As we discussed in yesterday's class, the New York School of poets got their name as a marketing stunt attempting to align them with the New York School of painters, their friends and compatriots, who were as much on the cutting edge of contemporary painting as the poets were on the cutting edge of contemporary literature. Ashbery, OHara, Koch and Schuyler hung out with these painters at the Cedar Bar, curated shows of their work at MoMA, wrote about their paintings, and collaborated with them on visual projects and plays.
Below, you'll find a small selection of works by a few New York School painters. What I want you to keep in mind here is that these aren't figurative works, they're not intended to be a paintings of something, but rather paintings in and of themselves: works which explore the potential of painting as an activity. In a similar fashion, the poems you'll be reading over the next ten weeks aren't often concerned with putting across a particular message or revealing a particular truth, as much as they're exploring the different things a writer can do with language.
(click on individual photos for larger images)
Jackson Pollock
Number 1, 1948
Untitled (Green Silver), 1949
Franz Kline
Chief, 1950
Painting Number 2, 1954
Willem de Kooning
Pink Angels, 1945
Woman I, 1950-52
Larry Rivers
Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1953
Pyrography: John Ashbery working, 1984 (you'll read Ashbery's poem of the same name next week)
Grace Hartigan
Untitled
Salute: the Canal to the Sky, 1960
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