Reporter Volume 25, No.12 November 18, 1993

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
The traveling exhibition "A Symposium of the Imagination: Robert
Duncan in Word and Image," which will be at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis Nov. 20 through Jan. 23, offers a glimpse into a long
personal relationship that produced intriguing visual art and some of
the most innovative poetic forms of the 20th century.
It focuses on the collaboration between Robert Duncan, the influential
experimental poet who co-founded the "San Francisco Renaissance" in
American poetry, and painter-collagist Jess, his companion in life and
art for more than 35 years.
"A Symposium of the Imagination" was developed by Robert Bertholf,
curator of the Poetry and Rare Books Collection at UB. The UB
collection of 20th-century poetry in English is generally considered
the finest in the world and its holdings include many of Duncan's rare
and first editions, manuscripts and personal artifacts, some of which
form the basis for this show.
In his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Bertholf writes that
the show represents the productivity of the Duncan-Jess household,
which from 1951 until the poet's death in 1988 was "alive with poetry,
music, art, ancient wisdom, fairy tales and folk legends--the high
romance of literature and painting."
The exhibit complements the concurrent Walker retrospective "Jess: A
Grand Collage, 1951-1993," which explores the intensely personal and
eclectic vocabulary of images and symbols employed by the artist and
often, as it turns out, by the poet as well.
"Jess..." originated at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. It
will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Feb. 24 through
April 24, 1994; Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, May 21 through Aug. 21,
1994, and New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, Sept. 22 through
Dec. 4, 1994. "A Symposium of the Imagination" will run concurrent
with "Jess" at the Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland and at the
Whitney. A Boston venue will be announced.
During their years together (1951-88), Duncan and Jess pursued
individual endeavors, as well as a wide range of collaborative
artistic and literary projects. This exhibit, for instance, features
original cards, broadsides, chapbooks and richly allegorical paintings
and poems whose symbols derived from a wide range of mystical sources
and personal experiences. Most intriguing from a literary perspective
are the limited editions of Duncan's poetry that were designed and
handcrafted by both men, in the process becoming narratives in both
art and poetry. 
Among the 183 items shown in the "Symposium of the Imagination" are
Jess's "Imaginary Portrait" of Duncan, a painting whose bright colors
project the poet's bold sense of joy and play; Duncan's childhood
cut-paper poetry constructions; self-portraits by Duncan and his
brightly crayoned covers for his book, "Fragments of a Disordered
Devotion."
There are also hand-rendered poems and collages for an edition of
Duncan's "Caesar's Gate;" prints and photographs of the poet and/or
Jess by such artists as Harvey Breverman, Harry Jacobus, Patricia
Bazelon; "made" drawings and handwritten poems for "A Book of
Resemblances." Other Duncan-decorated publications include special
copies of his book, "Letters," and the endpapers for "The Years as
Catches."
Bertholf writes that, like Jess's art, many of Duncan's finest
achievements were built on the principles of collage and "informed by
the wisdom of a life devoted to the achievements of the imagination.
"As Jess achieved high art in his 'Translation' series and then
visions of splendor in the brightly colored and complex collages...,"
writes Bertholf, "Duncan accomplished his vision of language...by
projecting a collage of words."