Gregory Corso Poem

A painterly surface with thin cardboard strips spread across the panel creating a subtle grid pattern, Gregory Corso Poem is an intricate work by Ray Johnson. "Tesserae" describe the strips of cardboard that create his layered surfaces. Johnson was a student at Black Mountain College during the mid-1940s under the guidance of Josef Albers and began making these cardboard works soon after his arrival in New York in 1948. His work epitomizes postwar artists’ adoption and reinterpretation of the collage medium. Johnson represents an important phase in postwar American art between the assemblages of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and the Pop images of Andy Warhol. Gregory Corso was a New York poet and a member of the Beat circle during the 1950s. Johnson, aware of the current practices of his contemporaries, many of them personal friends or acquaintances, often referenced them in his work.