R.B. Kitaj Some Poets 1966-69 Harriet Wailling
Although frequently labeled a 'Pop Artist', the American R.B. Kitaj (b.1932) has drawn widely on literary sources in his art. The ten screenprinted portraits entitled First Series: Some Poets were produced between 1966 and 1969 at the mid point of the artist’s screenprinting period, and although they were not, in Kitaj’s view, 'responses to particular poems' as such, they were certainly a 'reflection' on those emerging poets of the moment. Kitaj began this first series (a second has never been produced) following an initial appropriation of a photograph of the philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin. That photograph, which illustrated a text by Gershom Scholem and showed a younger, impassive Benjamin, became in Kitaj’s cropped and worked over lithograph, pensive if not melancholic, revealing by shades and degrees the nuances of the author and his work. The success of this print, in conjunction with a chance introduction to contemporary American poetry that same year in a London pub, prompted Kitaj to begin his Poets series. With the idea of creating a kind of collaboration between technique and subject matter, the screenprinting method permitted a great subtlety of interpretation of the sitter and Kitaj chose his ten poets out of reverence for their work.
The first of the Poets depicted Robert Creeley, who Kitaj had met at a party in London a couple of years earlier. Creeley had sat for a pastel sketch, which Kitaj photographed and then transferred to a screen with an assortment of hand-cut stenciled pieces, creating the first lithograph in the series. The technique was repeated for the other poets, including Ed Dorn, Charles Olson, John Weiners and Robert Duncan, each of whom had either taught or studied at the Black Mountain College in North California. The other poets, drawn from beyond this community, included W. H. Auden, the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, Michael McClure from the San Francisco school, and the composer Morton Feldman, who 'was a poet' in Kitaj’s view. The intimacy of each of the Poets portraits, which at times play with composition, constructing tripartite arrangements of images on top of each other like lines or stanzas of verse, marks perhaps one of the greatest achievements in this relatively new, often criticized, photo-mechanical technique. R.B. Kitaj: Some Poets 1966-69 27 March−24 June R.B. Kitaj, Fifties Grand Swank: Morton Feldman (detail) from 'First Series: Some Poets', 1968, screenprint on paper, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Loan), © R.B. Kitaj; R.B. Kitaj, Kenneth Roxroth (detail) from 'First Series: Some Poets', 1969, screenprint on paper, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Loan), © R.B. Kitaj
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