The Beat Goes On: Poets as Painters

This exhibition is a unique opportunity to see the best poets of the Beat generation’s artwork in-person. Paintings, illustrations, self-portraiture, and portraits of Beat contemporaries will be on display by Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert LaVigne, Mohammed Mrabet, Paul Bowles, Harold Norse, Carolyn Cassady, Brion Gysin, Lew Welch, Kenneth Patchen, William S. Burroughs, and Michael McClure. Joe Lee and John Natsoulas curated this incredible exhibition to show the incredible diversity of poetry, artwork, and ephemera of the Beat poets and painters.

Like all labels that stick, the nickname “Beat” richly and succinctly characterizes major aspects of its so-called movement, which sprang from the ecstatic and tortured rhythms of visionary poets, painters, and musicians. Tellingly, informatively, paradoxically, meanings of “beat” extend from a resolute self-affirming strike and an appointed path to their dark opposite–dissipated and hopelessly exhausted resolution or morale. “Beats” can also mean a dissonant battering set up by discordant patterns.

The Beat Goes On will run from November 10th through December 4th.

On November 13th from 6:30 to 10pm, there will be an opening night with live jazz and poetry,  featuring performances by Gregory Carter Dr. Andy Jones, John Natsoulas, and Tony Passarell Trio. The Linda Bair Dance Company will perform the original dance “Jack Kerouac”.