A Serious Look at the Visual Art of Alice Notley

Six days ago, for Jacket2, Nick Sturm expanded minds and hearts with his focus on the art of Alice Notley: "Like her visionary poetry, which she has written and published continuously for over fifty years," he writes, "Notley’s visual art is defined by intricate layers of presence and association as well as common themes: light, femininity, and irreducibility." More from this piece:

Despite limited access to Notley’s artwork (most of it is owned by friends or stored in archives at the University of California San Diego and the University of Connecticut), attentive readers of her poetry will notice an ongoing commitment to painting and visual aesthetics in her writing. The reciprocity between visual and textual mediums has been central to Notley’s poetry since at least Alice Ordered Me To Be Made (Yellow Press, 1976) and continues to be part of her work.[3] As Diana Arterian notes about in her important essay on Notley’s artwork, “For decades, Notley has learned and cultivated how to make her own universe from found things,” charting a lineage that links Notley’s collaged fans to the fan-based visual-text work of Stéphane Mallarmé and to Notley’s well-known feminist epics, like The Descent of Alette.[4] A recently republished essay by Notley from 1975, “Modern Americans in Their Place at the Chicago Art Institute: An Article,” follows her keen self-education as a young poet looking at art. “[P]ainting was teaching me what a word like ‘tipsy’ could do to the flat,” she writes. Works by Arshile Gorky, Joan Mitchell, Philip Guston, and Willem de Kooning are described by Notley in surprising, insightful terms. About Alex Katz’s Vincent and Tony (1969), Notley writes, “Katz I think wants to kiss many people long and hard, not an incomprehensible desire.” Like John Ashbery — but with even more of a shimmering twist of intimate perception — Notley shows us how to see visual art as poets. 

Read on at Jacket2.