Dr Sam Ladkin - 'Figura Serpentinata' in Art and Poetry: A Comparative Reading of Frank O'Hara's 'In Memory of My Feelings'
My current project seeks to revivify a critical terminology derived from the rhetoric of art of the Italian Renaissance, in particular that which surrounds the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti. This terminology illuminates, I hope, the seminal work of Frank O’Hara (1926-1966), a gay poet of the “New York School”, an art critic, curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and a friend to many of the major artists and poets (and composers and dancers...) of the 1940s through the 1960s. The term figura serpentinata, a term attributed to Michelangelo, describes the serpent-like twist in the pose of the (male) body, and is arguably reprised in O’Hara’s seminal 'In Memory of My Feelings'. Or rather, that is what I will argue.
