Day Seven

Benda 08
This week I have felt the need to pull the scraps of paper together that I have collected with some of my favorite quotes. I feel strongly that the Abstract Expressionist movement embodies Art without the trapping or comfort of representation. Milton Resnick, who I have quoted often this week rattled a few cages, upset the apple cart and challenged the status quo even among his peers. He often fought with deKooning and had a distaste for those who were not always true to the process. I feel he was more concerned with painting as a verb. He is quoted as saying in the book Milton Resnick and the New York School, by Geoffrey Dorfman; "If you intentionally avoid that unity within yourself, then you will intentionally avoid doing that in your work." He goes on to say "Painting has to become what you really are doing and not what you are reaching to outside of it."

Day Six

Milton Resnick 1947
Milton Resnick was a post war New York School Artist. He said of art, “Art is not a learning process. It is the very reverse of learning. It is the unhinging of your soul from your sight.”

A wonderful book to read Out of the Picture, Milton Resnick and the New York School, by Geoffrey Dorfman
Here you have an interesting combination of interviews and lectures woven together with fasinating historical information
on Abstract Expressionism in New York in the 1940's and 50's.


Benda 2009

Day Five

benda
"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of thigs you can't see from the center." Kurt Vonnegut

Day Four

If there is any suggestion, any hint of something in the image. The whole painting takes on the responsibility to fulfill that thought. The discipline is to remain thougtht-less.

Day Three

DeKooning- "We are going to spend all summer looking at this thing, one piece of paper or canvas at a time. And we are going to work at it until we get it exactly the way it is . Then we are going to keep looking at it until we have killed it. Then we are all going to keep working on it until we bring it back on its own."



The 100 days project of drawing birds.

Day Two

1950 photo for Life Magazine titled: The Irascibles. This photo was in response to the Metropolitan Museum of Art "American Art Today", a show in which the above artist were all excluded. 18 artist signed a protest letter sent to the Times, 15 are pictured in the above photo.
They are:
Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne

Does art protest anything anymore?
Peace anyone? 2008

Day One: The Beginning

Painting titled: Pot Boiling Over on the Stove
Benda 2009

"But what is a great deal of importance to you is what you do when you paint. How does it change you? What does it make of you?" Milton Resnick New York School Artist

(100 day committment to posting on this blog)