Johns, Rauschenberg, Motherwell - The New York School (In Memory of My Feelings)

About

The portfolio was created and published as a tribute to Frank O'Hara who was not only a leading New York poet, he was also an associate curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.

His death in 1966, following a car crash, shocked his friends and colleagues to such an extent that M.o.M.A. asked Robert Motherwell to compile the portfolio to celebrate the poet's work and love of art.

More than 40 artists are represented including Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Alex Katz, Claes Oldenburg, Grace Hartigan, Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, Larry Rivers and Robert Rauschenberg.

Each artist was assigned a poem to illustrate as he saw fit. They were given a copy of the text in galley-proof form with page layouts, along with translucent plastic sheets, called Copyrite, on which to draw, either in black or sepia, or both. The artists could use any medium that would hold or be fixed on the plastic surfaces—pencil, ink, charcoal, plastic-based paints, collage, transfer-rubbings, etc.

Ordinarily, such drawings have to be photographed through a "halftone screen/' which breaks up the image Into a pattern of minute dots of varying size; inevitably, some detail and contrast are lost. However, since the homogeneous plastic material is not, like paper, made of crushed fibres, light is conducted through It without distortion. Thus when the plastic is brought into direct contact with a sheet of photographic film and exposed to light, it produces a film negative that captures virtually all the subtle tonalities of the original.