Collaborations

I grew up in an artistic environment in which collaboration was considered de rigeur, as much for the pure pleasure in its making as the final result. My father, the painter Alex Katz, acted in films by Rudy Burckhardt, and he made books with poets Kenneth Koch and John Ashberry.

When I began to write poetry seriously, in high school, I immediately incorporated collaboration into the process. We did poet/poet collaborations and poet/artist collaborations. I was also interested in music, and that began to take a more prominent collaborative role.

In 1986, I was asked for some poems to be published in a small book with linoleum-cut prints by my father. Peter Blum wanted to publish a series of my father’s woodcuts, that eventually appeared in a beautifully-designed box, with the book of poems and the lino-cuts set in. The book and the set of prints took their title from one of my poems: “A Tremor In The Morning.” The poems, printed in letterpress, were selected by Mario Diacono, who had a gallery in Rome before moving to Boston. Two of the poems refer to my father, and one has a word of Italian in it. My father’s images of city and country left space for the poems to enter.

After that rich experience, I was on the lookout for other collaborations. I had long admired James Brown’s facility and love for materials, and we began talking about doing an artist’s book together. We decided to do two volumes, the first with poems, the second with song lyrics. Voyages was published in 1994. It is a dreamy, delicate book, with four poems – three written on a trip to Egypt and one written at Frederic Church’s Hudson viewpoint, Olana – typed by manual typewriter (“hand-typed”).

James chose visual elements – some found and collaged, others painted or drawn – which he placed in identical locations in the books, giving an uncanny effect of simultaneous identity and difference. In 2000, the second volume came out, Hyde Park Boulevard, which attempted to be true to popular music’s specificity of time and place. Instead of voyaging in the mind, we wanted to be rooted to a certain block in a certain neighborhood. The book is also bigger and funkier, appropriately.

I first saw Francesco Clemente’s work in an exhibition of his 14 “Stations of the Cross” paintings at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1983. We had to climb up a narrow white ship’s ladder to arrive in a chapel-like space. The whole conception, and particularly, the explosion of imaginistic invention I experienced there I will never forget. In 1997, I was asked to write an essay on Francesco’s portraits for a catalouge that never materialized. I took the idea to a publisher, and we came out with Life Is Paradise in 1999. The book examines his portrait work in oil on canvas, oil on wood, watercolor, fresco, and pastel, and details how central the social world is to this cosmopolitan artist.

In 2001, Francesco called and made a somewhat cryptic request. He asked me to translate some Late Latin poems on themes of Vanitas for an upcoming exhibition. I agreed, spurred on by the suggestion and also the thrill of the chase, as Francesco had given me no guidelines as to where to find such poems, I began a period of rigorous research, which resulted in a selection of nine poems, ranging from the early 6th century philosopher Boethius to the Neapolitan leaders of literary taste in the early 16th century. I translated their poems from Latin and wrote one of my own, entitled “Vanitas.” The book is Terra Fragile.

Patricia Cronin suggested to me that we should collaborate, and I liked the idea, as I like Pattie and her work. We have just finished our first piece together, Dreams, four watercolors and three poems that hang on the wall, pieces of paper that speak silently to one another. We have an idea for a play.

Mario Cafiero is from São Paulo, Brazil, and I met him when I started traveling there in 1988. He’s an artist and designer, who has had a long career collaborating on book covers and magazines. In the early days he did a photonovela, and was photographed with the pop star Roberto Carlos. More recently, he has worked for one of the main newspapers of São Paulo.

I always love going around São Paulo with Mario, or hanging out in his highrise apartment overlooking the surging Avenida Paulista. Mario is a true Paulista, who appreciates the grandeur and sweep of his city’s history, which also appealed to the Brazilian modernists of the 1920s. Given my love of the city as a setting for artistic experience,  I proposed to Mario that we do a book together, combining my poems written in Brazil with his images of the city. We had the good fortune to enlist the talented Regina Alfarano to translate my poems into Portuguese. The books should be out next year.

Working up to this exhibition, Clemente and Katz decided to do a new large-scale graphic works that contain my poetry as party of the visual field.

We keep stepping into the lake as the waters get cloudier.

Vincent Katz
New York
November, 2003