Rudy
Burkhardt, A Friend to Poets (1914-1999) by Simon Pettet |
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Click
on images to enlarge. (Five photos, one painting and one photocopied poem by Rudy Burkhardt.) |
Photographer, filmmaker, painter, collagiste, poet, writer Rudy Burkhardt, died this past August at his summer home in Maine (bidding adieu to his loved ones and walking into the adjacent lake he affectionately called "our pond"). He was 85 years old. "A jack of all trades and master of several," as John Ashbery once put it, a quintessential artists' artist, Burkhardt had, for over three generations, (since his arrival in New York, in 1935, from his native Switzerland), been a key presence, famously diffident, famously under-appreciated, quietly and unostentatiously, for over half a century, avoiding the glitz (and the fame of his contemporaries), doggedly getting on with the work. His achievements ranged far and wide, over an extraordinary span of years. Through his lifetime friendship with poet and da'hce critic Edwin Denby (1898-1983) he became intimately involved (both as observer and participant) at the very beginnings of a nascent post-war New York avant-garde. If the art world had a conscience, it was he-poet and patient witness-of the day-to-day, of the quotidian, laureate of unpretentiousness. His humility and old- fashioned gentleness were significant and defining features. His was something rare-a friendly art. His collaborations with poets were legion; among them, film collaborations with John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, David Shapiro, and books with Edwin Denby, Vincent Katz, Simon Pettet. Belatedly-in February 1987, he was feted with three simultaneous New York exhibitions-a show of photos (at Brooke Alexander), a show of paintings (at the Blue Mountain Gallery), and a film retrospective (featuring over 60 of his short films) at the Museum of Modern Art. Ten years later, in 1997, he was the subject of a full-scale retrospective (held at the Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, in Valencia, Spain, and organized by poet Vincent Katz). His images of New York City-the work that he is, perhaps, currently best known for are among the most fundamental and enduring taken this century. His position in the pantheon (as if he aspired to such immortality!) seems assured. |
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My
shoulder damp with tears
I thought
to see the streets
Green
awning wings burning mangoes
People
relaxed & slowed almost naked
Sunday
morning the lens on Avenue B
Ann
says, "Who's that behind those Foster Grants?"
Her
light smile wells up in East Sixth
August
1, 1999, a cool morning
sky
blue background air of no deception
It's
an old song but singing is the game of consolation
Fill
the loss with personal good karma
And
for our lamentation our queen
Will
bend her breast to us
On
my back
East
Hill, New York, ground close in clouds
Chilly
balm to lasting heat
My
shaded lens to the sky
Caught
shapes in coming fair weather clouds
Light
gray & darker peaks coming up the hill
A large
pregnant dark one
Hoisted
herself up to me
And
there he was!
His
head and hair
grayer
and darker
Chiseled
like Mt. Rushmore
Not
smiling not frowning
Just
there enormous in the heavens
His
deep look behind the camera
I took
my fill as he took his again
8/3/99
Cherry Valley
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