An Iron Will to Form

By ROBERT HUGHES

The New York art world forgives little but forgets much. It treats history as surf: either you catch the wave or you miss it. And a number of admirable painters have simply floated or drifted away onto other waters. One of these is Milton Resnick, 55, who has not exhibited in New York since 1964. His current exhibition at the Max Hutchinson Gallery marks the reappearance of an exceptional and independent vision.

"Here goes," wrote Resnick a decade ago. "I am not the follower of Monet. I am not an admirer or follower of De Kooning. I am not an action painter. I am not an abstract expressionist. I am not younger than anybody or older. I will not take my hat off to any other artist living or dead in all the world. I know this." With that, he turned his back on New York and moved to New Mexico. Resnick's interests as an abstract painter seemed to become obsolete, superseded by all those miles of unprimed duck, flat acrylic and masking tape.

Not any more--fortunately. In isolation, Resnick's work has developed steadily, and it now stands at an exhilarating pitch of concentration. He may not be Monet's follower, but his pictures do bear similarities to the late Monet lily ponds, not only in format --they are usually long, narrow rectangles, which drench the viewer in a field of color--but also in their light and density of surface. Resnick is a quite traditional painter, to the extent that he works in intimate, stroke-by-stroke contact with his painting. Brush marks pile on one another, forming a layered web of minutely graded pigment. (Some times the crust gets so thick that it is physically unwieldy: one large canvas in the show, Pink Fire, has 450 lbs. of paint on it.) The effect is not of a grand abstract-expressionist gesture, but rather a quiet, inexorable accumulation of incidents.

Light drifts slowly up through the paint and glows silently on the surface. Paintings that seem monochrome -- Resnick's work always has one dominant color, whether cobalt blue, pink or a peculiarly sensuous acid green -- disclose, on study, fascinating inflections and qualifications. These nuances constitute a structure. Resnick's paintings, unlike those of some so-called "lyrical abstractionists" 20 years his junior, never go soft or flossy; they are controlled by an iron will to form. Except that the forms do not become explicit; they remain stored in the pigment like warmth in stone. . Robert Hughes

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.