“All art is collaborative, in a
strange and otherworldly
way,” said poet Maya Angelou during a one-night-only
exhibition last fall at ACA Galleries in New York. Angelou
wore a long black dress and
rose-tinted glasses, having just
taken a bus from WinstonSalem, North Carolina, to attend the special event. In a
corner of the gallery, a bentglass panel bore a painted
scroll engraved with the words
of Angelou’s famous poem “A
Brave and Startling Truth,” in
her own handwriting.
The piece was executed by
artists David Sugar and
Carol Iselin, who have
known Angelou for nearly 30
‘Use No
Adverbs’
Jane Freilicher’s picture of
a green strip of jungle is “the
impossible composed of the
actual,” while Alex Katz’s
pretty pictures of pretty
women reveal “the existence
of the picture as a resolution
of color tensions.” That was
poet James Schuyler writing in ARTnews in 1958 and
’59, when he was an associate
editor of this magazine.
“Unconcerned with shaping art history, Schuyler used
his understated reviews to
practice certain poetic effects, with rare, idiosyncratic
density.” That is poet and essayist Wayne Koestenbaum writing in his recent
book My 1980s and Other Essays (Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux) about Schuyler’s
way with words.
My 1980s takes on the
essay as an avant-garde art
30
January 2014 ARTnews
years and have been workshows up on a black-anding on a series of glassred square of glass and on
works containing her
an orange rectangular
poetry for six years. Anpanel inspired by Gerhard
gelou wrote out two of her
Richter’s paintings.
poems in cursive; Iselin
Angelou describes herand Sugar then inscribed
self as a “serious collector,”
her writing onto six glass
though she declined to
sculptures, “using ancient
elaborate on her personal
techniques combined with
collection. One artist she
modern technology,” Sugar
has supported for decades
said. “A Brave and Staris Faith Ringgold, who
tling Truth,” the poem Anshows at ACA. “Faith Ringgelou originally penned for
gold paints. Because Faith
the 50th anniversary of
Ringgold paints, the gallery
the United Nations in
exists. They’re all in colluMaya Angelou at ACA Galleries in
1995, appears in four difsion, and it’s exciting, it’s
New York. Behind her is a glasswork
ferent works.
thrilling, and it also keeps
by David Sugar and Carol Iselin that
In one, the words stretch
you from being lost and
features Angelou’s poem “A Brave
and swirl to fit the shape
alone. Because there ain’t
and Startling Truth.”
of a Venetian-glass disk:
nobody who can make it
“We, this people, on a
out here alone. Not alone,
signs tell us / It is possible and not all alone,” she said at the
small and lonely planet /
imperative that we learn / A
Traveling through casual
opening, carefully deciding on
space / Past aloof stars, across brave and startling truth,” the
her words and intonation. “We
first stanza reads. The other
the way of indifferent suns /
all exist because the other
—Ali Pechman
poem, “In and Out of Time,”
To a destination where all
exists.”
form. In the penultimate
piece here, Koestenbaum,
who is a professor of English
at the City University of New
York’s Graduate Center, gives
his readers whimsical, openended assignments à la John
Baldessari’s famed 1970s
CalArts homework: “Write
seven paragraphs of selfpraise. Use no adverbs, or
few.” The book also includes
Koestenbaum’s unflinching,
deadpan, tragicomic catalogue essays for exhibitions
by artists such as Forrest
Bess, Kurt Kauper, Glenn
Ligon, and McDermott &
McGough.
Koestenbaum’s first catalogue effort was a 1992 response to a Christian
Marclay show in Rome. “I felt
welcomed by the world of art
writing,” he recalls. “Nobody
asked for my credentials at the
door.” And today’s era of postpost-modernity—where conceptual, performance, and
installation art (or all three
together) are forms du
jour—matches the omnivorous style of the experimental essayist.
Koestenbaum is a
noted extemporizer
and a fluid riffer,
though he claims to
spend most of his days
in silence, writing or,
increasingly, painting.
(His bright paintings
were among the felinethemed art in “The Cat
Show” at White
Columns last summer.)
Going to galleries midweek and talking to
curators and artists, he
says, offers a “charged
conversation in the
vicinity of glamorous
and enigmatic works
that need to be explained and appreciated.” Or, as Schuyler
once wrote, “Look
now. It will never be
more fascinating.”
—Carly Berwick
Wayne Koestenbaum’s Stray Cat,
2013, in “The Cat Show” at White
Columns, New York.
COURTESY WHITE COLUMNS, NEW YORK
Seeing
Angelou’s
Words Clearly
LISA PACINO
art talk