Child's Play: John Ashbery

Born in Rochester, NY in 1927, John Ashbery is best known as a poet, secondarily as an artist who began creating collages as more of an enjoyable hobby than profession. It was not until age 81 that Ashbery held his first solo exhibition. Yet both creative outlets dually influenced each other. Ashbery’s poetry, as described in Modern Painters “is renowned for its chatty obliqueness, and for its surreal, patchwork nature,” picking up on many of the mixed-media collage-like aesthetics of his art.  Likewise, his collages tended towards a hodge-podge combination of everyday, banal ephemera. Acknowledging his influence by Cubist artists Picasso, Braque, and Gris, and the collages of Max Ernst, Ashbery creates collages that feature “the stuff of modern like, at turns lusty, comic nostalgia, colloquial, and classically high-minded.” Ashbery picks up on the subtle aesthetics of his surroundings. Comic strips, magazine clippings, and movie advertisements permeate his collages. 

Chutes and Ladders I (for Joe Brainard) (2008) features an array of cutout images haphazardly pasted upon a Chutes and Ladders board game. Dedicated to his friend, fellow writer and artist Joe Brainard, this collage exhibits a collection of paper materials that Brainard used to send Ashbery, intended as creative inspiration. Stamps, Mexican bingo cards, unzipped denim pants, and an illustration of cake and tea are but a few of the colorful components that enliven this board, transforming it into a stream-of-consciousness articulation of Ashbery’s vibrantly creative consumption. 

John Ashbery, Chutes and Ladders I (for Joe Brainard), 2008

Collage on game board