Thoughts That Cure Radically: Pat Passlof ‘Recent Paintings 2005-2011’ Elizabeth Harris Gallery

Pat Passlof’s unexpectedly posthumous one person exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York City marks the passing of a certain pictorial consciousness. In addition to the dozen or so paintings made during the last decade, the exhibition unfolds into a dirge for the New York School’s promise and capability. Pat Passlof, who died at 83 on November 13 just a week before her show was scheduled to open, was married for a half a century to the iconoclastic and prickly painter Milton Resnick. Passlof, more so than the already under recognized Resnick, held a quiet reputation in relation to the brighter lights of de Kooning and Kline. Like them, however, Passlof maintained a true believer’s faith in the alchemy of painting. In a documentary shown in conjunction with the exhibition, Passlof, who taught at the College of Staten Island for several years as a painting professor, states that, “All painting since 1850 is based on Cézanne. I know I am certainly based on Cézanne.” The documentary also shows Passlof painting in her studio, a large former Synagogue on Forsythe Street that was located around the corner from Milton Resnick’s studio, also a former Synagogue. Painting confidently in her light filled studio with generous amounts of Williamsburg paint (Cadmium Green scooped straight out of the tin or Italian Pink squeezed directly from the tube to the canvas), Passlof speaks to the first mark releasing a force onto the canvas, which in turn is countered by the next mark, which will release its own counter force onto the picture plane, a force that will be corrected and restated with each additional mark throughout the painting's creation. The paintings in the exhibition, like the painting shown in the video, range in color from pastel to dung. Elements of figures and horizon lines creep into some pictures, while grids of circles or marks anchor other compositions. Similar to Resnick’s, ‘Elephant in the Room’ exhibition of late paintings held at Cheim and Reid last month, Passlof’s paintings do not create spatial illusion. Object-like in their materiality, space comes through intimations of physically sensed sky or earth. Passlof, like her partner Resnick, made paintings with her fingers and nostrils. Guileless, Passlof intends for her paintings to perform an obsolete task, that is, transform the viewer’s perception. Honeysuckle and verdant, Passlof’s last one person exhibition marks time until all such intentions have vanished.