The Sumner Files, Episode Eleven: Milton Resnick, Part 1

This episode was not recorded by Adam. It was recorded by Sumner, on February 20, 1980, when he, along with Rudolph Grey and Duncan Lindsay, sat down for a conversation with abstract expressionist painter Milton Resnick. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Resnick taught at the New York Studio School, where he was Sumner’s most important teacher. Under Resnick’s tutelage, Sumner’s own painting switched from figurative to abstract, and remained abstract until he began doing figurative painting again in the post-Mars period, the end of the 1970s into the 1980s. During this same time he also made a practice of conducting interviews, with artists and others. He interviewed Resnick three times, of which this is the first. While Sumner published some of these interviews in Vacation magazine, these interviews with Resnick have never been released publicly in any form, to our knowledge. This one is a remarkable, wide-ranging conversation, covering many topics, but coming back repeatedly to questions around the value and meaning of art and the role of the artist in society. Adam is also now writing about Sumner on substack, approximately weekly. You can find out more about Milton Resnick at the web site of the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation.