The New York School Project, led by art historian Krisztina Kovács and poet Péter Závada, will be launched on 1 June. The event is the eponym of the New York School, one of the most prominent and influential „moments” in 20th century art history, spanning three decades. Its impact stretched from the 1950s to the 1980s, interweaving visual art, literature, music and dance. The vibrant cultural world and exciting collaborations completely changed the art scene – putting New York on the map of the artistic world.
When we hear the term „New York School”, we shouldn’t think of institutions, lessons or classrooms – „New York School” is more of an umbrella term applied to the loose grouping of artists that formed from the poets, painters, dancers and musicians who settled in New York in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. The term was invented by Robert Motherwell, — it encompasses abstract expressionism, action painting, color field painting, jazz, avant-garde theater, and more.
As so many times in the history of art, the „school” was created through friendships, in bars and cafés, and by endless conversations. Greenwich Village has put itself on the map as an „artists’ district”. Perhaps this form of formation, this organicity, played a role in the way the New York School embraced artists from different disciplines and then provided a fertile ground for them to collaborate. Dialogue was a key motif in the functioning of the group, both internally and externally.
![An example for cooperation. The first in a series of paintings by Grace Hartigan, Oranges, in response to poems by Frank O'Hara. The Oranges, No. 1 (Black Crows), 1952, Source: Wikiart](https://papageno.hu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/the-oranges-no-1-black-crows-1952.jpgLarge.jpg)
The colourful complexity and versatility within the New York School is multi-layered. The diversity of genres has been enriched by the fact that within the different artistic fields we can distinguish branches, subgroups and even completely new trends. One such was automatism, initially employed by Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and Gottlieb, who saw each work as an unfinished idea in progress, an imprint of the present lived in the making. Similarly, action painting, as represented by Willem de Kooning and Pollock, saw art in the act of creation, giving meaning to every gesture, inseparably linked to the personality of the artist.
The other direction of abstract expressionism, colour field painting, which emerged somewhat later, may seem contradictory or complementary. This movement, represented by Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, is more passive, reflective and emotional in tone. The viewer is captivated by the majestic appearance of the huge, impressive canvases. As Rothko put it, „I paint large to be intimate”.
![Mark Rothko: Orange and Yellow, 1956, 231x180 cm, oil on canvas. Kate Rothko Prizel and Cristopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS) Source: Wikiart](https://papageno.hu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/orange-and-yellow1.jpg)
Alongside the visual arts, the New York School’s leading light is poetry – it’s pointless to rank the two, especially given their influence on each other. The foremost poet might be Frank O’Hara. He alone is a hallmark of the collaborations, being a curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The literary side is also extremely diverse. In view of the thirty years of the New York School, the poets and writers who can be included here are usually divided into two generations: the first is a core of five poets, John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara. The second generation includes Alice Notley and the group led by Ted Berrigan, Bill Berkson and Ron Padgett.
Stylistic diversity, as we have already seen in the visual arts, is reflected within genres. However, we can discover a favoured tone in the poets of the New York School. The direct, urbane, conversational style combined everyday moments, pop culture, humour and spontaneity, striving to capture life in its raw reality. It was also a response to the post-war intellectual seriousness born out of the horrors of the war – The playfulness, the compositions being airy yet suggestive of great meaning at the same time, spoke on a wide range of linguistic registers.
The dialogue between poetry and painting was effortlessly interwoven with music and dance. The composers of the New York School include names such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and Christian Wolff. They were influential in the development of Fluxus – to mention yet another cross-genre fusion. They also had an impact on the Judson Dance Theatre, which revolutionised modern dance. The artists working there combined performance and radical new choreography with the sound and visual world of avant-garde composers and dancers in a new way – perhaps we can recognise the spirit of the New York School in this.
![John Cage sitting in the anechoic chamber at Harvard University in 1951. Here he realises that absolute silence does not exist. This is what motivated him to compose "4'33". Source: Wikimedia Commons](https://papageno.hu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/John_Cage_in_Harvard_Universitys_Anechoic_Chamber.jpg)
Even in what has been described so far, we can detect the vibrancy, the atmosphere of renewal and excitement that characterised New York at the time. Understandably, the complexity of the New York School itself is strongly linked to the artistic and intellectual revival of the time, to the rebirth of the cultural scene. During these years, quite a number of new galleries opened their doors – the main ones featuring New York School artists were the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, the Anita Shapolsky Gallery and the Stable Gallery. Later, in 1998, the Gagosian organised an exhibition of the group’s work.
The Tibor de Nagy Gallery has played a particularly important role in the work of the New York School. Born in Hungary, Tibor Nagy had an adventurous life before he founded the gallery the with John Bernard Myers. Their artistic acquaintanceship is already legendary – they ran a puppet theatre. It shows that they were among the most experimental and innovative of gallery owners. The gallery functioned as a salon for artists and poets, and stood out from the crowd of New York galleries of the time thanks to collaborative works and joint exhibitions, as well as publications under the name Tibor de Nagy Editions. As Tibor de Nagy recalls, ” Well, artists and avant-garde poets were all around the whole time. They came in and out of our gallery. People like Frank O’Hara. Like John Ashbery.”
![Interior in the Tibor de Nagy Gallery —Tibor de Nagy Gallery Records, 1941-2016. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Source: Smithsonian Institution](https://papageno.hu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/AAA-AAA_tibode_54984.jpg)
They have done a very rich, bold job. The gallery was the first to publish the poetry of John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch and James Schuyler. Before anyone else, it organized solo exhibitions of works by Carl Andre, Helen Frankenthaler, Jane Freilicher, Red Grooms, Grace Hartigan, Alfred Leslie, Fairfield Porter and Larry Rivers. The salon-like operation meant that cross-fertilisation of different artistic disciplines was inevitable, with many examples of brilliant talent – take the Painters and Poets series, manifested in portraits of each other, or Grace Hartigan and Frank O’Hara’s Oranges. Between 1951 and 1970, the gallery published 18 limited-edition poetry volumes, with the covers and interiors of several books designed by de Nagy artists. Pairings such as Frank O’Hara and Larry Rivers, O’Hara and Grace Hartigan, Chester Kallman and Rene Bouche, Kenneth Koch and Nell Blaine, John Ashbery and Jane Freilicher, Ashbery and Trevor Winkfield, Barbara Guest and Robert Goodnough, and Kenward Elmslie and Ron Gorchov were created.
![Fairfield Porter: Frank O'Hara, 1957, 162x116.5 cm, oil on canvas. Toledo Museum of Art. Source: Wikimedia Commons](https://papageno.hu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Images_2_Frank_OHara_.jpg)
The diversity of the New York School is indisputable – the variety of its artists planted the seeds of the European tradition in the New World. Their vision, their friendship-based organisation, the community-centricity they represented was fresh and innovative. They responded to the terrible years of the world wars, to tragic times, with vitality and vigour. Perhaps it is fitting that Frank O’Hara once said, „I am ashamed of my century, but I have to smile.”
Find out more about the „New York School Project” exhibition and all-arts event at Várfok Gallery in June.