DARK MATTER
Molly Warnock on Pierre Soulages and Pierrette Bloch
Matt Mullican
Matt Mullican’s adventures in Slumberland
UNVANQUISHED
Amin Alsaden on Iraq’s art under two decades of occupation
Under the Cover
Amy Taubin reflects on Michael Snow’s 1967 masterpiece
FLAMING CREATURES
Paige K. Bradley on Lizzi Bougatsos
Last Danse
Valentin Noujaïm’s requiem for a razed nightclub
PRINT March 2008
Lytle Shaw’s Frank O’Hara: The Poetics of Coterie
Barrett Watten
“The demands of poetry and painting, of expressivity and formalism, collided in his work and would come to no easy resolution,” wrote Barrett Watten of Frank O’Hara in Artforum’s March 2008 issue. O’Hara’s legacy is defined by dichotomies—of “high” and “low,” privacy and disclosure, contrivance and sincerity, celebration and elegy. Watten finds cause to let these contradictions lie in Lytle Shaw’s 2006 book, Frank O’Hara: The Poetics of the Coterie. “The disparity of intention and scale between O’Hara’s intimate poetry and his inescapable public presence . . . had the effect of positing the