photo by Katherine Wolkoff

While writing a book about poet Marianne Moore and artist Joseph Cornell I went to a show of Ray Johnson’s collages and noticed that he made frequent reference in them to Moore and Cornell. In fact, the pictures were full of names, disposed in ever-shifting constellations that glittered with meanings held just out of reach. They were like nothing I had ever seen.

Also, like me, Ray Johnson was from Detroit, in Michigan, the mitten-shaped state.

I finished the book, Criminal Ingenuity: Moore, Cornell, Ashbery, and the Struggle Between the Arts, stopped teaching at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, started teaching at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and kept thinking about Ray Johnson until it seemed I ought to write a book about him.        

For a review of Criminal Ingenuity, see: https://www.artforum.com/columns/ellen-levys-criminal-ingenuity-209842/