Compiled by Barry Miles

(Italics indicate name of show and catalogue)

1964

Galerie Stadler, Paris, group show, catalog, [Peinture, Poésie, Musique: David Budd Recontre William Burroughs et Earl Brown Chez Rodolphe Stadler.] (View catalogue)

1982

B2 Gallery, London, group show supporting the Final Academy festival of readings and events celebrating WSB and his work. [cut-ups, collages, photographs] [ 27 September – 24 October, 1982]

1986

University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence, Kansas, 1986. [William S. Burroughs: An Exhibit of His Work]

1987

Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, solo show, catalog [19 December, 1987 – 24 January 1988]

1988

Suzanne Biederberg Gallery at the Amsterdam Art Fair, catalog

October Gallery, London, solo show, 1 June – 2 July, 1988] [shares catalog with above]

The Western Front Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, solo show [5 July – 15 July, 1988]

Center on Contemporary Art, [Seattle, Washington, [w/ St. Eom]

Gallery Casa Sin Nombre, Santa Fe, New Mexico, solo show, catalog.

Paul Klein Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, [w/ Sam Gilliam] [21 October – 26 November, 1988

Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, NY, group show, catalog [Literary Vision][November, 1988]

1989

Paul Maenz Gallery, Cologne, Germany, [w/ Walter Dahn]

Gallerie OBORO and Atelier Roger Bellemare, Montreal, Canada, two gallery solo show [22 April – 21 May, 1989] [two lithographs issued]

Cold City Gallery, Toronto, Canada, solo show

Elliot Smith Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri, solo show

Galerie Carzaniga & Ueker, Basel, Switzerland, solo show, catalog [27 April – 20 May, 1989]

Cleto Polcina Artemodernna, Roma, Italy, solo show, catalog [25 May, 1989 – ]

Galerie Carzaniga + Ueker at the Basel Art Fair

Kellas Gallery, Lawrence, Kansas, solo show [30 September – 11 November, 1989]

Galeria EMI Valentim de Carvalho, Lisbon, Portugal, solo show, catalog, 1/800 [November 1989]

1990

Galeria EMI Valentim de Carvalho at ARCO Art Fair, Madrid

Vanguardia Galeria de Arte, Bilbao, Spain, [4 March – 27 March, 1990]

Galerie Waschsalon, Frankfurt, Germany, solo show [16 March – ]

Galerie K, Paris, solo show, catalog [23 March – 21 April, 1990]

XPO Galerie, Hamburg, Germany, [w/ Robert Wilson] catalog [Black Rider] [31 March – 28 April, 1990]

October Gallery, London, [w/ Keith Haring] [29 March – 5 May, 1990]

The Seed Hall / Seibu Shibuya, Tokyo, solo show, catalog [14 June – 3 July, 1990] [Shotgun Paintings, works on wood & paper]

Akarenga Hall / Seibu Sapporo, Sapporo, Japan, solo show [same catalog as above] [12 July – 30 July, 1990]

Venice Biennale, Venice, group show. [“Dimensione futuro”] [27 September – 30 September, 1990]

Gallery Casa Sin Nombre, Santa Fe, New Mexico, [w/Allen Ginsberg (photographs)] [ the “Paper Cloud, Thick Pages” series]

Earl McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles, California, solo show

Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut, Tübingen, Germany, solo show

Galeria Sephira, Madrid, Spain, solo show, catalog [8 November – 7 December, 1990]

1991

Galerie Carzaniga + Ueker, Basel, Switzerland, solo show, catalog [10 April – 4 May, 1991]

Galerie Carzaniga + Ueker at D’Arte Contemporanea Art Fair in Milano [12 – 16 April, 1991]

Galerie Carzaniga & Ueker at the Basel Art Fair, [12 – 16 April, 1991]

Galerie K, Amsterdam, solo show, [15 May – 1 June, 1991]

1992

Atelier Marconi Gallery, Torino, Italy, solo show, catalog [Casa Burroughs: Shotgun Dipinti e Altro]

Transit Gallery, Bergamo, Italy, solo show

Project Theatre, Dublin, [w/ Brion Gysin]

The Sena Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, [w/ Dennis Hopper]

The October Gallery, London, solo show [“The Seven Deadly Sins”] [28 April – 6 June, 1992]

Artists en Mass, Lawrence, Kansas, solo show [“The Seven Deadly Sins”]

Earl McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles, California, solo show [“The Seven Deadly Sins”]

1993

The Writer’s Place, Kansas City, Missouri, solo show [“The Seven Deadly Sins”]

Galeria Sephira, Madrid, Spain, solo show

Galerie Porte-Avion, Marseille, France, solo show

XLV Exposizione Internazionale d’Arte, Venice, Italy, group show, catalog

2ème Biennale d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France, group show, catalog, [Et tous ils changent le Monde] [3 September – 13 October, 1993]

Center for Study and Exhibit of Drawings, Exquisite Corpse, New York, solo show

1994

Floria Brown Gallery, Woody Creek, Colorado, [w/ Hunter S. Thompson], [“Two Guys With Guns Making Art”] [22 January – 20 February, 1994]

The Bourgeois Pig, Lawrence, Kansas, solo show

Aktionsforum, Munich, Germany [“Nagual Marks”]

Vintage Gallery, Amsterdam, solo show [photographs 1962-1972] [17 June – 15 July 1994]

Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, group show [“The Ossuary”] [19 February – 19 March, 1994]

New York University, New York, group show, catalog [Beat Generation Art]

1995

Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark, solo show [“The Seven Deadly Sins”] catalog. [21 January – 19 March, 1995]

Terrain Gallery, San Francisco, California, solo show

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, group show, catalog [Beat Culture and the New America] [2 June – 15 September, 1995]

1996

Ubu Gallery, New York, group show. [“The Gun”] [27 January – 9 March, 1996]

Webb Gallery, Waxahachie, Texas, solo show [“Paintings”] [20 January – 2 March, 1996]

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, group show, catalog [“Beat Culture and the New America”] [2 June – 15 September, 1996]

Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, California, solo show + supporting exhibits, catalog [Ports of Entry] [18 July – 6 October, 1996]

Track 16 Gallery and Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, California, solo show [“Concrete and Buckshot. William S. Burroughs Paintings 1987-1996”][18 July – 6 October, 1996]

Spencer Museum, University of Kansas, Lawrence, [“Ports of Entry” see above]

David Levik Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri, solo show [19 November – 7 January, 1997]

Zola Café, Westport, Kansas City, solo show

Paolo Baldacci Gallery, New York, [“BANG – Gunshot Art”]

Ubu Gallery, New York, group show, [“The Gun: Icon of Twentieth Century Art”] [27 January – 9 March, 1996]

1997

Pat Hearn Gallery, New York, [w/ George Condo], catalog [6 December, 1997 – 7 January, 1998]

1999

Galerie Carzaniga + Ueker, Basel, Switzerland, solo show, catalog
[23 September – 31 October, 1999]

2004

Bloomberg SPACE, London, group show. [“Collage”] [27 March – 8 May, 2004]

Raab Galerie, Berlin, group show. [“William S. Burroughs – The 7 Deadly Sins”] [16 November – 31 December, 2004]

2005

Riflemaker, London, solo show [catalog] [Part One “Dead Aim”] [12 September – continues through all three shows]

Riflemaker, London, solo show [Part Two “Pistol Poem”] [10 October – ]

Riflemaker, London, solo show [Part Three “Rifle Range”] [31 October – 17 December, 2005]

2006

MACBA Barcelona, group show. [“Vinyl. Records and Covers by Artists”] [18 May – 3 September, 2006]

Galerie von Bartha, Basel, group show. [“Light and Shadow”] [1 September – 30 October, 2006]

CCA Wattis, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, group show. [“Radical Software”] [28 November, 2006 – 24 February, 2007]

New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK, group show. [“You’ll Never Know”] [1 December 2006 – 7 January, 2007]

2007

Palais de Tokyo, Paris, group show [27 September – 30 December 2007]

2008

Kunstverein München, group show. [“Oh Girl, It’s a Boy!”] [20 October 2007 – 10 February, 2008]

Palais de Tokyo, Paris, group show selected by Ugo Rondinone. [“The Third Mind, Carte blanche à Ugo Rondinone”] [16 November 2007 – 3 January 2008]

The Writer’s Brush: Visual Art by Writers, Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, NY. Group show. [11 September – 27 October, 2007]

The Writer’s Brush: Visual Art by Writers, Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, MA. Group show [5 December – 20 January, 2008]

Stellan Holm Gallery, New York, solo show [“Rub Out the Word”] [15 February – 29 March, 2008]

Irish Museum of Art, Dublin, [w/ Hans Christian Andersen], solo show, catalog [Cut-Outs and Cut-Ups, Hans Christian Andersen and William Seward Burroughs] [9 April – 29 June 2008]

White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO, group show.

Centre Pompidou, Paris, group show. [“Traces du Sacré”] [7 May – 11 August 2008]

[“Bendover/Hangover: An Evening with Cinema Zero”] 10 May, 2008 – one night only]

Haus der Kunst, München, group show. [“Traces du Sacré”] [19 September, 2008 – 11 January, 2009] [from Paris, above]

Royal Academy of Arts, London, solo show [“Burroughs Live”, part of the “Collision Course” series of exhibitions] [8 December – 18 January 2009]

Riflemaker, London, solo show. [“William S. Burroughs: Life File”] [16 December, 2008 – 10 January, 2009] [decorated folders]

Le Case d’Arte, Mailand, Italy, group show [“Omaggio a William Burroughs”] [18 December, 2008 – 20 January 2009]

2009

Maggs Bros, London, solo show [“William S. Burroughs, London photographs”] [19 January – 20 February, 2009]

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, group show. [“The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989”] [30 January – 19 April 2009]

Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, group show. [Sonic Youth etc.: “Sensational Fix”] [31 January – 10 May, 2009] [in two parts]

KIT Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf, group show. [Sonic Youth etc.: “Sensational Fix”] [31 January – 10 May, 2009] [in two parts]

Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica, two man show [Bukowski and Burroughs”] Malcolm McNeill and WSB: The Lost Art of Ah Pook Is Here.] [4 April – 2 May, 2009]

Plattfon Record Store, Basel, documentation show [“Inside the Bunker, at Home With William S. Burroughs”] [24 April – 30 July, 2009]

Stellan Holm Gallery, New York, solo show [“The Sky Is Thin As Paper Here”] [12 September – 31 October, 2009]

Kunstverein München, group show. [“Rip It Up And Start Again”] [10 October – 22 November, 2009.]

2011

Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bunesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, group show. [“Arp, Beckmann, Munch, Kirchner, Warhol … Klassiker in Bonn”] [28 January – 27 March, 2011]

2012

ZKM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany, solo show [“The Name Is Burroughs – Expanded Media”], [24 March – August, 2012]

Kunstalle Wien, Wien, Austria [Cut-ups Cut-ins Cut-outs. Die Kunst des William S. Burroughs] [15 June – 21 October, 2012]

by Roger Holden

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jed Birmingham for his courteous offer to submit this correction to his essay “Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer.” The premise of his essay was that, to his knowledge, Burroughs seems to have avoided using the computer for any of his creative work. “What would Burroughs have done,” Birmingham writes, “with an Ian Sommerville-type collaborator who knew the nuts and bolts of computers and the Internet, was aware of their philosophical and cultural implications, and also possessed a desire to expand the medium creatively? Like many on the forum at RealityStudio, I wonder what if? It was not to be.”

Happily, I can say that it was to be. I am privileged in this life to have been a friend of William Burroughs and also a collaborator on his visual art — using the medium of the computer. In 1995 I worked with Burroughs on a series of three-dimensional computer-generated stereograms (similar to the Magic Eye images of the 90s) based upon sampling his paintings. William guided me in the process of what to select for input into the computer so as to obtain results that he thought would be appropriate for this visual holographic cut-up collaborative experiment.

One of these images was selected for display in the landmark Ports of Entry exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1996 and was documented in the accompanying book Ports of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts on page 149:

… in 1995, Burroughs joined with computer animator Roger Holden in producing a series of computer-generated stereograms created by digitally scanning a detail of one of Burroughs’ paintings into a computer, color-enhancing it, and printing it with a laser printer. When viewed with relaxed and slightly crossed eyes, the three dimensional effects of these “cybernetic cut-ups” form imaginary landscapes of extreme intricacy and depth not unlike those imagined works described by Burroughs in 1981 [in Cities of the Red Night] as made by “some lost color process… used to transfer three dimensional holograms onto the… pages. You ache to look at these colors.”

Also on page 149, note 333 says: “The title ‘cybernetic cut-ups’ was coined by Holden in a letter to the author June 15, 1995.”

This particular image is now in the permanent collection of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. This image may be viewed online at the following presentation created by the Spencer Museum of Art. It is the 6th image of 8 shown in the presentation.

Quoting from an article from the University Daily Kansan October 28, 1996: “Steve Goddard, curator of prints and drawings at the Spencer Museum of Art, said that Holden’s collaboration with Burroughs was a good example of how Burroughs has continued to stay involved with contemporary trends in art. ‘It’s a very interesting piece that shows Burroughs’ relevance in the Cyberpunk world of computer art,’ Goddard said. ‘His openness in collaborating with other artists demonstrates how he accepts what is unfolding at the moment.'”

I am an inventor who has been aware of the philosophical, cultural, and audiovisual implications of the computer since 1976. I have always desired to expand this medium creatively. In 1982, for example, I designed the animation computer system used by PBS’s Emmy-winning children’s series Reading Rainbow to film their feature books for the first 5 seasons. Rogerreadingrainbow.com is my Reading Rainbow site.

I also co-invented a holographic-like computer image projection system which was featured in 2005 on the Discovery Channel Science of Star Wars series. It was shown as an example of futuristic R2-D2 holographic-like technology being realized in the present. I am presently developing a different and superior holographic-like display technology. A short video of the Discovery Channel segment is at YouTube.

I first met Burroughs formally in 1986 through his best friend and business manager James Grauerholz. In 1988 I produced a music video tribute to Burroughs which aired the same year on the USA Network series Nightflight and also on MTV in 1990 on their first internationally broadcast series, Buzz. It should also be mentioned that throughout the years I was given two wonderful cats by William. One was the White Cat mentioned in Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs and in the text on inter-zone.org.

One day when I was visiting Burroughs in the early 90s, he said “Roger, I want to show you the painting I finished today. It’s called Jack the Ripper.” Looking, I discerned that it consisted of reddish paint splotches and twirls on a white canvas. William then said, “Do you see Jack?” I looked carefully and replied, “William, I might sense the ambience of Jack in an abstract sort of way.” Immediately he said, “No! No! No! Do you see Jack?” I said I didn’t, but please show me. He then pointed to a specific area, a small area toward the bottom right side of the painting. Sure enough, I did see it, a leering evil face with a derby hat on top of his head. It was cartoon-like, somewhat warped in appearance but immediately recognizable. Burroughs then turned the painting upside down. In the same exact area where I had previously seen Jack the Ripper he pointed and said assuredly, “There’s his victim.” He was right. There was an equally vivid warped caricature of a woman’s face grimacing in an expression of horror! It was absolutely amazing to witness this, as it was a prime example of what he would call a “Port of Entry” into an image. William painted with a faith that his process of painting could serve as a vessel for evocative magic. These emerging images were searched for and discovered only after he painted the entire canvas. Naturally, after that experience, I wished for the day that we could collaborate using the medium of the computer in a likewise visual and shamanistic manner.

I would discuss my computer audiovisual interests frequently with William. One day he called and asked to visit my animation studio, Magic Visions. During the studio visit, I demonstrated a stereoscopic 3D image of a cat sticking its head outside of a computer monitor. On other occasions we might discuss such things as a computer-assisted visual prosthesis project I had received a grant to pursue or my computer-assisted holographic projection efforts. This type of discussion about computers (i.e. 3d stereoscopic imagery, sensory substitution) clearly engaged his interest because we were talking of a direct melding of the mind and computer through altered perceptual states. For example, discussions such as how would blind people perceive such a computer-generated tactile image vibrated onto the skin or how they might perceive a three-dimensional computer-generated audio environment. The studio visit, audiovisual computer discussions and demonstrations eventually led to the following 1994 inscription written for me on the inside cover of his Kurt Cobain CD collaboration, The “Priest” They Called Him, “for Roger Holden, who always has tomorrow’s ideas today.”

As 1994 wound up, I noticed his great interest and enjoyment of computer-generated stereograms. I had previous experience creating some of these myself so I asked him if we could collaborate together by incorporating some of his paintings into computer-generated 3D stereograms. His immediate reply was, “By all means, yes! Lets see what happens.” I first started on the project by using the entire painting as a source. Not much seemed to be happening with that approach. The output was thin and difficult to discern in 3D. Burroughs then directed me to incorporate small samples of his paintings into the computer rather than just simply inputting the whole thing. This was when we struck our pay dirt, as exciting bold 3D shapes began to emerge.

Our collaboration was a true “all into cyberspace” experience for both of us. These images allow for a direct altered state of visual perception just as the Magic Eye images do. However, rather than simply entice you with just a dolphin or 3-D heart, the cybernetic cut-up images can be used to experience directly certain information processes of the mind — specifically, those processes that can form our visual sense of the 3D outside world from the input of even the simplest of sampled information.

William was extremely enthusiastic about this collaboration and equally enthusiastic about the results. In essence, samples of his paintings were input as viral info elements into a 3D computer stereoscopic process. The 3D Cybernetic cut-up output resulted in complex holographic-like landscapes and objects. Our collaboration, including studies, involved more than a dozen images. Like all such attempts in art, some worked out better than others. A special few seemed to demonstrate some intriguing synchronicities. I hope to publish someday a compendium of these studies and completed images.

(Originally Appeared in Contemporanea, 1990)

To set the stage for this interview, which was originally published in 1990, Ms. Ellis kindly responded to some questions from RealityStudio.

When I did this interview, I was the chief art critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican, which William knew because he’d been to Santa Fe, I believe the year before, in 1989. I wrote for national and European art magazines as well. An Italian / US magazine, Contemporanea, approached me for a report on Santa Fe’s art scene (which I did regularly after that until the magazine folded) and I took the opportunity to pitch William’s visual art work to the editors.

I’d known William for many years, dating back to 1975 at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. (I lived in Boulder and was going to law school when Naropa started.)

In fact I picked up William from the airport on his first teaching / outing to Naropa on the invite of his old friend, Allen Ginsberg. He was fresh back from Tangier and that summer I began doing cut-ups. I didn’t miss a single class of his after that.

I was a teaching assistant for Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Anne Waldman and the various visiting poets (for nearly 10 years as well as teaching a writing workshop for three of those years), and spent many afternoons and evenings with William at his apartment in Boulder.

We shared numerous dinners over the next five years (usually with a group of his young protégés including James), and went shooting together at my place up Boulder Canyon. We both lived in the Boulderado Hotel at one time and saw a lot of each other then. I believe he was writing Cites of the Red Night at that time.

He was my mentor — I prefer prose to poetry and he was the only prose teacher at Naropa. He became a close friend.

After leaving Naropa in 1980, I arranged to have William come for a reading in San Francisco where I was going to film school at the Art Institute. He told me at the time that he hadn’t been to San Francisco for 25 years because he didn’t like it. However, we all had a great time and I believe William came back twice more in the 1980s, performing to capacity crowds each time. The first reading was with Allen Ginsberg and the next two were with Laurie Anderson.

The Contemporanea interview was done in Lawrence. I traveled there with my editor from the New Mexican, she dropped me off, I stayed for a week and took the train back to Santa Fe.

William and I had a terrific time. He took me shooting and we hung out and talked about everything under the sun till three in the morning most nights. Though we were supposed to be addressing art, we used the time to catch up on our always quirky and often funny conversations about mutual acquaintances, aliens, suicide, animals, the Johnsons of the world, history, futurism, cyberpunks, etc. I have three disks of that material, most of which has not been published.

We often talked about aesthetics and art. William had given me a target that he’d bullseyed (now in the possession of a friend) and I said “that looks like an abstract expressionist painting.” After that, we talked a lot about the possibilities there. Of course it was his idea immediately to blow up a paint can — maybe he’d even done that before. Not sure.

Later, in 1983 or 1984, I had a vivid dream about William and called him. I told him that in the dream there was a beet field next to him and it was a beautiful red purple color, like a painting. Then I realized, in the dream, that William was making paintings! that he was a visual artist now.

“Very interesting Simone, I do live next to a beet field and I am making art.”

Ever since William taught a small class one fall, training a handful of us to be more observant by using the technique of first-spotting (like one does with game when hunting), I’d written to him or called him to tell him dreams in which he appeared. He always thanked me for that. It was part of our friendship — I was sort of an “agent” (to use WSB’s terminology) of the dream world for him at these times. Sometimes the dreams were helpful to him and sometimes they weren’t.

So when the opportunity came to write about his work in a helpful way, I jumped at the chance. Needless to say, it was a memorable week.

The Conversation

Simone Ellis: Of course, you’ve been known as a writer since the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959. Then in the early eighties you worked with Robert Rauschenberg on his series of lithographs, American Pewter with Burroughs. Was this the beginning of your working with images instead of words?

William S. Burroughs: Not exactly. It actually goes back to the sixties. I was experimenting with scrapbooks with Brion Gysin, who was living in Paris at the time. We used actual pictures from newspapers, and the scrapbooks were a really weird mixture of painting, writing, and collage. We were trying to break down the barrier between painting and writing. Of course, you must remember that writing arose from painting via pictographs, and then there were Egyptian hieroglyphs. There’s no doubt in my mind that the pictographs were created as magic.

Ellis: Yes, and I know that you have always viewed writing as making magic. Is painting the same sort of magical act for you?

Burroughs: Well, not entirely. When I am painting, I see with my hands. When you write, you can’t help but see what is right in front of you. This is not true with painting — your hands do all sorts of things. For example, I read a book called Bad Medicine by C.Q. Yarbro, and in it someone had overdosed on anticoagulants, so that blood was coming out of his nose, through his skin, everywhere. And the drug was disguised in orange juice, because it had an acidic taste. Well, in one of my paintings, you can see the guy drinking the orange juice, which is odd because I wasn’t necessarily thinking about that at the time. In other words, what I am doing is automatic painting.

Ellis: When did you recognize it?

Burroughs: As soon as I painted it, I looked at it and said, this is that scene. I have had several experiences like that, recognizing events in my paintings after they have been completed.

Ellis: Do you think symbols come out of your unconscious mind onto the paper through your hands?

Burroughs: I would never use the term “unconscious,” because if it were completely unconscious, no one would be aware of it. Usually it is partially conscious.

Ellis: So when you have your materials in front of you, what sort of state of mind do you get into?

Burroughs: I try my best to make my mind a blank, but there is no such thing as making the mind a blank. The whole idea is that I try to let my hands go and paint whatever my so-called unconscious mind is aware of. I try to get my pictures to move. A face comes into focus, almost smiles, snarls, speaks. There are green monkeys, a green man, very serene. But I looked at the anticoagulant one afterwards and there was the man drinking orange. Horrible death, horrible. One time I saw a bicycle accident happen at the same time I was painting the picture. I have seen many things in my paintings.

Ellis: Do your paintings serve as oracles?

Burroughs: It isn’t really a question of oracles, it is a matter of the future and the past being laid out, so that you can see both the future and the past from the present. There is a very interesting book by John Dunne called An Experiment With Time, written in 1925. He started writing down his dreams and found that they very often referred to future events. I dream about earthquakes, and he had a very interesting point to make about that. He said that if you dream about an earthquake, you are not foreseeing the actual event. What you are seeing is the moment when you will become aware of it. That is, the moment you will see it in a newspaper or hear about it on the news. In other words, you are moving forward on your own time track to a moment of your own future awareness.

Ellis: You have spoken before about the clairvoyance of writing and art. Why do you think making art is a clairvoyant act any more than, say, laying a brick or driving a cab?

Burroughs: Well, art is a creative act. Paul Klee said that art does not simply render nature, it renders it visible. The artist sees something that others do not see, and by seeing it and putting it on canvas, he makes it visible to others. Recognition art. A particle physicist at the University of Texas named John Wheeler has developed something that he calls “recognition physics.” Wheeler says that nothing exists until it is observed. Well, the artist as observer is like that. The observer creates by observing, and the observer observes by creating. In other words, observation is a creative act. By observing something and putting it onto canvas, the artist makes something visible to others that did not exist until he observed it.

Ellis: And by observing it, he takes part in its coming into being.

Burroughs: Exactly.

Ellis: You have called your artistic process “nagual art,” after Carlos Castaneda’s books, referring to the concepts of the tonal (predictable) and the nagual (unknown) universes. So, by extension of recognition physics, is it the nagual that you are observing?

Burroughs: Yeah, the unknown, precisely. I am observing the unknown.

Ellis: And that is not the kind of art that paints the cow in the field?

Burroughs: Well, no. The cow on the grass is another sort of painting, and it is terrific. But now it can be done so much better with the camera. The next step was collage, which introduced the element of time. Someone walks around the block, comes back, and puts down on canvas what he is seeing. He is seeing a medley of fragments, which is much closer to the actual facts of perception. He is seeing someone’s face in a shop window, a dog, a cyclist, but it’s going to be a medley, and it will be much more real than sitting down and painting that static moment of the cow in the grass.

Ellis: There is no such thing as that frozen moment in time.

Burroughs: There is no such thing.

Ellis: Furthermore, unlike the cow painters, you are not looking at the outer landscape.

Burroughs: No, I am looking into an inner landscape and, to the best of my ability, rendering it.

Ellis: And somehow these figures continue to rise out of the ink.

Burroughs: Yes, through my hands.

Ellis: Have you ever considered yourself an expressionist, or do you think in those terms at all?

Burroughs: I never think in those terms. I just follow my hands. Sometimes they do not do anything interesting at all, but sometimes they do.

Ellis: And then there are the gunshot paintings. You have always been known to experiment with random selection, such as the cut-up method of writing. How do the gunshot paintings fit into that aesthetic?

Burroughs: When I make the shotgun-blast paintings, I am usually not thinking about the painting but about hitting the can. I line it up, and you get this explosion of color. Then the gun whams against your shoulder, but not hard at all.

Ellis: And that is the split-second of creation?

Burroughs: Yes, it happens only once. If you miss it, it is gone.

Ellis: Like the burning-out of a star.

Burroughs: Exactly.

Ellis: Do you get a rush out of this moment of creation? Out of creating these works of art and then having them look back at you?

Burroughs: Yes, absolutely.

Ellis: How does painting affect your emotions, your state of mind? Do you take it seriously enough to get depressed by a painting that does not turn out?

Burroughs: I take it completely seriously, but it is something absorbed and realized into yourself, for god’s sake.

Ellis: It allows you to exist on another level? In another dimension?

Burroughs: Exactly.

Ellis: You went through an obscenity trial over Naked Lunch in the sixties. Do you think that we are entering a new age of censorship?

Burroughs: Yes. It has not reached the written word in the United States yet, but it has definitely reared its head in the visual arts. I have very few overtly sexual pictures. I have one collage painting with pictures of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delight, but I do not think that anyone will be bothered by that. For one thing, it is protected by age. As Henry Miller pointed out, if it is old, then it is all right. Something that is perfectly acceptable in a museum may meet with opposition when it appears in new work.

Ellis: Do you think that the rise of censorship could in fact further the evolution of freedom by inspiring the artist to stretch boundaries, to make more cutting-edge art?

Burroughs: Well, that is the whole idea of opposition giving impetus. I say that it does. But any new school of art always comes about as an opposition to something that has been petrified.

Ellis: So along those lines, censorship in the United States may further the cause of creative art, however backhandedly?

Burroughs: Yes, but I do not see where it could go along those lines. There is nothing new about sexually explicit content.

Ellis: So where do you go from here?

Burroughs: Well, I have been working with gunshot paintings, and with India inks and watercolors on slick paper. I have also been making Rorschach monoprints that have produced some interesting results, but I think I will try oil on canvas next. I have not done that yet. And, of course, I will continue to let the picture see me. If you try this method, you will always notice that some little detail in the picture is looking back at you — seeing you, coming alive in your presence. For instance, look at this one, which I did with my suction-cup method — dipping a rubber suction cup into ink and then sticking it to the paper and moving it across it.

Ellis: These look like aliens.

Burroughs: They are. They are supposed to be aliens. Here’s one that I like very much — they are the Root People. I recognized them the moment that the painting was finished.

Ellis: Do you feel that you have checked into the unknown — the nagual — and come back out again?

Burroughs: I do indeed, at least sometimes. You know the story about the Zen master who appeared before the emperor with his painting, bowed three times and then disappeared into it?

Ellis: Will that ever happen to you?

Burroughs: I hope so.

Major Exhibit of Burroughs’ Artwork to Open in London

A major exhibit of William S. Burroughs’ artwork will open September 14th, 2005, in London at the Riflemaker gallery. “Dead Aim: The Unseen Art of William S. Burroughs” is the first installment of a three-part exhibition organized in collaboration with the Burroughs Estate. The exhibit is being curated by the gallery directors, Tot Taylor and Virginia Damtsa, along with Jose Ferez Kuri, editor of the book Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, and James Grauerholz, who also wrote a text for the book that accompanies the exhibition. In addition, Steven Lowe — a Burroughs collaborator who also owns the Beat Hotel in Desert Hot Springs, California — contributed an essay about target-shooting, and there are photographs by Gerard Malanga and Robert Mapplethorpe.

The first part of the exhibition will feature forty rifle-range targets, the so-called “shot sheriff” drawings. Never exhibited before, this series of targets “began on January 11, 1992 at the farm of Fred Aldrich near Lawrence, Kansas,” says the gallery’s press release. “The date is marked on the first target shot, signed and dated William S. Burroughs. Burroughs used mostly his Smith and Wesson .38 special on these targets. A figure would be drawn, the gunman would get in the mood, pace around, then shoot into it with his handgun, the holes and powdermarks creating shade and depth in these ‘alien’ forms. The marker-pen and brush drawings were then embellished with ink or small pools of watercolour.”

Paul Pieroni, manager of the Riflemaker gallery and co-organizer of “Dead Aim”, kindly took the time to respond to an email interview about the exhibit.

RealityStudio: What draws you to Burroughs’ art?

Pieroni: I am attracted by the fact that the central themes of Burroughs’ Beatwriting: vice, violence and passion are reflected in his canvases, works on paper and sculptures. One can see the clear and apparent traces of Burroughs’ hetero-ontology of forces at work, thus, as in his literature, we find war, cocks, violence, dirt, parasites, guns — junk.

I would argue that it is possible to view Burroughs’ art, as we have so often read his books before: as micro incisions into human abjectivity and as fantastically distilled violent and momentary, explosions in time. In particular it is his ‘action paintings’, made by the discharging of a gun into either a hate figure drawn on a shooting practice sheet, or onto a paint splattered plywood board, which are, like his literature, littered with a heavy dystopic optimism that envisions beauty in humankind’s primal urge for freedom and value in the violently creative impulses of the artist as a sovereign warrior.

RealityStudio: Why, as a gallerist, do you find Burroughs’ artwork important?

Pieroni: Burroughs is for a whole generation the absolute embodiment of active, longterm and successful iconoclasm against the hegemony of dominant value systems, therefore every node of his creative output deserves to be explored. His art, as a particular manifestation of his creativity, is as important as his literature, film works, spoken word etc… His entire oeuvre, it seems, is again ripe for re-consumption. This movement back to Burroughs is really gaining momentum, just look towards his appearance on the front cover of the TLS, or to the new reworking of his letters and literature by the likes of Oliver Harris and Barry Miles. Burroughs is back, although I’m sure he never really went away.

RealityStudio: Do you have any thoughts about its relationship to Burroughs’ literary work?

Pieroni: One of the many motivations behind Riflemaker’s exhibition of Burroughs’ artwork stems from issues regarding the flow of traffic between his different usage of creative mediums. When an author such as William Burroughs turns to fine art as a new method of conveyance, how are we to approach the fruits of his alternative expression? Largely, one must be careful to keep Burroughs’ literary work in mind when viewing his artwork. I would argue that every expression of Burroughs’ creativity stems from the spirit, be it bad/evil or not, within him as an artist and as a man. As Graham Caveney astutely points out: ‘What is interesting about Burroughs’ canvases is that they are canvases made by Burroughs — his signature inscribing them within the crossfire of his own iconography.’

The effect of viewing the artworks that will appear in the Riflemaker show is wholly reliant upon the viewer’s ability to relate the visual percept received to a priori knowledge of Burroughs’ literary work. This much is clear; Burroughs’ paintings do not stand up alone, they cannot. Prior knowledge here precedes the effect of the percept; Burroughs’ literature binds itself with his visual imagery in a transmission that leads to unity of understanding that can then become free in its referential oscillation between art and literature.

If Burroughs’ literature is known, if his life is understood, his pictures can be appreciated. Without the a priori knowledge of the man and his primary mode of art, these secondary performances become, quite simply, non-starters, curious anomalies, lost voices. However, if familiar with the nature of Burroughs’ literature, his artwork presents itself to the viewer as a fantastic material eruption that can only serves to extend and complement his written work.