Milton Resnick (Painter in the Age of Painting)

Milton Resnick: Painter in the Age of Painting is the first biography to explore Resnick’s life and work, and his place among the New York City artists who became known as the abstract expressionists. Resnick was a founding member of The Club, an artists’ group that included Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Herman Cherry, and Ad Reinhardt. Author Geoffrey Dorfman knew Resnick well, and over thirty-five years had many lively discussions and arguments with Resnick about his paintings and the predicament of the artist in post-war American society. This intimate and discerning biography follows Resnick’s life from his birth in Bratslav, Ukraine, in 1917, through his experiences during the second World War, his time in Paris, and his eight decades in New York, where he married the painter Pat Passlof, and where together they each lived and worked in separate old synagogues on the Lower East Side. Resnick exhibited his paintings at galleries including Poindexter, Howard Wise, and Max Hutchinson. Resnick’s work was shown at Robert Miller Gallery from 1980s until 2006, and then at Cheim & Read. In 1985, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, hosted a major exhibition, Milton Resnick: Paintings 1945–1985, curated by Linda L. Cathcart. Dorfman gives Resnick and his paintings their overdue place in one of the most significant periods of modern art in America. 

From the Preface: 
Willem de Kooning was famously quoted as saying, “Art never seems to leave me peaceful or pure,” to which Ad Reinhardt countered (less famously,) “Art never seems to leave me vulgar or violent,” and that, perhaps too glibly, seems to sum up the post-war argument amongst painters in a nutshell. But by the time Resnick’s achievement reached its apogee, that famous decade was long past, and his vision of art had left such polarities in the rear-view mirror. Perhaps this is one of the wisdoms gathered over a long active life, but in any case it did not reconcile Milton to the world as it was or as it is. The kind of enlightenment we typically associate with aging did not bring with it reconciliation or comfort. The only salvation lay in his work, in knowing what to do with himself every morning. Endurance was to be achieved by trimming off excess parts of his life that interfered with what he wanted to do. He succeeded better at that than most anyone I’m aware of. That was, not surprisingly, Milton Resnick’s message to young people; “There’s no advantage to working for what you don’t want. There’s no advantage to paying for what you don’t want.” He taught that and he lived it.