Page 14 - Studio International - September 1966

Frank 0' Hara, poet and museum official

an interview with Edward Lucie-Smith

Frank O'Hara, who has just died at the age discuss the placement of an image, which would think that Bill de Kooning is lying when he says
of 40, was Assistant Curator of the Depart- leave me enough room to write text, or I would say that he loves Poussin or Ingres, or Motherwell if
where I wanted the text and then he would he says he loves Delacroix?
ment of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions
decorate the rest of the stone. But that's the only
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
time I think that I've really collaborated. I've done What excites you most in modern American art? What
He had held this post since 1960, and had in
other things, too. Grace Hartigan has used some of are the qualities you find yourself responding to?
fact been associated with the Museum from a
my poems in painting or I have made pages of Well, they're all individual qualities. I would
much earlier period—since 1951. Thanks to
words for Michael Goldberg, which he then com- really just have to name a lot of artists. . . . I
this official connexion he had been responsible pleted; but I delivered the work in those cases, and don't find that one year I'm excited by Abstract
for some important exhibitions, such as the then they went on and did what they wanted. I Expressionism, the next year by Pop Art, the
Jackson Pollock show which toured Europe in didn't have any say about what they would do next year by Op Art, and this coming year by
1958. But facts such as these give little with them. I was very pleased with the result, but spatial sculpture or something. It's all in the same
notion of the extent of his influence in the I think the Rivers thing is the only thing where I environment to me.
New York art-world, where he had perhaps really did collaborate.
In Europe styles are apt to arise and then be packaged.
the most creative impact of any non-painter.
Isn't this kind of activity rather unusual in a museum In New York it must be very different.
His close friendship with Larry Rivers was
official? Museum officials are usually thought of in Yes, because you know the work before the style
especially notable, and the memorial to it is
Europe as members of the Court of Appeal but not as the has even been established.
the painting for which O'Hara posed—one of actual participators.
the best pictures of Rivers' early period. The Well, it's a little more complicated than that Do you think American Art has separate characteristics
position which O'Hara occupied was im- because, after all, Jean Cassou is a poet, isn't he ? which make it American?
portant but indefinable—he was poet, play- And in America it's very hard to codify the art as That's a horrible question. But does one think
wright, critic, friend, and catalyst, and all of it emerges anyway, so that your participation is that Tapies does things that way because he's
these at once. New York will be different really your interest in a sort of emotional way, Spanish ?
without him. which leads you perhaps to understand a little bit
better than the general public at the time the work No, that's not quite it. Do you think of Tapies as a
What I wanted to ask you about first of all was this link is appearing. And then you're either right or provincial artist in relationship to New York?
in New York between poetry and painting? wrong later. Not at all. No, I think the work of Tapies in New
It's partly because of the French influence on York, as in France or Spain or Italy, is an absolute
American painting. You know—Apollinaire, Cub- Which way do you think things are going in America? fact of contemporary art. I mean that the general
ism and all that sort of thing. People like John For instance, you've been very much identified with Rivers, mistake is in thinking of these things in terms of
Ashbeny and I arrived in New York or emerged as partly because you've collaborated with him, and partly nationalities. There is modern art.
poets in the mid-fifties or late fifties, and the because you were painted by him.
painters were then the only ones who were in- You mean, do I think they're going towards But you don't accept the specifically American flavour—or
terested in any kind of experimental poetry. The Rivers or away? I don't feel particularly identified even an American tradition?
general literary scene was not. We were published with Rivers. I mean we're friends, but then I'm I think Pollock was absolutely right when he said—
in certain literary magazines and so on, but very close friends with other painters whose work I I don't remember exactly how he said it—there is
nobody was really very enthusiastic except the also admire. Larry is a very individual artist and no such thing as American painting or any other
painters. therefore it would be very difficult to say that any kind of painting, there is good painting. But I do
particular trend was exemplified in his work. One think that's a very important point—there is good
Why do you think that was? Because the painters were thing that he did manage to do, which is quite painting and there's bad painting and there's
more committed to an idea of experiment than the literary significant I think, was to admire and be in- indifferent painting and there's superficial paint-
people? fluenced by Abstract Expressionism as a younger ing, there's frivolous painting. This also goes for
Yes. Exactly. person, a younger man than the heroes of the sculpture, poetry or anything else we're all in-
movement, and found a way to work with it—in a volved with. It depends on the individual artist.
How has this affected the way you write? valid, interesting way.
I think the example of certain of the Abstract I think, for instance, that the influence of Gorky What do you think about the idea of the New York
Expressionists in particular and of other major on Rivers is extremely strong, as is in some periods `Underground'? 'Underground' movies, for example?
artists in New York and in Europe gave me the the influence of Leger, for example. Where the I think actually in many cases it's an acknow-
feeling that one should work harder and should public is concerned, the transition to Pop Art has ledgement of the best work of a lot of other people.
really try to do something other than just polish been so fast that Rivers is usually labelled as a If so much really marvellous work hadn't been
whatever talent one had to be recognized for. But forerunner of Pop. The really interesting thing is done in the twentieth century by artists of a great
that one should go further. the way he used the influence of de Kooning, of many nationalities there would be no necessity for
Léger, of Gorky, and even in many cases of Andy Warhol to decide to devote himself to films.
Do you see yourself as a kind of collaborator of painters? Kandinsky in his work, where it may be related I'll put it more positively—he would not feel that
Only in one specific instance, when Larry Rivers to images of Camel packs, of lions walking through it was O.K. to do this, and if he has turned to films
and I actually did physically collaborate on some the streets, of the language books where the parts then it must mean that he, as an artist, assumes that
lithographs; we both really did work on them. I of the body are spelled out. a great deal of pictorial and cultural imagery has
learned how to write backwards, for instance. We been dealt with adequately in painting and
did not use any transfers. We worked on the stones What I want to get hold of is simply your reaction to sculpture, but not in films. I think most responsible
together; he did not work on the stones if I wasn't this idea of tradition. We've been talking, for example, artists improve the medium they choose. In times
there, and I didn't work on the stones if he wasn't of Rivers building on a series of other artists. of desuetude you find Rembrandt labouring over
there to see what I was doing. Sometimes we would Yes, like every artist does. I mean, you don't really etchings because there are no great etchings after