(Larry Rivers looks on while Frank O'Hara ripens a metaphor)

Mel Bochner in a review of Donald Judd's writing--

"A good many of the reviewers of that time came from literary backgrounds, usually the New York School of poetry, which showed up in their exaggerated claims and overripe metaphors. In art school in the late '50s, we played a game, reading reviews aloud from the latest issue of Art News and trying to guess who the subject was. I can still remember one: 'X dumps live chunks of landscape steaming hot into the gallery.' (Give up? Helen Frankenthaler.) What changed this situation? Artists started writing. (I'll leave it to someone else to answer the question 'What changed it back?') Why let the critics speak for you when you are perfectly capable of speaking for yourself?"

No names of course, not even for his "remembered" example. But the reflexive condescension displayed for "literary backgrounds" (as opposed to the rigour of art school, say!) and the "New York School of Poetry" certainly help explain why Tim Davis neglected to inform readers about his poetry in last month's Artforum "Top 10", why Frank O'Hara's crucial early support of Pollock has been all but erased from the record, and why the visual art and poetry communities in New York--to the detriment of both--have drifted so far apart.