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12.
BEAT CULTURE AND THE NEW AMERICA: 1950-1965 + Larry Keenan photograph of Allen Ginsberg and Dennis Hopper at the opening.
NY: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1995. First edition. 4to. Clothbound. 280pp. Prologue by Allen Ginsberg (a revised version of “A Definition of the Beat Generation” as published in Friction 1, Winter 1982). Issued to coincide with the major exhibition shown first in New York, then later in Minneapolis and San Francisco.
An examination in nine essays of the crosscurrents, exchanges and collaborations among poets, artists, musicians and filmmakers on both East and West Coasts, with the emphasis on the visual, and including the links with underground filmmakers Robert Frank and John Cassavetes.
Contributors include Rebecca Solnit, Lisa Phillips, Glenn O’Brien and Ed Sanders.
Profusely illustrated throughout, with reproductions of paintings, collages and assemblages by Jack Kerouac, Robert Rauschenberg, William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, Wallace Berman, Jay DeFeo, Bruce Conner, Wally Hedrick; installations by Ed Kienholz, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg; photographs by Allen Ginsberg, Fred McDarrah, Larry Keenan, and Dennis Hopper; plus a chronology by Steven Watson and a bibliography.
Fine in dw.
Together with:
i) promotional leaflets for the show and a calendar of the accompanying series of events (these included performances by Allen Ginsberg, George Herms, Jackie McLean, Max Roach, and Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek);
ii) a Larry Keenan photograph of Dennis Hopper and Allen Ginsberg (with his date) taken at the exhibition’s opening reception and preview at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, October 4, 1996. Colour digital print, printed by the photographer soon after the event (incorrectly dated on the verso), and SIGNED by him below the image. 21.5x28cm. (image size 12x17.5cm.). Acquired from the photographer. Fine. Earlier on the same day this cataloguer remembers encountering Dennis Hopper as he was photographing a wall on Broadway in North Beach, while across the street on Columbus Allen Ginsberg was making an appearance at City Lights bookstore.
