Poets of the Cities: New York and San Francisco, 1950-1965 Page: 32
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ASSEMBLAGE: ANYTHING This exhibition focuses upon a specific period, a highly fertile one in the development of
AND EVERYTHING. LATE 50s American avant-garde arts-the late 1950s and early '60s. It also deals with particular
Robert M. Murdock stylistic and visual characteristics and suggests parallels and inter-relationships among
several arts during this period. The integration of the arts and the breakdown of
traditional categories, both of which are now taken for granted, found their initial raw
expression in painting and sculpture, poetry, films and Happenings of the late '50s.
As the title suggests, the development considered here was primarily urban, in terms of
the environment, inspiration, and subject matter for art, and the activity was concentrated
in two art centers, New York and San Francisco. The "poets" in the title refer not only to
the literary figures including the Beats, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, or
such New York poets as John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, but in a broader sense includes
painters and sculptors such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Richard
Stankiewicz; composers, notably John Cage and Morton Feldman; dancers, Merce
Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer; film-makers such as Bruce Conner, Stan Brakhage and
Andy Warhol; and jazz musicians including John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Charles
Mingus. These diverse talents share a basic attitude of directness and spontaneity in
their work, all have in one way or another broken with tradition and investigated new
approaches to their art, and have broken down the division between art and life.
Rauschenberg's well known statement that he tries "to act in the gap between the two"
applies as well to many of the other artists in this exhibition.
To emphasize the richness and variety of artistic events during this period, it may be
useful to list a number of them. In 1952, at Black Mountain College, John Cage organized
an interdisciplinary performance which is acknowledged to have been the first
Happening; it included poetry (Charles Olson and Mary Caroline Richards), painting
(Rauschenberg); music (David Tudor), and dance (Merce Cunningham), all in pre-
arranged time segments. That same summer Cage had composed his famous "silent"
piece which was first performed in August, 1952. In 1953 Robert Rauschenberg created
the "Erased de Kooning Drawing"; 1955 saw Jasper Johns' first Flag paintings,
Rauschenberg's combines, and in San Francisco, the first reading of Allen Ginsberg's
Howl; in 1957, Jack Kerouac's On the Road was published. Allan Kaprow's first
Happening took place in 1958 and Johns' Targets had their initial gallery showing that
year. In 1959 Kaprow's 18 Happenings in 6 Parts and Red Grooms' Burning Building
were performed and Claes Oldenburg had his first one-man show in New York. In 1960
the important exhibition New Forms New Media was shown at the Martha Jackson
Gallery in New York, followed the next year by Environments Situations Spaces at that
gallery and by the monumental survey The Art of Assemblage at The Museum of
Modern Art. Even in a random listing such as this, far from complete, one is struck by the
productivity, the number of "firsts" and the pioneering character of the arts during this
period, as well as the beginning of an integration of these various arts.32
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Poets of the Cities: New York and San Francisco , 1950-65 [Brochure] (Text)
Brochure from the exhibition, "Poets of the Cities: New York and San Francisco 1950–65," November 20–December 29, 1974, held at the Dallas Museum of Art.
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Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Poets of the Cities: New York and San Francisco, 1950-1965, book, 1974; [New York]. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth176526/m1/36/?rotate=270: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Museum of Art.