Art
moved into the limelight, his great accomplishments weren't recognized to the extent some thought they merited, as a painterly integration of Western metaphysics
and Eastern philosophy
. In his mature years, he worked in a converted synagogue
on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side
, attended by devoted students, admirers, and his wife and lifelong companion, the painter Pat Passlof (1928-2011)
During the 1950s and 1960s, Resnick earned respect for his Abstract Expressionist paintings and also was unique for being one of the few New York artists to have a large working space for large-scale canvases. In 1976, he purchased the space that served him to the end of his active career, an abandoned synagogue on Eldridge Street on New York's lower east side. It was near his wife's studio, which was another abandoned synagogue and purchased by the couple in 1963.
(Akron, OH), the Arizona State University
Art Museum (Tempe, AZ), the Chrysler Museum of Art
(Norfolk, VA), the Jack S Blanton Museum of Art
(University of Texas, Austin, TX), the Honolulu Academy of Arts
, the Montana Historical Society (Helena, MT), the Museum of New Mexico
(Santa Fe, NM), the National Gallery of Art
(Washington, DC), the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY), the Oakland Museum of California
(Oakland, CA), the Phoenix Art Museum
, the Roswell Museum and Art Center (Roswell, NM), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
, the Smithsonian American Art Museum
(Washington, DC), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
(Kansas City
), the University of Arizona
Museum of Art (Tucson, AZ), and the Whitney Museum of American Art
(New York City
) are among the public collections holding work by Milton Resnick.
.
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
known for his mystical
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, abstract and figurative paintings. Born in Bratslav, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, he emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1922.
Biography
Milton Resnick was one of the last survivors of the first generation of the New York Abstract Expressionists. Born in Russia, Resnick and his family left and arrived in New York City in 1922 at age five. He settled in Brooklyn with his family and attended public school where a teacher re-named him from his birth name of Rachmiel and nickname of Milya to Milton. At age 14, he enrolled in the commercial art program at the Pratt InstitutePratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
Evening School of Art in Brooklyn, but a teacher there suggested he switch to fine arts, so the next year he enrolled in the American Artists' School in New York City. Ad Reinhardt
Ad Reinhardt
Adolph Frederick Reinhardt was an Abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered around the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism...
, future Abstract Expressionist, was a classmate, and they shared a budding interest in abstraction.
However, Resnick father forbid any expression from his son of wanting to be an artist and faced with this disapproval of his commitment to painting, Resnick moved out in 1934 when he was 17. He supported himself as an elevator boy and continued at the American Artists' School, where he was given a small studio room and each day provided with materials left behind by students attending night classes.
During the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Resnick was in the Easel and Mural Division of the WPA of the Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
. By 1938, he had his own studio on West 21st Street, and there was nearby Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
with whom he formed a close friendship in the 1940s. However, Resnick's art career was interrupted by World War II, and he served five years in the Army, stationed in Iceland and Europe. After the war he lived for three years in Paris, where among others, he associated with modernist sculptors Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
and Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
. He endured near-starvation during this period only to have the one show of his work created in Paris canceled by an unsavory dealer.
In 1948, Milton Resnick returned to New York, and used his G.I. benefits to enroll in abstract expressionist painter Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann
Hans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...
's school. He also took a studio on East 8th Street, near Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, de Kooning, and Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
, and in September through de Kooning met artist Pat Passlof, whom he married in 1961. Passlof was also an accomplished abstract expressionist painter and remained married to Resnick until his death in 2004. Passlof died of cancer in November 2011.
In the late forties
1940s
File:1940s decade montage.png|Above title bar: events which happened during World War II : From left to right: Troops in an LCVP landing craft approaching "Omaha" Beach on "D-Day"; Adolf Hitler visits Paris, soon after the Battle of France; The Holocaust occurred during the war as Nazi Germany...
he debated painting with his friends and colleagues Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
, Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. On October 25, 1945, she married artist Jackson Pollock, who was also influential in the Abstract Expressionism movement....
and Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, sometimes at The Club, a regular meeting of modern artists working in and around Tenth Street in New York. Like them Resnick was striving for an overall quality for his pictures, a way to unite foreground and background, in order to achieve a resolution of opposites, a metaphor for all dialectics. While the others moved toward throwing or dragging quantities of paint across the face of the canvas, Resnick retained a particularly personal and impassioned confrontation with brush painting. Sometimes his work was referred to as Abstract Impressionism
Abstract impressionism
Abstract Impressionism is a type of abstract painting where small brushstrokes build and structure large paintings...
because of his all over style.
Coming into prominence just as Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
moved into the limelight, his great accomplishments weren't recognized to the extent some thought they merited, as a painterly integration of Western metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
and Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy includes the various philosophies of Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Iranian philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Indian philosophy and Korean philosophy...
. In his mature years, he worked in a converted 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...
on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
, attended by devoted students, admirers, and his wife and lifelong companion, the painter Pat Passlof (1928-2011)
During the 1950s and 1960s, Resnick earned respect for his Abstract Expressionist paintings and also was unique for being one of the few New York artists to have a large working space for large-scale canvases. In 1976, he purchased the space that served him to the end of his active career, an abandoned synagogue on Eldridge Street on New York's lower east side. It was near his wife's studio, which was another abandoned synagogue and purchased by the couple in 1963.
Public collections
The Akron Art MuseumAkron Art Museum
The Akron Art Museum is an art museum in Akron, Ohio, USA.The museum first opened its doors on February 1, 1922, as the Akron Art Institute. It was located in two borrowed rooms in the basement of the public library...
(Akron, OH), the Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
Art Museum (Tempe, AZ), the Chrysler Museum of Art
Chrysler Museum of Art
The Chrysler Museum of Art is an art museum in the Ghent district of Norfolk, Virginia. The museum was originally founded in 1933 as the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. In 1971, automotive heir, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. , donated most of his extensive collection to the museum...
(Norfolk, VA), the Jack S Blanton Museum of Art
Blanton Museum of Art
The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art is the art museum and research center of the University of Texas at Austin. Formerly under the College of Fine Arts, the museum director now reports to the University's...
(University of Texas, Austin, TX), the Honolulu Academy of Arts
Honolulu Academy of Arts
The Honolulu Academy of Arts is an art museum in Honolulu in the state of Hawaii. Since its founding in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke and opening April 8, 1927, its collections have grown to over 40,000 works of art.-Description:...
, the Montana Historical Society (Helena, MT), the Museum of New Mexico
Museum of New Mexico
The Museum of New Mexico consists of six separate institutions in Santa Fe, New Mexico, including :* New Mexico Museum of Art* Palace of the Governors* Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology* Museum of International Folk Art...
(Santa Fe, NM), the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
(Washington, DC), the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY), the Oakland Museum of California
Oakland Museum of California
Oakland Museum of California or Oakland Museum is a museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California located in Oakland, California....
(Oakland, CA), the Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix art museum
The Phoenix Art Museum is the Southwest United States' largest art museum for visual art. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western...
, the Roswell Museum and Art Center (Roswell, NM), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
, the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
(Washington, DC), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its neoclassical architecture and extensive collection of Asian art....
(Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
), the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
Museum of Art (Tucson, AZ), and the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
(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...
) are among the public collections holding work by Milton Resnick.
Representation
The estate of Milton Resnick was formerly represented by the Robert Miller Gallery of New York, NY and is currently represented by Cheim & Read gallery of New York CityNew 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...
.
See also
- Action paintingAction paintingAction painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...
- New York SchoolNew York SchoolThe New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
- Abstract expressionismAbstract expressionismAbstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
- Stable GalleryStable GalleryThe Stable Gallery, originally located on West 58th Street in New York, was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward. The Stable Gallery hosted early solo New York exhibitions for artists including Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol.-History:...
- Tenth street galleriesTenth street galleriesThe Tenth Street galleries was a collective term for the co-operative galleries that operated mainly in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York in the 1950s and 1960s. The galleries were artist run and generally operated on very low budgets, often without any staff. Some artists became members...
- Abstract ImpressionismAbstract impressionismAbstract Impressionism is a type of abstract painting where small brushstrokes build and structure large paintings...
Sources
- His life and work are chronicled, mostly in the artist's own words, in Out of the Picture, Milton Resnick and the New York School, by Geoffrey Dorfman, published by Midmarch Arts Press, NY.
Books
- Out of the Picture, Milton Resnick and the New York School, by Geoffrey Dorfman, published by Midmarch Arts Press, NY. ISBN 1-877675-47-4
- Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. p. 282-285
- Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. p. 12; p. 16; p. 38; p. 302-305