The New York School (synonymous with abstract expressionist painting) was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City. The poets, painters, composers, dancers, and musicians often drew inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular action painting, abstract expressionism, Jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world's vanguard circle.
The poets
Concerning the New York School poets, critics argued that their work was a reaction to the Confessionalist movement in Contemporary Poetry. Their poetic subject matter was often light, violent, or observational, while their writing style was often described as cosmopolitan and world-traveled. The poets often wrote in an immediate and spontaneous manner reminiscent of stream of consciousness writing, often using vivid imagery. They drew on inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular the action painting of their friends in the New York City art world circle like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
Poets often associated with the New York School include; John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, Barbara Guest, Ted Berrigan, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, Kenward Elmslie, Frank Lima, Ron Padgett, Lewis Warsh and Joseph Ceravolo.
O'Hara was at the center of the group before his death in 1966. Because of his numerous friendships and post as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, he provided connections between the poets and painters like Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter and Larry Rivers (also his lover). There were many joint works and collaborations: Rivers inspired a play by Koch, Koch and Ashbery together wrote the poem "A Postcard to Popeye", Ashbery and Schuyler wrote the novel A Nest of Ninnies, and Schuyler collaborated on an ode with O'Hara, whose portrait was painted by Rivers.
Koch, O'Hara, Schuyler and Ashbery were quite different as poets, but they admired each other and had much in common personally:
- Except for Schuyler, all overlapped at Harvard University,
- Except for Koch, all were or are homosexual,
- Except for Ashbery, all did military service,
- Except for Koch, all reviewed art,
- Except for Ashbery, all lived in New York during their formative years as poets.
All four were inspired by French Surrealists like Raymond Roussel, Pierre Reverdy and Guillaume Apollinaire. David Lehman, in his book on the New York poets, wrote, "They favored wit, humor and the advanced irony of the blague (that is, the insolent prank or jest) in ways more suggestive of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg than of the New York School abstract expressionist painters after whom they were named."
The Beats
There are also commonalities between the New York School and the members of the beat generation poets also active in 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s New York City, including Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Diane di Prima, Diane Wakoski, Anne Waldman, Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Norris Embry, and several others. Many of the poets, including Koch, Ashbery, Ginsberg, and Kerouac attended Columbia University.
The composers
The term also refers to a circle of composers in the 1950s which included John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff. Their music paralleled the music and events of the Fluxus group, and drew its name from the Abstract Expressionist painters above. In the 1960s the work of the avant-garde Minimalist composers La Monte Young, Philip Glass, Tony Conrad, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley became prominent in the New York art world.
The dancers
During the 1960s the Judson Dance Theater located at the Judson Memorial Church, New York City, revolutionized Modern dance. Combining in new ways the idea of Performance art, radical and new Choreography, sound from avant-garde composers, and dancers in collaboration with several New York School Visual artists. The group of artists that formed Judson Dance Theater are considered the founders of Postmodern dance. The theater grew out of a dance composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage. The artists involved with Judson Dance Theater were avant-garde experimenatalists who rejected the confines of ballet technique, vocabulary and theory.
The first Judson concert took place on July 6, 1962, with dance works presented by Steve Paxton, Freddie Herko, David Gordon, Alex and Deborah Hay, Yvonne Rainer, Elaine Summers, William Davis, and Ruth Emerson. Seminal dance artists that were a part of the Judson Dance Theater include: David Gordon, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Deborah Hay, Elaine Summers, Sally Gross, Aileen Passloff, and Meredith Monk. The years 1962 to 1964 are considered the golden age of the Judson Dance Theater.
During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s New York School artists collaborated with several other choreographer / dancers including: Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and Paul Taylor.
Jazz
The new Bebop and cool jazz musicians in the 1940s and 1950s featuring Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Ahmad Jamal and Gerry Mulligan coincided with the New York School and Abstract expressionism. Later new jazz musicians such as Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane coincided with Hard-edge painting, Minimalism, Color Field, Lyrical Abstraction, and Pop art of the 1960s.
New York School abstract expressionists of the 1950s
The New York School which represented the New York abstract expressionists of the 1950s was documented through a series of artists' committee invitational exhibitions commencing with the 9th Street Art Exhibition in 1951 and followed by consecutive exhibitions at the Stable Gallery, NYC: Second Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1953; Third Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1954; Fourth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, 1955; Fifth Annual Exhibitions of Painting and Sculpture, 1956 and Sixth New York Artists’ Annual Exhibition, 1957.
References
Bibliography
- Philip Pavia; Natalie Edgar, Club without walls: selection from the Journals of Philip Pavia (New York : Midmarch Arts, 2007.)
- Irving Sandler, ‘’The New York School: the painters & sculptors of the fifties,’’ (New York; London : Harper and Row, 1978.) ISBN 0-06-438505-1, ISBN 978-0-06-438505-3
- Irving Sandler, ‘’ The triumph of American painting: a history of abstract expressionism,’’ (New York; London : Harper and Row, 1977.) ISBN 0-06-430075-7, ISBN 978-0-06-430075-9
- Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4
- Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
- Statutes of Liberty, The New York School of Poets, Geoff Ward, Second Edition, 2001
- The New American Poetry, 1945â€"1960, Donald Merriam Allen, 1969
- An Anthology of New York Poets, Ron Padgett (ed.) and David Shapiro (ed.), 1970
- Frank O'Hara: Poet Among Painters, Marjorie Perloff, 1977
- The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, David Lehman, 1998
- Maurice Tuchman (ed.), The New York School, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1965.
- Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art : Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1983.