{"product_id":"the-last-avantgarde-isbn-9780385495332","title":"The Last Avant-Garde","description":"\u003cb\u003eA landmark work of cultural history that tells the story of how four young poets, John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, reinvented literature and turned New York into the art capital of the world.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGreenwich Village, New York, circa 1951. Every night, at a rundown tavern with a magnificent bar called the Cedar Tavern, an extraordinary group or painters, writers, poets, and hangers-on arrive to drink, argue, tell jokes, fight, start affairs, and bang out a powerful new aesthetic. Their style is playful, irreverent, tradition-shattering, and brilliant. Out of these friendships, and these conversations, will come the works of art and poetry that will define New York City as the capital of world culture--abstract expressionism and the New York School of Poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA richly detailed portrait of one of the great movements in American arts and letters, \u003cb\u003eThe Last Avant-Garde\u003c\/b\u003e covers the years 1948-1966 and focuses on four fast friends--the poets Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Koch. Lehman brings to vivid life the extraordinary creative ferment of the time and place, the relationship of great friendship to art, and the powerful influence that a group of visual artisits--especially Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Fairfield Porter--had on the literary efforts of the New York School.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Last Avant-Garde\u003c\/b\u003e is both a definitive and lively view of a quintessentially American aesthetic and an exploration of the dynamics of creativity.\"[A] jaunty and readable account of artisitc friendship and collaboration in Manhattan in the 1950s and early '60s...Lehman tells this story with spirit.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A highly readable and fittingly hybridized book: part cultural history, part speculative essay, part literary criticism, part biography...[Lehman] weaves narrative strands together with pertinent and lucid appreciation of the poetry.\" --\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New York Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Lehman skillfully waeves biographical sketches into his account of the poets' work and friendships...Makes a vivid, substantial constribution to our picture of New York in the '50s.\" --\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305211842789,"sku":"NP9780385495332","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385495332.jpg?v=1767740112","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-last-avantgarde-isbn-9780385495332","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}