Untitled 1988

Curator: Milton Resnick's "Untitled," painted in 1988. It’s a striking example of his later work. Editor: It's... overwhelming. Like a solid wall of textured gray. I feel the weight of the medium instantly. Curator: And indeed, Resnick was devoted to the physical presence of paint. This work is a prime illustration of so-called "matter painting", rendered in thick, expressive layers of oil. Editor: Absolutely, it's less about representation and more about the sheer labor of application. I imagine Resnick, repeatedly, deliberately building up these impastoed layers. The means of production are the message. Were the brushes specifically coarse to produce these furrows and ridges? Curator: I believe so. Resnick sought a kind of spirituality in the density of the pigment, engaging in an all-over application with few, if any, bare spots. This particular canvas exists in conversation with ideas about absence, emptiness and post-Holocaust trauma explored by other artists of the era. The subdued colour scheme lends the overall tone a distinctly muted gravity. Editor: The lack of color really focuses the attention on the process. We aren't distracted by hues, only the variations in value, from the darker grays to the hints of yellow barely noticeable around the bottom perimeter of the picture. It brings a material honesty to the foreground, challenging the art market, even its value and consumption in that context. Curator: That's certainly valid. Though for me it highlights questions around legacy and power structures in art history, Resnick, despite the obvious physical and intellectual investment reflected here, remains overshadowed. How much longer do we privilege form over a broader sense of societal and philosophical implications when talking about pieces such as these? Editor: Maybe the emphasis on materiality can challenge those orthodoxies precisely because it points back to the basic conditions of how art is even produced. Curator: Food for thought. An artwork and an artist deserving a new critical reading, no matter our preferred perspective. Editor: Indeed. There is always more than meets the eye here—literal and otherwise.