Old Masters, New Methods: ’s Icarus

121 Evelyn Austin How do the collages of poet John Ashbery relate to his poetry? Austin considers the image-text relationship through the visual work of one of America’s most renowned poets.

John Ashbery’s close relationship to the Winkfield, relationships that would have a big visual arts can be traced back to his very first and lasting influence on the artistic practices collection of poetry, which was published by of all three men.4 a gallery, rather than by a publishing house. Ashbery began creating collages in the Tibor de Nagy Gallery published Turandot 1940s. In 1977 he submitted the postcard col- and Other Poems in 1953, four years after lage L’Hevre Exquise to Artists’ Postcards Series Ashbery’s arrival in New York. Included were I, an exhibition and subsequent publication.5 four drawings by Ashbery’s close friend, the His work featured alongside that of friends painter Jane Freilicher. In 1956 Ashbery’s sec- and colleagues such as , John ond book of poetry, Some Trees, was awarded Cage, Robert Motherwell and Saul Steinberg. the Yale Younger Poets Prize by W.H. Auden.1 The following year he served as an advisor Among the poems was ‘Pantoum’, dedicated for the second series, accepting the work of, to visual artist Joseph Cornell. Ashbery first among others, Jane Freilicher and . came across Cornell’s work when he was a In 2006 The Sienese Shredder included four- young boy, and was immediately drawn to teen of his ‘postcard collages’ in its Winter the artist’s glass fronted shadowboxes (fig. volume.6 Another eclectic platform re-opened 1): three-dimensional collages including a its doors to Ashbery less than a year later: the large variety of seemingly disjunctive objects.2 poet made his solo debut as a visual artist When Some Trees was published, Ashbery had at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 2008, half a already left his close-knit, New York coterie of century after the gallery published his first artistic friends for the relative anonymity of collection of poems. He exhibited two-dozen , where he worked as a reluctant art critic small collages, most of which were the size and wrote the heavily fragmented poems that of postcards. In 2009 a selection of these would make up The Tennis Court Oath (1961).3 collages was printed in literary journal The It was also in Europe that Ashbery met writer Paris Review, and a second solo exhibition, Harry Mathews and visual artist Trevor Recent Collages, took place at Tibor de Nagy

122 Kunstlicht nr. 2 / 3 – 2012 1. Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Tilly Losch), ca. 1935-38, box construction, 25.4 x 23.5 x 5.4 cm, The Robert Lehrman Art Trust, Courtesy Aimee and Robert Lehrman, Washington, D.C.. (photo: Mark Gulezian/Quicksilver)

1 Ashbery and his friend and fellow poet 4 For a detailed analysis of the influence Ashbery, Mathews Frank O’Hara both applied for the prize. Auden was and Winkfield had on each other, see: J. Quilter, ‘“We hesitant to give it to any one of them (due to what he even imagined the posters”: collaborations between John considered their disjunctive, French style), but in the Ashbery, Harry Mathews and Trevor Winkfield’, Word & end favored Ashbery’s work. See: A. Epstein, Beautiful Image 25 (2009) 2, pp. 192-209. Enemies: Friendship and Postwar American Poetry, Oxford 5 In an interview with Kenward Elmslie, Tim Dlugos writes 2006, pp. 254-259. the following: ‘“I started making postcard collages 2 For an in-depth study on the relationship between litera- because of a dream John Ashbery had four or five years ture and visual art in the work of Cornell and Ashbery, ago,” Elmslie recalls. “He dreamed that he, [writer] Gerrit as well as on how the former influenced the latter, see: Henry, and I would all make collages and give them to Ellen Levy’s Criminal Ingenuity. Moore, Cornell, Ashbery, one of the other two, who would then write works based and the Struggle Between the Arts, Oxford 2011. Her book on the cards. So we did it.” Elmslie found that the process offers not only a significant insight into the two artists, “quickens my sight.” And the procedure still works. The but allows for further contemplation on the (institution- Alphabet Work is based entirely on the postcards which alized) distinction between the arts. will illustrate it.’ T. Dlugos, ‘The Postcard as an Object of 3 See: D. Herd, ‘An American in Paris: The Tennis Court Art’, Christopher Street 2 (1977) 6, pp. 53-54. Oath and the poetics of exile’ in: John Ashbery and Ameri- 6 J. Ashbery, ‘Postcard Collages’, The Sienese Shredder 1 can Poetry (2003), Manchester 2009, pp. 69-92. (2006), pp. 137-146. The Sienese Shredder is edited by art- ists Brice Brown and Trevor Winkfield.

123 Old Masters, New Methods: John Ashbery’s Icarus – Evelyn Austin 2. John Ashbery, Icarus, 2010, paper, 9 x 14 cm, Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York. in October 2011. From this latest exhibition Haynes was a family business just outside I would like to examine a recent work from Yellowstone, and the official photographer for 2010, namely Icarus (fig. 2). Characteristic of Yellowstone National Park. This means we are Ashbery’s visual oeuvre, this work makes use also provided with the name of the author and of the postcard for its basic material, and is the location depicted. In other words, it is fair ‘topped’ with sparse secondary imagery. How to say we develop a firm idea of the postcard’s does Icarus relate to Ashbery’s poetry, and origins. what does it reveal about his attitude towards Inside the borders, the postcard fea- the relationship between image and text? tures a photograph of Morning Glory Pool, a Icarus is a 9 x 14 cm collage. The basic hot spring in Yellowstone. Most of the image material is a linen postcard originating from is taken up by the pool, which is of a bright, 1934. Around the edges are beige borders, almost surreal blue. Two clouds of steam float which, at the top, bottom, and right, feature up from the water. Beyond the crude borders information about the postcard itself. In the of the pool, the deep-yellow sand spreads out top border we read: ‘©16049 – Morning Glory in accumulating layers, until it reaches a line Pool, Yellowstone National Park’, providing of pine trees that seems to encircle the spring. us with the location from where this image Through gaps between the trees we glimpse originates, and perhaps also where it was pur- another clearing, lined by yet another row of chased and from where it was sent. The cryptic trees. The pool, placed firmly in the middle ‘4A-H281’ on the right, we can imagine, refers of the photograph, seems to struggle with its to this specific postcard’s position within a surroundings. It is not quite embedded in the series, or within a manufacturing process. landscape, but rather seems to lie on top of it, In the lower border it states: ‘Copyright by pressing the sandy ground and the trees out- Haynes Studios Inc., Bozeman, Montana’. wards, getting ready to swallow the landscape

124 Kunstlicht nr. 2 / 3 – 2012 whole, waiting for the landscape to fold in looked like a long black coat enveloping the on it. But as we move back to the front of the falling figure in Ashbery’s collage, is actually picture, there is, of course, the painted image water from what must be the Icarian Sea into of a figure Ashbery has pasted into the photo- which Icarus fell, according to Ovid’s classical graph. The figure, which seems to be wearing myth. something that resembles a long black coat, But perhaps just as much as Icarus, is falling head first into the spring, his or her very literally, summons Icarus from Bruegel’s jacket turned up, revealing two bare legs and painting, it also brings to mind what must be feet. While at first glance the figure seems the most famous ekphrastic poem of the twen- terribly out of place, it actually balances out tieth century, ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ (1938) by the photograph by complying with the pulling W.H. Auden, who Ashbery has named as his force of the water; the pool’s water is set in ‘most significant poetic model’.8 In ‘Musée motion in a way that seems more natural than des Beaux Arts’ (named after the museum in the preexisting scene. Did Ashbery, as it were, Brussels where Auden saw Bruegel’s painting, sacrifice this figure to keep the pool calm? Or and where it hangs to this day) Auden con- is it the intervention of injecting this figure templates La chute d’Icare, describing it as an into the photograph that rendered an other- example of how man deals with suffering. wise harmless body of water, malevolent? The legs we see disappearing into Mor- […] the ploughman may ning Glory Pool belong not just to anyone: they Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, are Icarus’ legs as portrayed by Bruegel in his But for him it was not an important failure; painting La chute d’Icare (Fall of Icarus) (fig. 3).7 the sun shone The late sixteenth-century painting is divided As it had to on the white legs disappearing into three almost equal sections. From the into the green bottom right-hand corner, reaching upward to Water, and the expensive delicate ship that the top left, is a piece of land being ploughed must have seen by a farmer and horse. The land becomes less Something amazing, a boy falling out of the detailed as it merges into the coastline. The sky, viewer’s attention is drawn to the farmer, por- Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly trayed with his back towards the viewer, who on.9 is not only placed in the middle of the scene, but is also wearing a bright red shirt. Slightly The poet leaves Icarus to splash around in below him, a shepherd herds a pack of sheep, the periphery,10 referring to the tragedy first crowding the little patch of land they are gra- as ‘the splash’, subsequently summing up the zing on. The shepherd is staring upwards, his event by its elements, ‘the forsaken cry, […] the back turned towards the sea. Beside him his white legs disappearing into the green’, and dog faces the same direction. The top section concluding that what took place was noth- of the picture consists of the sky, cast gold ing more than ‘a boy falling out of the sky’. by the setting sun. The sea takes up most of The tragedy happens ‘while someone else is the middle part of the canvas. Painted a dark eating or opening a window or just walking turquoise, it is inhabited by multiple ships, dully along’.11 Icarus falls, it seems to Auden, boulders, and a small island. Hardly notice- unseen: no one has eyes for the tragedies of able, in the bottom right-hand corner, two legs others. disappear into the water with a splash. What

7 The painting was long thought to be Bruegel’s, but this 10 William Carlos Williams foreground Icarus more in is now considered very doubtful, seeing as the canvas is his 1960 poem ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’, in dated decades after Bruegel’s death in 1569. which the final lines read ‘this was / Icarus drowning’, 8 A. Wasley, The Age of Auden: Postwar Poetry and the Ameri- emphasizing both the event as well as the trivial manner can Scene, Princeton NJ 2011, p. 109. in which the other subjects in Bruegel’s painting dealt, or 9 W.H. Auden, ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, in: Collected Poems, failed to deal, with his fall. London 2007. 11 W.H. Auden, op. cit. (note 9).

125 Old Masters, New Methods: John Ashbery’s Icarus – Evelyn Austin In The Gazer’s Spirit, John Hollander mulation of objects over any one in particular, describes ekphrastic poetry as ‘representing when he writes: in language what is itself representing visually yet something else’.12 An important aspect of About what to put in your poem-painting: the study of ekphrasis is the concept of the Flowers are always nice, particularly del- paragonal relationship between the poet and phinium. the painter. Namely, ekphrasis ‘evokes the Names of boys you once knew and their power of the silent image even as it subjects sleds, that power to the rival authority of language’.13 Skyrockets are good-do they still exist? Standing before Bruegel’s work in the Musées There are a lot of other things of the same Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brus- quality sels, Auden’s narrator, one could say, speaks As those I’ve mentioned.18 for the painting, attributing details to its various elements, creating a narrative that In Winkfield’s visual work one sees a corre- supposedly encompasses and transcends the sponding shifting and changing of signs and picture. symbols, as well as a deferral of narrative. The big difference between how Auden According to Quilter, ‘Electric candles or light and Ashbery deal with Bruegel’s work be- bulbs might also be ice creams or torches […] comes immediately apparent: whereas Auden and doves could be planes […]. In [the draw- represents the visual in words, Ashbery ap- ing] A Novel, a sheaf of corn is also an arrow- proaches the visual on its own terms, mak- head, and a bubble might be a bomb’.19 ing use of the ‘original’ source material.14 Although Quilter takes into account Ashbery’s direct use of Bruegel compared to both Winkfield’s visual and textual work, Auden’s image-to-text remediation, reveals she fails to consider Ashbery’s collages. In something about Ashbery’s and Auden’s dif- Ashbery’s own words, he has ‘a visual artist’s fering attitudes towards image-text relation- take on how a poem should be, for instance, “I ships. Whereas Auden speaks for the painting, should move a piece of this over there”; “This Ashbery speaks with it, emphasizing the (re-) needs a certain color, rather than a certain use and (re-)mediation of materials, but also, word”’.20 But what about Ashbery’s take on as a poet, calling into question supposed how his own visual work should be? Soothing boundaries between visual art and literature, the hot spring by offering it the falling figure, between what visual artists and poets should Ashbery seems to create a narrative continuity and should not do, or use. foreign not only to his poetry, but also to the Writer Jenni Quilter identifies the influ- aesthetics of Winkfield and Mathews. Is ence of as the common Ashbery’s visual work simply, as critics have factor in the work of Ashbery, Harry Mathews, put it, ‘formally bright and transparent, […] and Trevor Winkfield.15 She writes: ‘Roussel’s providing gentle relief’ from his ‘deeply, noto- influence would account for the sudden and riously difficult’ poetry?21 Or can the analogy abrupt changes of subject and the arcane of the aesthetics of Ashbery, Mathews, and sentence constructions in all three men’s writ- Winkfield, as described by Quilter, be extend- ing’.16 According to Mathews, the meaning of ed to include Ashbery’s postcard collages? phrases lay not in the vocabulary, the ‘nouns Besides the chosen medium, there is and verbs’, but rather in the syntactic arrange- another big difference between the work by ments.17 Accordingly, in the act of translating Auden and that by Ashbery that I have already it is more important to leave the syntax intact touched on, namely that Auden ‘speaks for’ than it is to find matching words, which would and Ashbery ‘speaks with’ the Icarus’s that result merely in a copy of the content of the came before theirs. In his poem, Auden, as text, but would fail to produce a similar effect. it were, explains Bruegel’s painting (which In the 1977 poem ‘And Ut Pictora Poesis Is Her itself proclaims to disclose or explicate Ovid’s Name’, Ashbery, too, seems to favor the accu- textual work), and in doing so creates a new narrative about human suffering. Ashbery’s

126 Kunstlicht nr. 2 / 3 – 2012 3. Pieter Bruegel, Fall of Icarus, oil on canvas, 73.5 x 112 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. use of Icarus, however, draws the attention to- mentary character, of reanimating bits of the wards these other texts, rather than away from past without asserting that such signs of life them. It does not explain or interpret, but constitute a veritable resurrection.’22 What, or rather shows. The layers of text, which Auden who, are we really looking at? Icarus by Ovid, forces to the background in favor of his own, by Bruegel, by Auden? Or simply a figure in a are brought to the fore by Ashbery in a visual long black raincoat falling into Morning Glory game of playful cut-and-paste. Or, in Ellen Pool, by Ashbery? Levy’s words, it is the ‘practice of making art Furthermore, the insertion of the falling out of fragments without denying their frag- figure reveals something about the textual

12 J. Hollander, The Gazer’s Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent and was first published in the 1962 Portfolio and ARTnews Works of Art, Chicago 1995, p. 4. Annual under the title ‘Re-establishing Raymond Rous- 13 J. Heffernan, The Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphra- sel’. The annual also included the first chapter of Impres- sis from Homer to Ashbery, Chicago 1993, p. 1. sions of Africa, translated by Ashbery. 14 Also, whereas Auden contemplates a famous painting by 16 J. Quilter, op. cit. (note 1), p. 195. an Old Master in a classical, authoritative museum, 17 Ibid., p. 196. Ashbery is most probably viewing a cheap, widely-availa- 18 J. Ashbery, ‘And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name’, Houseboat ble reproduction. For more on Ashbery and mass culture Days, New York 1977, pp. 45-46. and reproductions, see: D. Bromwich, Skeptical Music: 19 J. Quilter, op. cit. (note 1), p. 202. Essays on Modern Poetry, Chicago 2001. 20 N. Shengold, J. May, ‘John Ashbery’, River of Words: Por- 15 Ashbery, Mathews, and Winkfield contributed to traits of Hudson Valley Writers, Albany 2010, pp. 209-214. Roussel’s How I Wrote Certain of My Books, ‘a text from 21 D. Cohen, ‘John Ashbery: Collages at Tibor de Nagy Gal- which Winkfield derived many of his early painting lery, Mario Naves: Postcards from Florida at Elizabeth methods.’ T. Diggory, Encyclopedia of the New York School Harris Gallery and Trevor Winkfield at Tibor de Poets, New York 2009, p. 505. The introduction to this Nagy Gallery’, Artcritical, n.p., 14 Sep. 2008. Retrieved collection was written by Ashbery in 1961 whilst living in from www.artcritical.com on 13 Oct. 2011. Paris (where he had planned to write a thesis on Roussel) 22 E. Levy, op. cit. (note 2), p. xxvii.

127 Old Masters, New Methods: John Ashbery’s Icarus – Evelyn Austin information. Whereas the text supposedly Icarus makes, or allows, us to reexamine the pinpointed not only exactly what we saw in identity of the bare-footed, falling figure. After the photograph, but claimed that picture all, if ‘doves could be planes’ not every boy corresponded with a location outside of the that falls from the sky has to be Icarus. More text, it is actually made up of non-specific than merely calling into question our com- placeholders. Like in Winkfield’s visual work, monplaces, an act not unfamiliar, Ashbery where ‘doves could be planes […] and a bubble leads us to reconsider the supposedly funda- might be a bomb,’ ‘©16049 – Morning Glory mental distinction between image and text, Pool, Yellowstone National Park’ is actually and between (the work of) painters and poets. saying nothing other than ‘Title’. ‘Copyright In doing so he not only invites scholars to con- by Haynes Studios Inc., Bozeman, Montana’ sider literature and visual art in a new light, means ‘Author’, and the cryptic ‘4A-H281’ but encourages writers and visual artists to do could mean as much as ‘place in collection/ the same. oeuvre’. Remarkably, this is the informa- tion Tibor de Nagy provides to accompany the work: Icarus (1 ½ x 5 ½ inches) by John I would like to thank Diederik Oostdijk for his Ashbery. 1/21 (the first of twenty-one collages), comments on an earlier draft of this article. 2010. The textual information on the postcard has changed meaning. It no longer refers to a ‘real’ location outside the text, but to yet another text. Personalia In 1955 Auden warned Ashbery for ‘the great danger with any “surrealistic” style, Evelyn Austin is enrolled in the Research namely of confusing authentic non-logical Master Literature at the Vrije Universiteit relations which arouse wonder with accidental Amsterdam and is an editor for Kunstlicht. Her work focuses on the relation- ones which arouse mere surprise and in the ship between visual art and literature, and 23 end fatigue’. Auden’s words did not deter more specifically on the collaborative works Ashbery. His second collection, The of the New York School poets and painters. Tennis Court Oath, reveled in early postmod- ern thought and the influence of the Surreal- ists and Dadaists, making use of ‘“the classic strategies of the historical avant-garde”: “shock, chance, and defamiliarization”’24. I believe Icarus can be seen as a continua- tion of the aesthetics Ashbery has displayed throughout his textual work, one that perhaps refuses to commit to the sharp distinction between visual art and literature, and which no longer believes in the possibility of poetry to supply us with grand narratives. In 1929 Benjamin wrote: ‘[The Dadaists] mounted old rags, tram tickets, pieces of glass, buttons, matches and were saying: You can no longer handle reality. Not this little pile of garbage and not the troop movements, the flu epi- demic and the banknotes.’25 In a like manner,

23 W.H. Auden, unpublished letter to F. O’Hara, 3 June 24 A. Ross, ‘Taking the Tennis Court Oath’ (1995), as quoted 1955, quoted in: M. Perloff, The Poetics of Indeterminacy: in: E. Levy, op. cit. (note 2), p. 165. Rimbaud to Cage, Evanston, IL 1981, pp. 249-250. 25 W. Benjamin, cited in: S. Spieker, The Big Archive: Art From Bureaucracy, Cambridge, MA 2008, p. 8.

128 Kunstlicht nr. 2 / 3 – 2012