Lot Essay
So we start with the big, ugly American lie. Allen Ginsberg, according to George Will, made his career on the dysfunctions of American Society. Allen gnawed a hole in the lie; his was the Howl heard round the world, from Mexico City to Peking, the Howl of distorted, suffocating youth. Allen's worldwide influence was unprecedented. He, with the courage of his total sincerity, charmed and disarmed the savage Fraternity Beasts.
(William Burroughs, May 24, 1997, on Allen Ginsberg, The New Yorker, August 18, 1997, p. 36).
In the autumn of 1984, Allen Ginsberg travelled to China for the first time, sponsored by a non-profit organization, the Foundation for Educational Futures. While there he gave classes on American poetry and literature at Hebei University in Baoding, about 50 miles south of Bejing where the photographs contained in this lot were made.
Ginsberg, the preeminent American poet of his generation, made photographs beginning in the 1950s. Like his friend Robert Frank, from whom he probably drew inspiration, he preferred the spontaneity of the captured moment, where presence and context dictated the image. Also, like the later work of Frank, Ginsberg's photographs were consciously made narrative through the addition of text directly on the print itself. In that regard, the works contained in this lot function not only as documents of this momentous journey but as a visual and written journal as well.
(William Burroughs, May 24, 1997, on Allen Ginsberg, The New Yorker, August 18, 1997, p. 36).
In the autumn of 1984, Allen Ginsberg travelled to China for the first time, sponsored by a non-profit organization, the Foundation for Educational Futures. While there he gave classes on American poetry and literature at Hebei University in Baoding, about 50 miles south of Bejing where the photographs contained in this lot were made.
Ginsberg, the preeminent American poet of his generation, made photographs beginning in the 1950s. Like his friend Robert Frank, from whom he probably drew inspiration, he preferred the spontaneity of the captured moment, where presence and context dictated the image. Also, like the later work of Frank, Ginsberg's photographs were consciously made narrative through the addition of text directly on the print itself. In that regard, the works contained in this lot function not only as documents of this momentous journey but as a visual and written journal as well.