Article from Hit Parade 1981 Premiere
JOEL RESNICOFF
By Francis Toohey
It's August and it is tropic hot. Standing in the rum-bright light of the landing we hear drums coming
from inside the door. We hear laughter --
Looking as dark and loose as a jungle crawler, with a sculpted black woman by his side, the
odd-man-out and in-crowd-item among New York fashion illustrators gestures to welcome us. He
introduces his representative, Carolyn Brindle, with a carnival air, and retreats to subdue the stereo.
The softened patter of the dance beat lulls us into our seats. We are offered fresh fruit juices. We
settle down to sip thick pink liquids.
"You're right, you're right," Joel Resnicoff calls out, tossing his locks like a cockatoo as we begin to
talk. "I love all primitive art--because I consider myself to be a primitive person. Primitive in terms
of getting back to basics. Cutting through the bullshit and all the games," he emphasizes, drawing his
purple-swaddled limbs up under him in the chair. "Then I deal with how I really feel and try to put
what I feel into what I do. I think the word 'primitive' connotes sophistication, too. They share a
certain simplicity."
Resnicoff rests upon his haunches and ponders what he said. Here and there his zombie-blank
drawings or mannequins stare out at us mere mortals, as impassively as African masks They are at
once naive and knowing. They're all planes and angles like Picasso's calm Dame: d'Avignor.
"When I first took my book around," Resnicoff admits, "the art directors used to start to shake." He
laughs. "They didn't know what to say to me. Finally, they'd say, "We don't know what to do with
this. We don't know what to say. We think we like it." But I knew it was going to take awhile for
them to understand my work. Also, I knew that the more I took it around to them, the more their
eyes would get used to it. They're still not used to it. Right?" He chuckles, turning to his rep. Carolyn
rallys to him, leaning closer into our circle before speaking in a soft deliberate tone. "I'm known for
repping illustrators and I can say that Joel's work now is becoming an in thing. People look at it and
realize that they've seen a piece here and a piece there--but when you show them an entire book, they
realize that he's done a lot of work. And the clients are so varied. Think about postcards," Carolyn
enthuses, pointing out some designs currently selling in stores."He's done magazines. He's done ads.
All of a sudden, it's kind of acceptable. Look at the industry and the people now," she nods,"When the
money gets tight and the clothing gets dull, you've gotta pull something in like a Resnicoff to get your
clothing off the shelf."
Carolyn strokes the plastic sleeves of her friend's portfolio. Page after simmering page of figures
shiver with the colors as she flips through unpublished work. Resnicoff's work-in-print takes up yet
another book: Carribean-flavored sections, covers for the Soho News, and fashion ads, sleek
contributions to manhattan Catalogue, four-color spreads from Italian and Japanese publications.
Now Resnicoff speaks for himself. "The way I'd like for it to be is this: I think fine art should be
commercial, too. I think there is a need for everything in the form of art to be important, to be
prominent. I mean, rather than taking ad space and fillng it up with garbage, it could be tasteful
through-out. We've all reached a level of sophication with our technology...that I see no reason why we
can't bring everybody visually up to another level. At the turn of the century, all the great masters
were doing book illustrations and things like that. I'd like to make fashion art important, instead of
letting it stay a situation where the cheapest person gets the job."
We speculate that in years to come, Resnicoff's art might be likened to the advertising triumphs of
Mucha and Toulouse-Lautrec or to the graphic abandon of advertising during its artsy heyday of the
30s.
Resnicoff looks flattered. "A lot of times I have to make the situation -- you know-- I have to think
of the idea and the purpose and then sell the whole package to a clint. I had one project last year that I
tried my hardest to make happen. It fell through, but I thought it was really exciting. It was conceived
with a particular shoe company in these big paper dolls that sit up -- you saw a couple of them in my
book," he explains, waving a fine hand toward his portfolio. "What I wanted to do with them was to
hook up with a store and do a whole campaign using the dolls instead of live models, and take them out
and photograph them on a sailboat or in, say, a 747. But no one was ready to try it." Resnicoff shakes
his head patiently.
"Another problem I've had came about from actually getting a job. I'd worked on ads for one store for
about six months and my ads were so distinctive that everybody said, "Oh, you're the Armadillo
artist." My work became too identifiable with one place--and there wasn't enough work there doing
one ad illustration a month to make it very profitable to me."
There's a problem with editorial illustration, too," Resnicoff continues. "Let's say a magazine wants
to do a spread on swimwear. They then take the art director, the stylist, the make up person, half a
dozen models, a few assistants, and a few people to carry the luggage, and they all go somewhere exotic
for two weeks and come back. Their budget is phenomenal," he yelps. "For an illustrator to depict
the same clothes would bring in no more than $200. Instead of spending all of that money they could
send me to the same place and let me do the same job. Give me the ticket! One group went to
Australia and used only a picket fence. There must be better scenery than that! I suggested this once
to an art director and he got very vindictive," Resnicofff relates, an insinuating smile flicering across
his lips. We interrupt to suggest gracefully that with the economy the way it is today, our magazine
just might take him up on such an offer--and might just as readily hand him a National Geographic in
lieu of the actual local! But Joel doesn't get vindictive. Instead, he laughs, suggeting a compromise
with a location job on the Lower East side. We ask for references!
Continued: click here