In this stimulating and innovative synthesis of New York鈥檚 artistic and literary worlds, Lytle Shaw uses the social and philosophical problems involved in 鈥渞eading鈥 a coterie to propose a new language for understanding the poet, art critic, and Museum of Modern Art curator Frank O鈥橦ara (1926-1966).
O鈥橦ara鈥檚 poems are famously filled with proper names鈥攆rom those of his immediate friends and colleagues in the New York writing and art worlds (John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Grace Hartigan, Willem de Kooning, and many musicians, dancers, and filmmakers) to a broad range of popular cultural and literary heroes (Apollinaire to Jackie O). But rather than understand O鈥橦ara鈥檚 most commonly referenced names as a fixed and insular audience, Shaw argues that he uses the ambiguities of reference associated with the names to invent a fluid and shifting kinship structure鈥攐ne that opened up radical possibilities for a gay writer operating outside the structure of the family.
As Shaw demonstrates, this commitment to an experimental model of association also guides O鈥橦ara鈥檚 art writing. Like his poetry, O鈥橦ara鈥檚 art writing too has been condemned as insular, coterie writing. In fact, though, he was alone among 1950s critics in his willingness to consider abstract expressionism not only within the dominant languages of existentialism and formalism but also within the cold war political and popular cultural frameworks that anticipate many of the concerns of contemporary art historians. Situating O鈥橦ara within a range of debates about art鈥檚 possible relations to its audience, Shaw demonstrates that his interest in coterie is less a symptomatic offshoot of his biography than a radical literary and artistic invention.
鈥Frank O鈥橦ara: The Poetics of Coterie is an outstanding study of a remarkable, underrated poet and critic. Combining incisive reading of specific poems and critical pieces with astute insistence on more general theoretical issues involving historical context and rhetorical positioning, Shaw calls into question not only previous鈥攐ften trivializing鈥攅valuations of O鈥橦ara and his work but also revises crucial mid-twentieth-century literary and artistic concepts like that of 鈥榗oterie鈥 itself.鈥濃擫inda Nochlin, Wallace Professor of Modern Art, New York University Institute of Fine Arts
