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I must cite for the benefit of the Beat Generation fans among my readership the exhibition now at the National Theatre of London (presumably similar if not identical in content to other recent exhibitions of memorable photographs of the Beats):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12274697
I must also engage in my annual self-promotion for the brief opportunity of everyone on earth with internet access to acquire a piece of my art work (actually, there is a companion piece if anybody bids on this one and loses out):
https://artpapers.dojiggy.com/auction/product.cfm?7040235B307872080C737406124528577C060873007578
I believe I wrote in this very journal about the work in question, No Longer Albers, and Probably Not Alberti Either, a conceptual meditation on the place of beauty in artmaking, plus folk craft, found objects, and too many other things to think about, or at least to be worth thinking about. The deliberately off-balance geometry of the found tiles recalls Japanese aesthetics (of "the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete"—look closely to see the small rust spots on the shrine box) more than the would-be perfection of the geometric paintings of Josef Albers, and despite its Baroque trappings, the folk-art Mexican shrine box will never be confused with anything derived from the Renaissance aesthetics of Alberti, who was, according to Wikipedia, "an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer." Got that?
Since I hate the idea of ending on a note of self-promotion, I shall take the risk of quoting someone else's already quoted image (www.flickr.com/photos/roadtointerzone/) of William Burroughs reading Allen Ginsberg's copy of St-John Perse's Winds in the lovely Bollingen Press edition I have recommended before in this journal (I think) as one of the great accomplishments of post-WWII book design as well as a superb poem in its own right. Further proof, if any were needed, that the Beats were broadly interested in the compatible literary options of the day (Perse's rhetorical stance seems perfectly compatible with Ginsberg's, though Perse probably would not have thought so, had someone offered the opinion in his lifetime):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12274697
I must also engage in my annual self-promotion for the brief opportunity of everyone on earth with internet access to acquire a piece of my art work (actually, there is a companion piece if anybody bids on this one and loses out):
https://artpapers.dojiggy.com/auction/product.cfm?7040235B307872080C737406124528577C060873007578
I believe I wrote in this very journal about the work in question, No Longer Albers, and Probably Not Alberti Either, a conceptual meditation on the place of beauty in artmaking, plus folk craft, found objects, and too many other things to think about, or at least to be worth thinking about. The deliberately off-balance geometry of the found tiles recalls Japanese aesthetics (of "the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete"—look closely to see the small rust spots on the shrine box) more than the would-be perfection of the geometric paintings of Josef Albers, and despite its Baroque trappings, the folk-art Mexican shrine box will never be confused with anything derived from the Renaissance aesthetics of Alberti, who was, according to Wikipedia, "an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer." Got that?
Since I hate the idea of ending on a note of self-promotion, I shall take the risk of quoting someone else's already quoted image (www.flickr.com/photos/roadtointerzone/) of William Burroughs reading Allen Ginsberg's copy of St-John Perse's Winds in the lovely Bollingen Press edition I have recommended before in this journal (I think) as one of the great accomplishments of post-WWII book design as well as a superb poem in its own right. Further proof, if any were needed, that the Beats were broadly interested in the compatible literary options of the day (Perse's rhetorical stance seems perfectly compatible with Ginsberg's, though Perse probably would not have thought so, had someone offered the opinion in his lifetime):
