Poets House exhibit teams two artistic temperaments

February 24, 2016 | Downtown Express| Posted by: Scott Stiffler

BY LINDSAY BU | Visual art and poetry may not always share common ground, but they do exhibit commonalities. Both rely heavily on the audience to interpret what is presented before them, and to consider the full story behind a single image or a line. But grappling with visual art and poetry is very different when the two are combined.

Fay Lansner: “Hot Turns” (1982. Pastel on paper with collage, 38 x 44 in.). Image courtesy Poets House. Image courtesy Poets House.

At Poets House (10 River Terrace), the exhibit “Metamorphosis: The Collaboration of Poet Barbara Guest & Artist Fay Lansner” features a creative dialogue between the two women, by presenting a number of Lansner’s portraits of Guest, as well as her charcoal and pastel pieces that incorporate lines of Guest’s poetry.
The poetry of Barbara Guest (1920–2006) began to rise in prominence during the late ’50s, when she was considered among the New York School of Poets — whose other members included John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler.

Fay Lansner: “Portrait of Barbara Guest” (1970s. Oil on canvas, 60 x 36 in.).

Influenced by surrealism and abstract expressionism, Guest’s work is characterized by the lyricism and musicality of her words; a painterly impulse that evokes gentle but poignant images. Fay Gross Lansner (1921–2010) was a prolific member of the abstract expressionist movement. Affiliated with well-known artists such as Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell, Lansner was committed to figurative painting and symbolic imagery.   MORE