COLLAGE ON VIEW
John Ashbery: The Construction of Fiction
at Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York, New York, USA
21 September-14 November 2018
“John Ashbery: The Construction of Fiction” is the most comprehensive exhibition of the poet’s visual art to date. It spans seven decades of work, presenting over 120 collages and archival materials. The prolific collage work produced by Ashbery over the last decade of his life allows new insights into the creative process of one of America’s most reticent poets. What many saw as a poet’s late foray into the visual arts was, in reality, a return to an early vocation that morphed into complex hybrids.
Composition, whether with images or words, was Ashbery’s métier and collage had been his technique of choice since he began his career as a poet. The mixing of visual arts and literature was also a distinctive trait in the works of authors that have been of central interest to Ashbery (1927-2017), namely French writer Raymond Roussel, and American outsider artist Henry Darger. Ashbery, like Roussel and Darger, conveyed narrative through the juxtaposition of seemingly random imagery that left to the reader the task of filling the gaps and making connections.
Curated by Antonio Sergio Bessa, Director of Curatorial and Education Programs, Bronx Museum.
(adapted from the gallery’s press materials)
INFORMATION
Pratt Manhattan Gallery
2nd Floor
144 West 14th Street
New York, New York 10011
(212) 647-7778
Hours:
Monday-Wednesday & Friday-Saturday, 11AM-6PM
Thursday, 11AM-8PM
Image:
Promenade
by John Ashbery
8.25″x8.125″
collage
2011
Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York