Wednesday 24 June 2009, 18.30

An evening celebrating the creative collaboration between two key figures of the post-war New York arts scene, who together brilliantly captured the heady excitements of a golden period in the city's artistic life. An artist of diverse talents and prodigious energy, Alfred Leslie (b1927) is celebrated internationally both for his abstract expressionist and realist paintings and for his films which include the seminal beat document Pull My Daisy (1959, with Robert Frank). Frank O'Hara (1926-66) is considered one of the most original and influential American poets of the twentieth century, the laureate of the New York scene who's position as curator at the Museum of Modern Art reflected his unique awareness of the visual arts. 

Leslie and O'Hara met when Leslie had a solo show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Manhattan, which was then a kind of home base for the 'New York School' poets such as O'Hara and John Ashbery. Leslie and O'Hara became close friends - collaborating with, talking to, promoting and adoring each other until O'Hara's untimely death in 1966.

Introduced by author and poet Dr Daniel Kane, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at University of Sussex.

This event marks the launch of the DVD Cool Man in a Golden Age, Alfred Leslie Selected Films (LUX, London, 2009) and the book We Saw the Light, Conversations between the New American Cinema and Poetry by Daniel Kane (University of Iowa Press, 2009).

The Last Clean Shirt
Alfred Leslie & Frank O'Hara, USA 1964, 42 min, 16mm

In a letter to his friend and collaborator, the poet Frank O'Hara, Leslie writes: 'We will shoot for two SEPERATE LEVELS on the film. One is the VISUAL, the other the HEARD & the spectator will be in TWO places or more SIMULTANEOUSLY. NOT AS MEMORY BUT AT THE SAME MOMENT. PARALLELISM! MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW!'

It is a blueprint for The Last Clean Shirt in which a man and a woman take a car ride through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A clock on the dashboard foregrounds the fact that the film is a single shot. The woman speaks in double-talk Finnish, interpreted by the beautiful and brilliant story told via O'Hara's subtitles that run throughout.

USAPoetry: Frank O'Hara
Richard O. Moore / WNET, USA 1966, 15 min, video

O'Hara discusses with Leslie his work and the relationship between poets, playwrights, and artists. O'Hara also reads some of his poetry and talks about his friendships with other artists. Filmed on 5 March 1966 at O'Hara's home and Leslie's studio in New York City.

Programme duration 90 mins

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£5 (£4 concessions), booking recommended

    

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