Vincent Katz

Martin Brody

A veritable archive of material on the visual, performing, and literary artists who made Black Mountain College the most successful experiment in the history of American art education.

Experiment in Art

Black Mountain College

experiment in art

Red Grooms

From delicate, soft-ground etchings to an over six-foot tall woodblock print to spray-painted stencils, Red Grooms's artistry reflects his antic humor, imaginative vision, and often raucous view of an extensive range of subjects.".

The Graphic Work

Anne Waldman

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Art."FANTASTIC CARYATIDS, by Anne Waldman & Vincent Katz, is a lush, vivid and spectacular reading/album/book of poetry, conversation and photographs. Note that the subtitle is A Conversation with Art. The with has the particularities of city, specificities of the senses, of memories, of an ethos whose upper limit is friendship, companionship. It is a model, a remarkable 'alternative version of how to be alive.' (Anne Waldman) Dynamic, urbane, intimate, 'the occasion of these ruses' (Frank O'Hara) is synergy from chronos to kairos. From Ted Berrigan and Barbara Guest to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, from Chelsea to St. Mark's, from Kiki Smith to Patti Smith, we see the duo's radiant and earnest exchanges about how communities develop around being together in space and time, making and sharing a world, a life. The proliferations of concretions and abstractions connect to early days ('first hits of reading, ' first poetry) to the making, the working, the people they knew and know. 'From you I get the story' gestures back to Guido Cavalcanti's subtle spirit which 'strikes through the eyes / That rouses a spirit in the mind / From which a spirit of love will rise.' From 'Look at that field' to 'What did we miss?' From Vincent Katz's 'Alright, we're live' to Anne Waldman's 'Satori ' Well, you get the picture: 'Form is love.' You don't want to miss this " Norma Cole "New York Schooling: standing still and walking in New York. Philip Whalen, ever far from NYC, wrote in a poem that 'a walking grove of trees' is what 'academy' might, in its deep root, really mean. Taken to heart, this could lead to a mode of wondering-while-wandering 'what could happen to us between ourselves when we expose ourselves to this space, which belongs neither to one nor the other.' That is, to Avital Ronell's charmed formulation for the kind of study and finding out that can open up when conversation happens. "Our two simpatico Manhattanites from birth, of a 'composite generation, ' set out, all eyes and ears, into their city among its works, 'taking a walk to look at art with you.' New York's 'fantastic caryatids, ' cutting through the neo- liberally capitalized new ruins of the super-urban, shine down out of an earlier rendition of 'Empire City.' They think with their poem as the singular intelligence, unmoored, drifts loose, pluralizes: 'theory & practice, my DNA / this will get you far... 'seeing' is why we exist for a time / and would you agree, holding up / the world in imagination.'" Steve Dickison"

A Conversation with Art

Fantastic Caryatids

Francesco Clemente

Essays and Interview by Vincent Katz This is a ravishing collection of Clemente's rarely seen oil, pastel, and watercolour portraits of personalities from the world of pop culture, high society and art. Friends and acquaintances who have passed through his studio and are featured here include the likes of Lauren Hutton, Toni Morrison, Robert De Niro, Fran Lebowitz, Gus Van Sant, John Ashbery, Andy Warhol, Christy Turlington, Gwyneth Paltrow, keith Haring and man more. 100 full-colour reproductions.

The Portraits of Francesco Clemente

Life is Paradise

"Friendship, love, and the potential energy of change animate these poems of walking through the New York City Broadway, the famous artery, both off the grid and definitive of Manhattan as it cuts its way downtown, is a metaphor for Katz's path through these poems: from Lincoln Plaza on the Upper West Side to the African Burial Ground and the courthouse downtown, Katz mines his native city for the deep humanity that undergirds its streets. His title, with its implication that one could give something as large and undefinable as Broadway to a single person, courts an impossibility that generates the possibility of friendship, as well as the largesse Katz wants to find in our civic discourse. In poems such as "Juneteenth," "Ivanka Skirting," and "This Beautiful Bubble," we encounter his reckoning with a divisive culture that can, he suggests, be healed, through our daily acts--through a kind of alert graciousness that also defines his poetry. In this moving collection, we enter Katz's world, both public and private, and experience poetry as a way of seeing that can change hearts and minds"--

Poems

Broadway for Paul

Jim Dine

Stephanie Wiles

Allen Memorial Art Museum

This book of 85 drawings by Jim Dine illustrates the range and mastery of the artist's draftsmanship over more than four decades. The variety and breadth of the selection shows the intense way Dine observes the world around him and the excitement with which he records it on paper. Dine has said that his ability to draw is both a privilege and the result of hard physical training, compelling him to move inexorably forward to capture the next idea or the next psychological insight in drawings that are extraordinarily human. The selection includes early tool pencil drawings and collages, as well as powerful portrait and figure studies in a variety of media. Also included are large painterly pastels executed with a bravura that places them somewhere between painting and drawing. Dine sees his paintings and drawings as essentially conceived and developed in the same way--requiring the same amount of time, emotion and physicality of medium. The only difference, in the end, is that the drawings are on paper.

Jim Dine, Some Drawings

Vivien Bittencourt

"Hanuman Presents!" is a remarkable art video documenting the historic reading of Hanuman-published authors on May 18, 1989 at St. Mark's Church in New York City. Captured on tape are performances by legendary Beat figures Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, and John Wieners, who give the reading an air of studied provocation; Warhol Factory-era superstars Taylor Mead and Rene Ricard; the beloved Cookie Mueller, famous John Waters' actress and chronicler of the 80s art boom for the original Details; Richard Hell, leading instigator of the punk movement; renowned fetishist performance artist Bob Flanagan and his L.A. post-punk poet colleagues Amy Gerstler and David Trinidad; and the East Coast crew of Elaine Equi, Vincent Katz, and Eileen Myles. Several of these acclaimed literary and cultural innovators have since passed away, adding an indelible historical framework to this once-in-a-lifetime taped event. Through beautifully placed jump-cut edits, the producers of "Hanuman Presents!" splice these historic performative readings with the lyrical and minimalist imagery of famous underground filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt, himself a producer of over ninety 16mm films in his career, dating back to the 1930s. Swiss born, Burckhardt moved to the U.S., like his contemporary Robert Frank, to become a photographer. Burckhardt frequently collaborated with poets, musicians, artists, and dancers such as John Ashbery, Aaron Copland, Joseph Cornell, Edwin Denby, and Paul Taylor; he died in 1999

Hanuman Presents

-Culled from Dia Art Foundation's -Readings in Contemporary Poetry- series, this anthology includes ninety-four poets who have participated in the reading series from 2010 to 2016. Edited by poet and author Vincent Katz, the book stresses the experimental aspects of contemporary poetic practice, highlighting commonalities among poets and placing their diverse voices in conversation with one another---

An Anthology

Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Rudy Burkhardt

New York, Hello!

Andrea Henderson

Andrea Henderson Fahnestock

Celebrating the unique duality of New York City - from its small neighbourhoods and intimate streets to its expansive open spaces and cloud-catching skyscrapers, this is a must-have volume for contemporary art lovers anywhere.

The Art of Yvonne Jacquette and Rudy Burckhardt

Picturing New York

An original Clemente aquatint etching, printed in Rome, signed and numbered, measuring nine by four teen-and-a-half inches, made especially for this edition of LIFE IS PARADISE; the trade edition of which is completely sold-out. Includes a specially printed slipcase just for this edition.

Hunt Slonem

Artist Hunt Slonem creates his magical paintings and sculptures of flora, fauna, saints, and other subjects with inspiration that he draws not only from his sense of spirituality, but also from his environment in a “self-created world” filled with myriad exotic forms, vivid colors, and mystical essences. While the public can imagine an artist at work or at home, rarely does an aficionado or a reader gain access to an artist’s lair. That will change with the publication ofPleasure Palaces: The Art and Homes of Hunt Slonem, by Vincent Katz. Here, the reader is invited into not only the artist’s studios (past and present) but also his homes in New York and Louisiana. From Slonem’s first downtown studio in New York City “where it all began” in 1975 (shown on the book’s cover) to his Victorian mansion on the Hudson River in Kingston, New York, as well as his two Louisiana plantations—one on the Bayou Teche in St. Mary Parish, about two hours’ drive northwest of New Orleans, and the other in a remote location one hour north of Baton Rouge—the reader will get a unique perspective on how this Neo-Expressionist artist’s environments are brought to life by his collections of antique neo-Gothic furniture, Blenko glass, and period frames, not to mention his astonishing collection of tropical birds, which are both his muses and his passion. Multi-talented poet/author/curator/documentarian/editor Vincent Katz, who has written about Slonem numerous times and has previously contributed poetry to Slonem’s publicationsHunt's Place and Exotica, has written an essay forPleasure Palacesthat not only provides a critical analysis of the artist’s work, but also explores his spiritual life and how it influences his art and the extraordinary homes that are his havens. Katz’s essay and an interview with the artist bookend lavishly illustrated color sections, with views of Slonem’s estates (Albania Plantation, Lakeside Plantation, Cordt’s Mansion) and New York City studios (including the private aviary in his West 10th Street studio) interspersed with his oil and watercolor paintings of flora and fauna. At the book’s conclusion, an up-to-date chronology of Slonem’s solo and group exhibitions (including forthcoming 2007 shows), a bibliography, a list of awards received, and a list of public collections that include his works complete this comprehensive document of Slonem’s body of work.

Vincent Katz

Books

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