Barbara Guest and Mary Abbott

Continued from previous post

In the 50s the poet and art critic Barbara Guest began collaborating with the Abstract Expressionist painter Mary Abbott (read more on Abbott at the McCormick Gallery website). Guest was interested in poems that were essentially words given to an artist who “placed” them in a painting; this was based on the work of surrealist poet Mallarme. The works by Guest/Abbott were first shown at New York's Kornblee Gallery in 1958 along with collaborations by Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara. One such placement painting is Le Chante de Rossignol - For Joseph Cornell. 1959 oil on linen 73" x57″

©2012 by Mary Abbott, used with permission courtesy of the McCormick Gallery, Chicago