Ut Pictura Poesis

Poetry resembles painting. Some works will captivate you when you stand very close to them and others if you are at a greater distance. This one prefers a darker vantage point, that one wants to be seen in the light since it feels no terror before the penetrating judgment of the critic. This pleases only once, that will give pleasure even if we go back to it ten times over.
—Horace

Jenni Quilter (The New School for Public Engagement) considers the Poetry Foundation’s current exhibition, Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets. Quilter's discussion will explore Freilicher's friendships with poets John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch. The event will feature a virtual tour of other collaborations among painters and poets of the New York School, and a discussion of the relationship between image and text. Quilter will touch on the possibilities that images hold for the poet, the cop-out of “illustration,” and the history of livre d’artiste. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A moderated by David Getsy (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and a reception.

Jenni Quilter’s academic research focuses on collaboration between the arts, with a focus on the New York School of poets (particularly John Ashbery) and the visual artists with whom they worked. Quilter is currently editing a large anthology of New York collaborations (poems, art pieces, essays and ephemera) for Rizzoli Books. Her recent publications include a book about the painter Max Gimblett’s studio, workspace, and a set of extensive interviews with the painter Matt Jones published in Innerspace and Matt Jones 2010. Quilter runs (picnic, lightning), a small printing press devoted to publishing collaborative books. She has taught at Oxford University, The University of Auckland, and New York University. Her awards and honors include Fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sisam Scholar 2005, Rhodes Scholar 2001, and Senior Scholar at The University of Auckland. She has a doctorate of philosophy in English literature from Oxford University, a master's of philosophy in English literature from Oxford University, and a bachelor's degree from Auckland University.

David J. Getsy is the Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History and Chair, Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School for the Art Institute of Chicago.