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A good deal has been written
about the New York School in recent years Ð probably more about the poets
than the painters, as the poets have emerged from relative obscurity to
international recognition. The importance of the the interaction between
poets and painters as friends, admirers and collaborators has always been an
essential part of the story, but on occasion it's mentioned only in passing,
if at all, as if once mentioned nothing much more need be said.
Also, what's been difficult to see a lot of the time has been some of the
work itself. I don't mean the obvious, well-known works, such as the major
paintings by the likes of Willem de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Jane Freilicher,
Larry Rivers et al, or the poems of Ashbery, O'Hara, Koch and Schuyler from the "first
generation" of poets. Instead, what's been less easy to find and consequently
largely overlooked are the works that came about through collaboration
between poets and painters. We know these guys used to hang out at the San
Remo and the Cedar Tavern, drinking and talking and sometimes squabbling; we
know O'Hara worked at the Museum of Modern Art and was for a lot of the time
something like the "social secretary" around whom so much activity
revolved; we know painters painted poets and poets collaborated with
painters, and that the poets have written art criticism; and we know (more or
less) their various sleeping arrangements. But a detailed history of this
social grouping and the collaborative works that came out of those intense
and intimate relationships has not been so easy to see. Back in the 1950s and
60s and into the 1970s a lot of the art that came out of the social milieu
that was "the New York School" enjoyed only a very limited audience
Ð indeed, some of that stuff was the result of friends making things (poems,
plays, visual art) with and for friends, with little or no concern for a
wider audience. I'm thinking of the little magazines, but in particular the
painter and poet collaborations; the little magazines were often produced
with an excitement and a sense of being part of a tight-knit social group, an
excitement that seems to have pretty much disappeared from Poetry World these
days, in addition to which much of what was made Ð whether a poet/painter
collaboration or a play Ð was largely experimental and often executed as much
in the spirit of fun and play than high seriousness.
But with New York School Painters & Poets:
Neon in Daylight this vital social and collaborative aspect of the New York
School is before us in an account supported by a huge range of primary
materials. In short, the work is allowed to speak for itself, and not only
through the more well-known and sometimes over-anthologized items. Here, in a
lavish, even sumptuous big book that I, for one, have drooled over Ð it
measures 9½ inches x 12½ inches (I don't know what that is in centimeters),
with thick glossy pages, and weighs the proverbial ton Ð we have photographs
of parties, readings, gatherings, and of poets and painters at work and play;
there are first-hand accounts from the major players by way of essays and
letters; there are marvellous reproductions of the key paintings and
collaborative artworks; there are also samples of the covers of most of the
important publications from the period, magazines and chapbooks, many of
which I'm pretty sure are seeing the light of day for the first time in many
years: poetry collections with covers by the artists, and little magazines
where poets and painters rubbed shoulders. The focus is fixed absolutely on
the collaborations and interactions between people, and it's fascinating.
While some of the material here has been relatively easy to find before now,
much of it has not, and it's great to see.
So primarily what you get for your money (and this book is not cheap - £40 on Amazon, I think) is a splendid collection of
works, beautifully presented. It looks like the proverbial coffee table book,
but it's much more than that. There are numerous full-page reproductions of
paintings and artworks, and the volume is generous in its use of size and
space: for example, John Ashbery, in the course of an essay on Jane
Freilicher, discusses her "The Painting Table", and over the page
the painting is reproduced on a double-page spread; Frank O'Hara's
much-anthologized "Why I Am Not a Painter" sits alone on one page,
with Mike Goldberg's "Sardines" taking up the opposite page; Grace
Hartigan's "Oranges" are spread across four pages; the O'Hara and
Rivers "Stones" series is reproduced in its entirety; and there are
artist-designed covers of now legendary little magazines such as Folder, C
and Big Sky.
The list goes on and on, and it's a veritable feast for the eyes as well as
for the intellect, taking us from the post-war friendship and collaborations
of poet and dance critic Edwin Denby and photographer Rudy Burckhardt, key
figures both, through to the late 1970s Ð so it deals with the first and
second generation "New York School", the date parameters, as Jenni
Quilter explains, being set by the reasoning that "the New York School
was largely a social circle, it makes sense to trace the creation and dissipation
of that historically specific circle in particular." The period covered
means substantial space is spent looking at the work of artists some people
may not be so familiar with, such as George Schneeman and Trevor Winkfield,
and to poets like Ron Padgett, Ted Berrigan and Ann Waldman, central figures
in the artistic community centred around the Poetry Project at St. Mark's
Church, founded in 1966. The work of Joe Brainard is a particular delight,
and it's refreshing to have a book about the New York School that sees beyond
the more famous poetry quartet of Ashbery, O'Hara, Koch and Schuyler:
Jenni Quilter's accompanying text is a mixture of solid factual information
and thoughtful commentary, and it makes this much more than a mere collection
of glossy reproductions. It's an account of a particular approach to the
making of art, and of the exhilaration to be found in the creative process,
an approach and a sensibility that is never less than inspiring. (Of course,
some people think these poets and painters are rubbish, but they're wrong.) If one were
to point to a fault, it might be that the book is largely uncritical. The
closest Quilter comes to acknowledging any weakness in the works is the
admission that sometimes the playfulness resulted in art that was slight and
a little silly. But since what is really happening here is that we are being
given the work, and the work and its makers are being allowed to speak for
themselves, that seems like a pretty minor quibble. And, of course, the
understanding that the slight and the silly have a place in our lives and
also in our art, and are too important to lose, is an aspect of the New York
School sensibility that, if lost, the entire edifice may well collapse around
our ears. But anyway, this book is more of a narrative and an exhibition than
a critical treatise, and it's a good read.
Given that the emphasis is on the collaborative, it's not surprising this is
a startlingly social book, and the social is very much the theme behind the
show. People are almost always
with other people, enjoying each other's company and throwing ideas around
and, more often than not, producing impromptu art because it's good to do. In
Quilter's words, in the 1950s "These artists and poets were making their
way in the New York art world, and somehow, making something Ð a sociability,
sensibility, whatever it was Ð together." As Koch later recalled,
"We inspired each other, we envied each other, we emulated each other....
we were almost entirely dependent on each other for support. Each had to be
better than the others but if one flopped we all did." Their collective
approach to making art is more than once described as reckless. Ashbery, in
his essay "The Invisible
Avant-garde", says "Most reckless things are beautiful in
some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art
beautiful....." The shared
sensibility feeding the collaborative processes and the creative acts here
rejects what we are usually told art is: the biggest artistic sin for these
people was/is to be dull.
I don't think it's an overstatement to say that the art and poetry on show
here pulsates with energy. One can sense the excitement as well as the
understanding that not every bit of art that was made "worked", but
that was fine, too. Somewhere in all this, Kenneth Koch says "all kinds
of things can and must exist side by side at any given moment, and that is
what life and creating are all about." Jenni Quilter points to "a
shared sensibility that is resolutely ephemeral .... these objects were
considered more creative by-product than principal event, a consequence of
fun with friends." Taking chances with ideas to see what happens was
part of the point, a point that informs the major works as well as the minor,
and this volume sheds an exciting light on the more famous works. It also
reminds us just how dull so much other poetry and art is. Did I already say
it's inspiring? Oh yeah, I already said that.
©
Martin Stannard, 2015
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