Alice Attie (born in 1950) is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

visual artist The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual a ...

and published

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

from

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Education

After graduating from

Barnard College Barnard College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a grou ...

in New York City with a degree in

French literature French literature () generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by French people, French citizens; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of Franc ...

, Attie obtained an MFA in poetry, studying under

June Jordan June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation. Jordan was passionate about using Black English ...

at the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a Public university, public research university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York ...

. Attie went on to complete a PhD from the

Graduate Center of the City University of New York The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and postgraduate university in New York City. Formed in 1961 as Division of Graduate Studies at City University ...

in comparative literature, with a

doctoral dissertation A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...

focused on "modern

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

, specifically on the meeting place of language and the unspeakable: how we accommodate what is inaccessible to language".

Photography and visual art

Attie's drawing practice began as an exploration of literary texts, as the expanded inscriptions which they inspired. ''Class Notes'', ongoing, is a series of drawings composed during graduate

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and physics seminars at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. Attie's class notes are taken in the form of

drawings Drawing is a visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, sometimes in com ...

. Attie's drawing series ''Take Care of Yourself'', inspired by the lectures of

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...

at the College de France, are writing-drawing abstractions formed by repetitions of the phrase "Take Care of Yourself", referencing the Socratic notion of care as it was addressed in Foucault's studies. Alice_Attie_art

Attie's recent

photographs A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an ''image'' or ''picture'') is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. The process and pra ...

feature the meadows, parks, and fields of

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

New Hampshire New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

upstate New York Upstate New York is a geographic region of New York (state), New York that lies north and northwest of the New York metropolitan area, New York City metropolitan area of downstate New York. Upstate includes the middle and upper Hudson Valley, ...

, and

Central Park Central Park is an urban park between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, and the first landscaped park in the United States. It is the List of parks in New York City, sixth-largest park in the ...

. Taken with her father's old 1937

Rolleiflex Rolleiflex is a long-running and diverse line of high-end cameras originally made by the German company Franke & Heidecke, and later Rollei-Werke. History The "Rolleiflex" name is most commonly used to refer to Rollei's premier line of med ...

camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...

, her photographs explore the idea of nature as

visual poetry Visual poetry is a style of poetry that incorporates graphic and visual design elements to convey its meaning. This style combines visual art and written expression to create new ways of presenting and interpreting poetry. Visual poetry focuses on ...

. Her photographic work and drawings on paper can be found in collections at

The Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a modern and contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. The institution was founde ...

, The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, The

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an African-American art museum at 144 West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African A ...

, The

Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area. Notable Jewish museums include: Albania * Solomon Museum, Berat Australia * Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourn ...

, The

Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

in Los Angeles and The Museum of Fine Arts in

Houston, Texas Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, among others. In 2001, Attie published ''Alice Attie: Harlem on the Verge'', (with introduction by historian

Robin D. G. Kelley Robin Davis Gibran Kelley (born March 14, 1962) is an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Stu ...

), a photography book of photo portraits and storefronts documenting modern-day

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater ...

on the verge of

gentrification Gentrification is the process whereby the character of a neighborhood changes through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents (the "gentry") and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has ...

. In 2012, Attie collaborated with photographs in books by

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (; born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative ...

: ''Harlem'' and ''An Aesthetic Education in the Age of Globalization''. In 2012, Attie contributed photographs to

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( ; ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitic ...

's book, ''The Church and the Kingdom''. Photographs of the artist

June Leaf June Leaf (August 4, 1929 – July 1, 2024) was an American visual artist known for her abstract allegorical paintings and drawings; she also worked in modernist kinetic sculpture. She was based in New York City, on Bleecker Street in NoHo, and ...

, taken over eighteen years, accompany images of June's drawings in the book Attie completed with

Steidl Steidl is a German-language publisher based in Göttingen, Germany. Founded in 1968 by Gerhard Steidl, it publishes photobooks. Overview The company was started by Gerhard Steidl.Bill Kouwenhoven, "Off to see the wizard", ''British Journa ...

Press to accompany the 2016 Whitney Museum Exhibition: ''June Leaf: Thought is Infinite''.

Poetry

Attie's first volume of poetry, ''These Figures Lining the Hills'', was published by

Seagull Books Seagull Books is a publishing venture begun in Kolkata in 1982 by Naveen Kishore, a theater practitioner. It began primarily as a response to the growing need for an Indian publishing house for theater and the other arts and since then it ha ...

in November 2015. ''These Figures Lining the Hills'' was inspired by a request from Naveen Kishore of Seagull Books: a call to "write about notes, notes that we write to ourselves, in journals, in notebooks, perhaps notes that we imagine writing, fragments of notes, notes in margins, and notes, perhaps, that are not written". Having kept a journal for almost 50 years, Attie culled from her recent notebooks. Attie's poetry book ''Under the Aleppo Sun'', 2018, with

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It pu ...

, is a collection of

poems Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

were inspired by her visit to

Aleppo, Syria Aleppo is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous governorate of Syria. With an estimated population of 2,098,000 residents it is Syria's largest city by urban area, and was the largest by po ...

, the home of her grandparents, in March 2011, as the war in Syria was taking hold.

Influences

Attie studied under

while obtaining her MFA in poetry. She cites

George Oppen George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions o ...

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...

, and recently,

Alice Oswald Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald (née Keen; born 31 August 1966) is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second ...

, as some of many poets who inspire her. She cites the works of the work of

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

as formative to her work in literature and art. Like Kafka, she sees her work as a mediation between two worlds, one which could be articulated and another which hovered, above or outside, but never in the field of definition. Among her cherished books are: ''

To the Lighthouse ''To the Lighthouse'' is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel P ...

'' by

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

and ''

As I Lay Dying ''As I Lay Dying'' is a 1930 Southern Gothic novel by American author William Faulkner. Faulkner's fifth novel, it is consistently ranked among the best novels of the 20th century.The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classical Guide to World Lit ...

'' by

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...

and she keeps the Collected Poems of

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

on her nightstand or in her suitcase.

Exhibitions

*2020 ''C19, Stones,'' ''Portraits of Ambiguity, Intensities, Abstractions,'
Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder
*2018 ''Possibilities, Where are you?'' Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder *2017 ''Where am I?'' Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder *2016 ''Series Refugees, Silence'' Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder *2014 ''Green Weather'' Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder *2012 ''Physics'' Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder

References

Sources

Howard Greenberg Gallery
*Flaherty, Meghan.
Review: Harlem by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak & Alice Attie
Columbia Journal (2013)

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Attie, Alice 1950 births Living people 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists Artists from New York City Barnard College alumni City College of New York alumni CUNY Graduate Center alumni