Biography from Levis Fine Art:
| The 1940’s and 50’s allowed for the freedom of artistic license. Resnick, along with de Kooning, Kline, Pollock, de Pavia, Guston and others, continued to develop their artistic sensibilities using the “Club” as a forum for dialogue, theory and philosophical critique. In 1950 Life magazine published an article on Jackson Pollock crowning him as the King of modern art world, a battle which pitted him against de Kooning and would divide the artist community into two camps. Resnick, refusing to pick sides, continued on his own personal search for honesty within his art. As such, his work during the next several decades represented tremendous growth and personal insight.
By the mid-1960’s Resnick showed more interest in texture than color, as his palettes turn arguably more monochromatic. By the mid 70’s and into the 80’s, his works progressively combine a darker, more complex color palette with significantly smaller and more repetitive brushstrokes, creating monochromatic, heavily laden paintings with just a glimpse or “key” of contrasting color. His 1980’s works were so heavily laden with layers of sculptured paint that he used wax-impregnated, thick honeycomb boards to withstand the weight of the paint
Jack Tworkov described Resnick’s oeuvre as relating much to Soutine “…[both Resnick’s and Soutine’s] passion is not for the picture as a thing, but for the creative process itself. It is meant to have impact on the soul….it is the unpremeditated form the picture takes as a result of the struggle to express motive, to capture the sequence of ephemeral experience, the tragic anxiety, the constant brooding over being and not-being, over bloom and decay, over life and death. It is not technique, but process”.
Throughout his career, Resnick was obsessed with the viscosity of the paint, the fervor of total detachment of the recognizable, and the transient ability of sustaining snapshots of utter honesty within a painting. For these reasons, he remains a testament to the aesthetic philosophies which captured and dominated our nation during the mid-20th century.
© 2008 Levis Fine Art, Inc.
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Biography from AskART:
| A painter, especially noted for Abstract Expressionism, Milton Resnick once wrote: . . art need not be more than a serious but wanton game of leap-frog and that newism is not its goal. (Herskovic 282).
Milton Resnick was born in Russia, 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 Institute 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 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 near Willem de Kooning with whom he formed a close friendship in the 1960s. 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 Brancusi.
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 met artist Pat Passlof, whom he married in 1961.
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.
During his career, Resnick was also an art educator, who taught at Pratt Institute and New York University beginning 1964.
Sources include:
A World of Art Biographical Sketches, http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/wabios/resnick.html
Marika Herskovic, Editor, "American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s"
Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art" |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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Milton Resnick is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Abstract Expressionism
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