Invisible Terrain

In his debut collection, Some Trees (1956), the American poet John Ashbery poses a question that resonates across his oeuvre and much of modern art: ''How could he explain to them his prayer / that nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?'' When Ashbery asks this strange question, he joins a host of transatlantic avant-gardists--from the Dadaists to the 1960s neo-avant-gardists and beyond--who hav...