It’s a common refrain among artists: to really get to know a painting, you have to see it in the flesh. The subtle shifts of color, the physicality of the paint, and the impact of its full dimensions — none of these can be replicated on screen or in print. All, however, count among the most elemental properties of painting, and for some artists, their qualities are so complex and subtle that they warrant a lifetime of study.

Geoffrey Dorfman is clearly such an artist. His paintings — produced through a discipline of constant improvisation — possess a bodily presence, a fleshiness, all their own. Talking about painting with Dorfman, one senses that for him it is not just a calling but a moral commitment. Gestures of paint have weight, colors have substance, and the two inform each other. “Color and texture are not separate,” the artist maintains. “Painting stands absolutely against disembodied color.”

Words will forever fall short in conveying the visual and tactile expressions of painting. Yet it seems safe to say that, for Dorfman the first gestures of paint start the hope of uncovering meaningful forms; the gathering flux confirms and strengthens these forms’ identities, and if all goes well, the forms become real — not as references to the external and literal, but according to the energies of paint itself. (“The painting is telling you exactly what it needs.”) It’s a process of incited accidents in which painter and paint are accomplices.

No surface in a Dorfman canvas remains static. Areas that seem at first an even glow of color turn out to be layers of inter-brushed pigments. The quality of space continuously changes; a portion of a canvas may seem like a close-up, shallow, clear-running stream, or as deep as an alpine lake or a hall of mirrors — though one suspects that the artist would reject even such lyrical allusions to the external.

In Pink Cabinet, condensations of forms punctuate a background of tawny green-browns. One’s eye — or really, one’s mind — wants to impose the familiar: an area could be darkening due to a cast shadow, and a “ground plane” lightening up because of vagaries of illumination. But such imaginings soon dance away in the sheer ineluctability of paint, which ranges in texture from buttery, knife-skimmed surfaces to lumpy coagulations to thin, canvas-revealing brushstrokes. Colors hum from within these turgid textures: a curl of intense white tops a sturdy, deep mauve; wandering greens incise a hard, pure yellow; oranges and greens streak in ethereal layers. (These may be Dorfman’s “shape wannabees” — forms half-emerging from the depths.) Spreading across the surface in a kind of urgent play, each element somehow remains mindful of others as well as the canvas edges.

Dorman likes to compare painting to following a thread through a labyrinth. One proceeds as best one can, but the way is never sure: “The thread breaks; you pick up the wrong thread.” Viewing a group of his canvases together, one is particularly struck by their divergent paths. Iolas follows an entirely different color scheme than Cabinet, with a dense, pink-beige background irradiated in places by an underlying yellow. Arrayed around the top and left of this canvas are a series of small, tightly drawn arcs and angling lines, some containing contrasting pulses of color. Each hue reacts to the ground in different fashion: a brilliant yellow, though close in tone, lifts aloofly; purples sink as anchoring notes; whites converse among themselves, some floating as thick, opaque strokes of paint, others revealing themselves (up close) as bare parts of canvas. Other paintings — Sun Scratch, Portal, and Inez — take a very different tack, turning to denser all-over tapestries of color.

In some canvases, faint, window-like patterns cordon off a section, momentarily redefining a few square inches as an escape, and the surrounding ones as a confining interior. Such an incident occurs in Augury, but it’s a subtle sideshow within the larger drama of merging purple and green tides, whose collision sets off a series of curious events, including a pair of misaligned blue-green half-circles and an irregular bull’s-eye of concentric polygons, ”a shard within a shard.” Across this same canvas, two pale rectangles — one a lightly limned outline, the other a gap between broad, thick brushstrokes — elicit contrary states of presence and absence.

The primal forces in Dorfman’s paintings seem at once alien and familiar. They contain animated spaces, without any kind of fixed topography; a sense of internal scale without preconceived notions of height, width or depth; presences without the usual distinctions — so crucial to our everyday perceptions—between object and void. We must dig deeper than our usual cognitive powers to come to grips with these canvases. But they compel us to try, as we follow best we can the thread left by the artist who preceded us, searching countless paths. “You have order. You depart from the order. Then you come back to it.”

The post Geoffrey Dorfman: “The painting is telling you exactly what it needs.” appeared first on artcritical.

Out of the Picture – Milton Resnick and the New York School
Transcribed, compiled & edited by Geoffrey Dorfman
Midmarch Arts Press, 2003, 314 pages

Milton Resnick committed suicide on the 12th of March. Up until then he was one of an ever-diminishing group of living individuals such as Philip Pavia, Robert Richenberg and Paul Jenkins that comprised the New York School (A.K.A. the Abstract Expressionists). The artists he knew ranged from notables such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky and Franz Kline to (now) obscure artists like Max Schnitzler and the sculptor Ernest Guteman. Geoffrey Dorfman, also an abstract painter, began working on this tour de force book in 1979. The result is a comprehensive readable volume that addresses Resnick and the New York School together and individually.

Reading this book might be compared to taking a river trip. The introduction provides a capable landing from which to launch your virtual canoe. Once underway you’re quickly immersed in the buoyant light rapids of the ‘Resnick Interviews’. The current begins to slow with reproductions of Resnick paintings ranging from the late 50s to 2000. Shortly thereafter the waters run very still and deep with a series of Resnick’s talks at the Studio School from 1968 to 1972. Subsequently you are swept up in the torrents again with the 1966 Resnick/Leo Steinberg panel discussion which quickly streams into the dénouement of the book Resnick/Ad Reinhardt debate: “Attack”, from 1960 that drops you over a waterfall. But you bubble back up to the surface with Pat Passlof’s remembrance (Milton Resnick’s wife and also a painter).

The interviews provide some early history on Resnick such as how he took up fine art due to the advice of a teacher and the encouragement of a friend. However, upon learning of it, his father presented him with a “not under my roof” ultimatum. This incident is a foreshadowing of Resnick’s often defiant, go-it-alone, temperament (hence the title ‘Out of the Picture’) because he chose to leave home and struggled for years to live and make art. For the next seventy plus pages Resnick and Dorfman engross you in a personal view of the New York Art world beginning in the 1930s. A subtext for the conversation is an engaging macro-perspective of the ‘New York School’ from its inception to its heyday.

Resnick’s account follows a number of interesting pathways such as the fact that early on he lived with de Kooning’s eventual wife, Elaine (and ironically de Kooning was with Pat Passlof). Or consider Resnick’s relationship with Pollock who at one point he invited to ‘Step outside’ at the Cedar Bar after an initial provocation. But he was also there (along with de Kooning) to steer a nervous Pollock clear of the bars while taking a break during the opening of his 1949 show. Resnick was one of the few individuals alive who was qualified to assess Pollock. He does so by pointing out Pollock’s weaknesses; but from a sympathetic viewpoint and ultimately, with respect for his intelligence and abilities. Resnick’s recollections relieve Pollock of his ‘Art god’ adornment while also countering his ‘piss-in-the-fireplace’ notoriety. This cutting through art historical analysis and sensationalist hubris is far more interesting in revealing Pollock as an individual rather than as cardboard cut-out.

The Studio School talks provide a fascinating view of Resnick’s forceful ideas regarding art, art making and artists. However, those ideas are presented with a refreshing undertone of uncertainty. Transcribed from tapes they possess a wonderful ‘off the cuff’ quality punctuated by humor and occasional audience discord. But they go right to the core of Resnick’s beliefs and demand a concentrated reading.

There are portions of the talks that don’t completely make sense such as Resnick’s assault on music. At one point he says, “.if you know anything about painting, you hate music.” further pointing out that music is poisonous. Is this just provocation, an attack on another medium or an absolutist’s statement? It’s not clear and when pressed by the audience his explanation is still not entirely satisfactory. At other times when challenged, Resnick defends his position by referring to his accumulated knowledge and experience over his questioners. This is weak and as a reader I was yearning to ask my own follow-up questions. But these are isolated criticisms. For the most part Resnick delightfully meanders through his subject matter in what amounts to a captivating journey through a wilderness of ideas.

The two panel discussions present the opportunity to see Resnick among his contemporaries; especially the ‘Attack!’ panel that took place January 1st, 1960. Chaired by Resnick and Ad Reinhardt ‘confrontational’ just begins to describe the event. The transcript offers an absorbing demarcation of the sea change that occurred when commercial success in the art world collided with the New York School artists’ decades long commitment and suffering for their idealism and integrity. Attack! represents one of the last documented gatherings of artists whose passionately fueled collective sensibility and veracity was something worth arguing and even fighting over. (Harold Rosenberg, immediately after hearing himself quoted by Resnick, was angered enough to get up and leave and de Kooning nearly got into a fist fight at one point). Shortly thereafter the art world moved on to embrace, indeed celebrate, the obtuse detached commercialism of Pop Art and the once intimate New York art community began to come apart.

Pat Passlof’s remembrance provides an excellent post-script. Presented in the same spirit as the interviews it brings a divergent view of the period plus a different personal take on Resnick. Passlof represents the younger generation of artists from that time and from her we learn of how the first contemporary art galleries sprouted up on East 10th street beginning with the cooperative Tanager gallery. There was also occasional friction between the younger and older artists. At one point, Passlof and others had been given permission to use ‘The Club’facilities for an alternative version of the Friday meetings on an off night. (The Club was the formal organization of the New York School that met weekly to discuss art and ideas). However, this was eventually revoked by the older artists in what appears to be fear of competition. One of the most touching accounts is Passlof’s portrayal of Franz Kline; of his character as well as being a character and of him tearfully breaking the news to everyone at Cedar Bar of the illness that eventually took his life.

Overall this book functions very well on a couple of significant levels. You get to know Milton Resnick the artist as an indisputable member of the New York School who was nevertheless separate from it – an individualist’s individual. Also you are treated to an intimate viewpoint as inseparable from a greater historical perspective; in short, a first person account of the birth and culmination of an authentically American art form.

With any visual artist, but especially for one of this magnitude, I wanted to see a lot more of his art. Still, the 16 reproductions of Resnick’s paintings present an adequate survey of his work. The period photographs sprinkled lightly throughout the content add context without distraction. The brilliant inclusion of maps indicating where artist’s studios once were also recreates a sense of place. At the completion of this book you walk away with a genuine sense of knowing Milton Resnick both personally and professionally. The downside is the sharp poignant edge this adds to his tragic death.

The post Out of the Picture – Milton Resnick and the New York School appeared first on artcritical.