Visionary Architects
Barbara Guest, Frederick Kiesler, and the Surrealist Poetics of the Galaxy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20249167 |
|---|---|
| Authors | S P Rosenbaum (University of Georgia, corresponding author), Susan Rosenbaum |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 113 |
| Publication date | 2022-09-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/h11050113 |
| OpenAlex | W4294792872 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 30 |
In this essay I demonstrate how Barbara Guest’s experiments in visual poetry were influenced by Frederick Kiesler’s architectural designs: both artists, inspired by Surrealist poetics, sought to build visionary structures that took shape on the page but moved beyond it. Following Kiesler’s 1965 death, Guest published a poem in 1968 inspired by Kiesler’s “Galaxy” structures, titled “Homage”, and included a shortened version in Durer in the Window (2003). Kiesler composed a number of works under the name “Galaxies”, all of which shared an interest in merging architecture with other art forms, including sculpture, mobiles, drawing, and painting. In “Homage”, Guest was less interested in describing Kiesler’s “Galaxies” than in building a commensurate architecture of the page, dependent on the spatial arrangement of lines and stanzas, the visual impact of white space, and the reader’s imaginative navigation of both. Putting Kiesler’s “Galaxies” and Guest’s “Homage” in dialogue illuminates a model of inter-arts reception as co-creation or what Kiesler called “Correalism” that depends on the spatial dimensions of the poetic imagination. Both works can be understood as open, mobile, “museums without walls” that anticipate the future by inviting dynamic collaboration and future transformation. Finally, I argue that the relationship between these works models the kind of affiliation important to experimental women artists and poets such as Guest, affiliations that helped form an En Dehors Garde “in the shadow” of the avant-garde
Art · Art history · Literature · Painting · Poetics · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Sculpture · The arts · Visual arts · Media, Communication, and Education · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory · Architecture
Museum of words
New York School Collaborations
Manifestoes of Surrealism
Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation
The Fury Archives
Thirteen Tactics for Teaching Poetry as Architecture
Race and the Avant-Garde
Barbara Guest and the mother of beauty
The fifth point of a star
Out of This Century
Twentieth-Century Poetry and the Visual Arts
Frank O'Hara rebuilds the Seagram Building
Magnifying Mirrors
The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature
Ekphrastic Double Exposure and the Museum Book of Poetry
Automatic Woman
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |