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In his new exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on Fifth Avenue, the distinguished American poet John Ashbery again succeeds in revealing his visual sensibilities through new collages. It was as recent as 2008 that the poet made his debut as a visual artist at the gallery. Now with collages with names like Promontory, Family, Corona, Confederate Money, and Motor Court, the poet deepens his art beyond that exhibited in his earlier show, “They Knew What They Wanted.” |
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“there is something orderly, compact, tightly organized—with just a whiff of this and a whiff of that—in Ashbery’s collages.”
John Ashberry, Triptych, 2010. Collage, 14 x 10.5 in. Courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery.
Ashbery Knew What They Wanted
Harriet Zinnes
In his new exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on Fifth Avenue, the distinguished American poet John Ashbery again succeeds in revealing his visual sensibilities through new collages. It was as recent as 2008 that the poet made his debut as a visual artist at the gallery. Now with collages with names like Promontory, Family, Corona, Confederate Money, and Motor Court, the poet deepens his art beyond that exhibited in his earlier show, “They Knew What They Wanted.”
There is something orderly, compact, tightly organized—with just a whiff of this and a whiff of that—in Ashbery’s collages, manifesting ingenuity and terrific ability in the assemblage of the different, the complex, and the ordinary. That the poet who has written works as varied as Where Shall I Wander, Wakefulness, Girls on the Run, and Your Name Is Here should turn to collage—layers of heterogeneous materials—is understandable. The poet early admired the collage novels of Max Ernst and some of the Cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque to the extent that even as an undergraduate at Harvard he used collage in his art and poetry. That he should continue to focus on the technique of collage may help us to understand his remarkable poetry such as his recent Planisphere (2009) and his translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations (2011).
This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. NY Arts Magazine is published by Abraham Lubelski. Sponsored by Broadway Gallery, NYC and World Art Media.
