Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

On entering the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, the first thing you see is Jack Kerouac’s name lit up in neon. Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the headlining exhibit at the library, is clearly a big deal. Given the 50th Anniversary of On the Road, there has been a tremendous amount of hoopla over Kerouac in the past year. The media attention has been nice. The increased and increasingly thorough scholarly attention has been appreciated. The published version of the scroll has been devoured and enjoyed. But when you get down to it, nothing prepares you and nothing compares to the garden of literary delights that are housed in the NYPL’s Berg collection and documented in Issac Gewirtz’s monograph on the exhibit. Both are quite frankly breathtaking and serve as the icing on the cake for the 50th Anniversary. But icing is too insubstantial; the exhibit is a Beat smorgasbord, a naked lunch, monumental in its presentation and contents.

Paul LeClerc, President of the New York Public Library states in the foreword to Gewirtz’s book, “Clearly, the New York Public Library may now proclaim itself the center for Beat research in the world.” I was aware that the Berg possessed extensive holdings on Kerouac but nothing can prepare you for the experience of seeing all the letters, journals, manuscripts, photographs, and books in one place and all spread out before you. If you have read Ann Charter’s accounts of visiting Kerouac in 1966 for her pioneering bibliography on the King of the Beats, you know that Kerouac kept meticulous records of his literary output. Everything was filed and accounted for. Kerouac may have lived a helter skelter, disorganized life, but that did not extend to his literary existence. He kept records and accounts of everything. I was amazed at how fresh the manuscripts and letters looked. The condition of these incredibly fragile items is impeccable. Collectible first editions of On the Road are in far worse condition that Kerouac’s manuscripts of the novel. One of the many impressions that come from the show is that Kerouac probably lived with obsessive compulsive disorder.

The Gutenberg Bible is currently on view at the NYPL, and so is the Bible of the Beat Generation. As you enter the Kerouac room in the center of the main lobby of the Library, the scroll version of On the Road centers the exhibit. I expected to see a few feet of the 120 foot scroll rolled out for viewing. In fact, a full 60 feet are available for study in a long glass case. There is an annotated sheet to help readers out. The scroll is footnoted at the margins so you can go to a number and start reading your favorite section. Kerouac’s visit with Burroughs in New Orleans is section 12 and 13, towards the end of the 60 feet on view. If taking in the entire scroll gives you chills, seeing Bill Burroughs’ name typed out on the manuscript instead of Old Bull Lee provides its own tingle.

I would have loved to see the end of the scroll where Lucien Carr’s dog famously chewed the manuscript, but that said, seeing just half of the scroll rolled out is a powerful experience. It is a remarkable object. On one level it stands out in its tangibility, its physicality, its size and expanse, but at the same time it is so fragile, delicate and ephemeral. It threatens to crumble and blow away under your inquiring eyes. As the exhibit makes clear, the scroll as an object immediately bring to mind the concept of the road, the path, the journey that lies at the heart of On the Road. For me, this merging of form and content in the physical object coupled with the physical act of creating it (not just the typing but the act of taping together the paper as well) makes the manuscript a work of art on par with any major work of the 20th Century. The scroll is in some sense ahead of its time, predicting the artists’ book, conceptual art and performance art boom of the 1960s and beyond. The scroll got me thinking of book artists like Dieter Roth or Jim Dine (interviewed in the Bunker). It was just that impressive to me on my first viewing.

There is no way to take in the Kerouac exhibit in one swoop. The Gewirtz book will help you digest what you have seen although the book only deals with half of the objects on display. I decided to take the exhibition in pieces and have a focus. As I checked my bag, I looked at my coat check. It was number 23. This seemed like a sign that I should look through the exhibit with an eye out for Burroughs. In fact, the words and ghostly figure of Burroughs run throughout the exhibit. Just to the right of the scroll and at the beginning of the exhibit, the first object that captures the viewer’s gaze is the Ace edition of Junkie (1953). There is a small collection of Burroughs items including a manuscript page of Naked Lunch with Burroughs’ hand edits. This is a page from the “Original material for Naked Lunch and Soft Machine, and earlier” that begins “Panama: Paregoric gags you.” The Gewirtz book reprints the page so you can read and study it after the exhibit. In addition there are a couple of photos including one by Charles Gatewood of Burroughs sitting in front of an E-Meter taken in 1962 also from the Burroughs archive.

Kerouac is the headliner at the NYPL at the moment, but Burroughs waits in the wings for his chance in the spotlight. Hopefully, the position of Burroughs at the entrance of the exhibit foreshadows a Burroughs show in 2009 — the 50th Anniversary of Naked Lunch — on the level of the Kerouac show. I would expect that the Burroughs Archive at the Berg rivals the Kerouac Archive in its depth and breadth. It should make for a remarkable exhibition. According Gewirtz’s book, the Burroughs Archive is ready for researchers. The foreword reads, “To facilitate such research, both the Kerouac and the Burroughs archives were organized, and electronic finding aids created for them, with the financial assistance of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.” Correct me if I am wrong but I do not think the Burroughs archive is available yet on the NYPL’s webpage of finding aids.

The Kerouac exhibit is organized roughly chronologically and it becomes clear just how influential a figure Burroughs was on Kerouac early on and vice versa. The exhibit includes a draft manuscript for the legendary And the Hippos Boiled in their Tanks, Kerouac and Burroughs’ collaborative account of the Kammerer murder. The manuscript (in impeccable condition) bears the original title “I Wish I Were You: The Philip Tourian Story” with Kerouac and Burroughs’ names as authors written in Kerouac’s hand. The upper right corner reads “45 Ryko Tourian.”

In this same section, there is a Kerouac journal from November 10-Dec 26, 1944 opened to a page that gives a clue into the power of Burroughs’ influence as an intellectual mentor. The journal reads, “Write about Burroughs’ Gideanism — the acte gratuite, he so indiscriminately champions” He continues later on the same page, “Morality is a word [Burroughs] as frankly disavows as Nietzsche does idealism.” The central role of Burroughs in the concept of the New Vision that held together the early Columbia circle could not be clearer. Another journal from the fall of 1946 contains a section entitled “On Bill Burroughs.” In this journal, Kerouac declares his independence from Burroughs’ influence. Yet there follows a description of Burroughs in his apartment attempting to get high from smoking birdseed. I immediately thought of Oliver Harris’ book The Secret of Fascination. For years after their initial meeting, Kerouac would attempt, like Oliver Harris decades later, to get to the heart of Burroughs and explore Burroughs as an object of fascination.

Burroughs was no less influenced by Kerouac. The Burroughs archive contains a folder dedicated “to Kells Elvins and Jack Kerouac.” These two men early on encouraged Burroughs to become a writer. Burroughs in essays and in interviews has credited Kerouac with being instrumental in this regard. Gewirtz’ book contains a quote from Burroughs’ essay “Jack Kerouac” to that effect.

Another possible but tenuous link to Burroughs appears in Kerouac’s juvenilia. At an early age and continuing on to adulthood, Kerouac constructed an elaborate fantasy life revolving around role playing games of baseball and horseracing. In 1936 (Kerouac was 14), Kerouac created handmade newspapers (Tuft Authority, Romper’s Sheet, Daily Owl, Stake Special, The Sportsman are a few of them) recounting these fantasy contests. In 1950, Kerouac created a draft of On the Road in a newspaper format entitled American Times. These works reminded me of Burroughs’ three column cut-ups of the 1960s, like Moving Times. I wonder if Burroughs saw Kerouac’s newspapers. If so, somewhere in the back of Burroughs’ mind, these works of Kerouac might have influenced Burroughs’ in taking up this format.

In addition, Kerouac, again in 1936, kept scrapbooks dedicated to his fantasy games. These scrapbooks continued later in Kerouac’s life. The Book of Dreams manuscript contains a collage with a linkage to numerology. Kerouac fixates on the number 69 (Burroughs was fascinated with 23). Another scrapbook work entitled By Memere also contains sexual references revealing an oedipal component to Kerouac’s relationship with his mother. Collage and scrapbooks were early expressions of creativity for Kerouac that continued throughout his career.

Kerouac’s mother figures prominently in another item that features Burroughs. In 1958, Memere wrote Allen Ginsberg a nasty letter telling Ginsberg and Burroughs to stay away from her son. The letter focuses on all the worst aspects of Burroughs and derides him as a pernicious influence on Kerouac. Nearby is a less threatening letter with a maternal theme from Ginsberg to Burroughs from 1959. Few of Ginsberg’s letters to Burroughs from the 1950s survive. In this letter, Ginsberg mentions his poem in progress, Kaddish, that was dedicated to his mother, Naomi.

Photographs are a big part of the exhibit and several of them feature Burroughs. There is a photo of Burroughs birthplace taken in 1912/1913 when Mortimer and Laura Lee bought the home on 4664 Berlin Avenue. Burroughs was born in 1914. The street was renamed Pershing Avenue after WWI. Several photos from 1953 are sprinkled throughout. Burroughs visited New York City in late 1953 in an effort to reconnect with Ginsberg after years in Mexico. Ginsberg famously rejected Burroughs sending the dejected lover to Tangier. Many of these photos have become iconic shots. The pics of Burroughs without a shirt at a desk at 206 East 7th St as well as the pic of Burroughs lecturing Kerouac on a couch in this same apartment are included. There is also a photo of Burroughs with Alene Lee. Lee was Mardou Fox in The Subterraneans, and she typed up the manuscript for The Yage Letters. There is another interesting photo of Burroughs outside the San Remo with Alan Ansen from the same period. As a group, these photos document a pivotal moment in Burroughs’ life and capture a slice of New York City in the 1950s, when the city was the world’s center for art and literature.

There are a few photos from Tangier as well, including the famous shot of Burroughs in a business suit lying on the beach. This is from the period in which the Naked Lunch manuscript was constructed with Kerouac typing large chunks of it at lightning speed. Later in the exhibit, there are four snapshots of Big Zoco (Big Market) and Zoco Chico (Little Market) in Tangier from 1954. Taken shortly after Burroughs’ arrival in Tangier, the blurry pics give the briefest of glimpses of the marketplace that in part provided the backdrop for the Market Section of Naked Lunch. “The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market.”

One of the odder pieces in the exhibit also possesses a link to Burroughs. As I mentioned before, Kerouac compulsively kept lists and statistics. In his writing, he meticulously monitored his daily progress in terms of words and pages produced. He also detailed his sexual conquests. Remarkably, in a list of over fifty names, Joan Adams (Vollmer) is listed as number 23. The number is coincidental but still I was amazed by this sexual link to Burroughs. Kerouac notes that they slept together 175 times. This is more frequently then he slept with Edie Parker or Joan Haverty and second only to Alene Lee, Kerouac’s girlfriend at the time of Burroughs’ visit in 1953. Clearly, the early Columbia Circle was incestuous (Kerouac also slept with Celine Young, Lucien Carr’s girlfriend), but I was unaware of the extent of Vollmer and Kerouac’s relationship. Vollmer remains a shadowy figure in Burroughs’ life and in Beat history in general. She was an intimate member of that early circle on many levels. By all accounts (scanty as they are), she was a remarkable woman who captivated Burroughs and clearly possessed some hold on Kerouac as well.

Another exhibit on display at the NYPL got me thinking about Burroughs. Graphic Modernism in the Baltic and Balkans conjured up images of Burroughs’ small press output of the 1960s. Works by El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and others link, in terms of design, to the newspaper and scrapbook works. Certain pages of Moholy Nagy’s Malerei, Photographie, Film (1925) got me thinking of Time and Apo-33. The Polish Journal, Zdroj (Source), looks exactly like a Lower East Side mimeo. In fact, Modernist little magazines and the samizdat tradition in Eastern Europe foreshadow the mimeo revolution of the post-WWII era. You cannot look at Fuck You, a magazine of the arts or C: A Journal of Poetry without thinking of these earlier predecessors. The Expressionist innovations in layout, design, production and use of printing materials were something for the mimeos of the post WWII era to build on and react against.

I exited the New York Public Library and was greeted by a January thunderstorm. The bad weather brought to mind the Ghost of the Susquehanna section in On the Road. The exhibit included manuscript and journal versions of that section including pages with drawings of the Ghost. The exhibit also had several drawings of Dr. Sax. Of course, Dr. Sax features an epic storm as well. Dr. Sax was in part modeled on William Burroughs, and Kerouac wrote much of the novel while living in Mexico with him. The exhibit contained a photo of 212 Orizaba Street where Joan and Burroughs lived in 1950 and Kerouac and Bill Garver later resided in 1956. Dr. Sax is in many ways Kerouac’s much planned Visions of Bill. Like Visions of Cody written for and about Neal Cassady, Visions of Bill would have captured the essence of Burroughs that fascinated Kerouac from their first meeting. In some ways, Dr. Sax serves that purpose. Walking away from 5th Avenue in the rain, I kept looking over my shoulder. I felt somebody was following me. Call him el hombre invisible, Dr. Sax, Old Bull Lee, or William Burroughs. From the Beatific Soul exhibit, it is clear that Burroughs haunted Kerouac. He haunts me too.

Note: Columbia University has a companion exhibit dedicated to the art work of Kerouac and his friends. I was unable to attend this exhibit. In addition, in my single-minded quest to see the scroll I forgot about the book fair at the 25th Street Armory. If anybody attended these two events, please send an account to the comments section. The University of Texas at Austin will have a Beat exhibit starting in February. The scroll will be on hand as will examples of the stellar holdings of the library at Austin, one of the finest in the world. For example, the library houses Kerouac’s On the Road journals, included in the paperback version of Windblown World. Again, if a RealityStudio reader attends that exhibit please send along an account of it.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

RealityStudio bills itself as a digital community, a gathering place for fans, friends, collectors, and scholars of William Burroughs. In recent weeks, we have received some emails that testify to the international nature of that community as well as to the potential of building and sustaining that community online. In the forum, there is a running thread on The Third Mind. Isome23 attended The Third Mind exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. She mentioned that she took lots of pictures and here they are.

This may be your best opportunity to view the visual and textual collaborations of Burroughs and Gysin that were completed mostly in New York City in 1965. My timeline on Burroughs in New York provides some sense of the atmosphere surrounding these works of art. The Third Mind images should be viewed in connection with the complete My Own Mag, particularly The Dutch Schultz Issue (#13), also available on RealityStudio. I hope in the next few weeks to have the complete Time, a Burroughs scrapbook published by Ted Berrigan’s C Press, uploaded as well. This collection of images provides just a glimpse into the incredible artistic output of Burroughs in the mid 1960s. They highlight the visual development of the cut-up that would continue into the 1970’s and lead to the collaboration with Malcolm Mc Neill in the never completed Ah Puch is Here.

The Third Mind manuscript resides in the Los Angeles County Museum with bits and pieces located in a private collection in Paris. Before RealityStudio, the best place to view selections of The Third Mind was Robert Sobieszek’s Ports of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts. The book is out of print, but copies can be purchased from $10.99 to $120 on Amazon. Get a copy. In the past decade, Oliver Harris has completely revolutionized the textual history of Burroughs with his archival research of the early manuscripts. Sobieszek performed a similar service with Burroughs in the visual arts. Ports of Entry is essential reading (and viewing) for anyone interested in Burroughs. The chapter on The Third Mind is the best account of this material available providing literary history and critical analysis.

Until 1970, Grove Press planned to publish The Third Mind in all its glory. The book was to be marketed as an art book costing from $10-$30. According to Ports of Entry, Grove abandoned the project due to high production costs or due to a sense of bewilderment on how to market Burroughs and Gysin’s instruction manual / art book / experimental poetry / textbook. “In his introductory text to the Viking edition of 1978, Gerard-Georges Lemaire… pointed to the work’s complexity and lack of definition: ‘It eludes definition just as it eludes itself; a prey to unfathomable anamorphosis, it rubs itself out and rewrites itself; it allows itself to be read, only to slip away. The Third Mind jumbles the linguistic network, simultaneously revealing and antagonizing it. It is a strange device for confronting semiotic assaults” (quoting from Ports of Entry). Sobieszek continues, “The Viking edition reproduces twenty-six of the collages (reproduced it would seem, from the French edition or the printer’s plates and not the originals), and one of these reproductions does not appear among the originals in the LACMA collection. Not all of the chapters or parts of the original manuscript are included in the Viking edition, nor do the plates in it appear in the precise sequence laid out in the late 1960s.” The published version fails to capture the magnificence of the manuscript as evidenced by the images on RealityStudio. The LACMA holds “70 unique works of art and original visual texts.” Apparently the original manuscript switched hands and locales often so who knows what is still out there or lost forever. As noted in Ports of Entry, “the total number of artworks made for The Third Mind is unknown.” Clearly, the published version of The Third Mind provides only a glimpse, and a black and white one at that, of the original manuscript.

As discussed in the forum, The Third Mind is difficult to get a hold of and expensive. The book was first published by Viking in 1978 under the editorship of Richard Seaver. Seaver began his editing career with Alexander Trocchi’s Merlin Group in Paris in the early 1950s. He continued on with Grove in its formative years. By the 1970s, Seaver went mainstream taking Burroughs along with him. John Calder published The Third Mind in hardcover and softcover in 1979. Seaver, under his own imprint, reissued The Third Mind in 1982. Finally, in 1998, Flammarion printed the book in France. There may be other printings, but these are the ones listed in Shoaf’s Bibliography.

The images of The Third Mind available on RealityStudio provide only a small piece of the available manuscript. Yet coupled with My Own Mag and Time, the jigsaw puzzle of Burroughs’ development and exploration of the cut-up technique can begin to be pieced together. The picture is incomplete and many of the missing pieces reside in libraries, like the NYPL or Ohio State. Slowly, these collections are being made available to scholars and the public. Hard copy publications are not the only outlet. The digital archives on RealityStudio provide another alternative and, in the minds of many commentators, a window into the future.

(Readers interested particularly in Brion Gysin’s contribution the Third Mind may want to consult Brion Gysin: Tuning In to the Multimedia Age, Nothing Is True Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin, and Brion Gysin: Here To Go.)

Photos of the Works Displayed at the Third Mind Exhibit at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Fall 2007

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

To quote a Canned Heat lyric, “I’m on the road again.” The trip up to New York City on the Chinatown bus was all wind in the hair and “Born to be Wild.” Smooth sailing with Billy and Wyatt, but the trip back to Baltimore was more like the bus ride with Ratso Rizzo at the end of Midnight Cowboy. That said, it was worth the trip as New York City was the site of two very different exhibits dealing with the 1960s: the Whitney’s Summer of Love and Printed Matter’s’ Fuck for Peace: A History of the Fugs. Neither show was ideal but taken together they provided a very informative perspective of the era.

I must admit that my viewing of the Whitney exhibit was somewhat tainted by several people who told me to focus on what was missing from the show. These absences do speak volumes about the exhibit, but if one really digs around and explores the entire museum, it can be argued that the Whitney saw the gaps in the Tate Museum’s organization of the show and attempted to correct them. Psychedelics are supposed to cleanse the doors of perception, clarify the sight of the third eye, and help one see the Truth more easily, but the Summer of Love exhibit tends to filter the Sixties through rose-colored glasses. The exhibit for the most part presents the good trips such as those provided by Owsley’s White Lightning. What needed to be given more attention were the bummer visions like those engendered by the notorious brown acid that filtered through Woodstock.

The problem could be that the exhibit used the more positive / celebratory elements of rock culture to tie together the whole show. Handbills, album covers, light shows, and posters dominated the space. Think of the Art of Rock book that chronicled the rock posters and handbills of the period. This is to be expected at a show celebrating the art of the psychedelic era, but the focus on rock music and the artwork it inspired could have been used to much greater and complex effect.

For example, those attending the exhibit could pick up pre-recorded devices that played music with certain sections of the show. In some cases, the music simply accompanied a rock poster, album cover, or visual effect. As a result, the listener would understand what a band or situation sounded like, but in far too few cases did the music actually comment critically on the era. When utilized in this manner the effects could be striking. The most memorable instance for me involved the Fugs’ song “Kill for Peace.” The song was to be played while viewing Peter Saul’s large piece: Saigon. It was an inspired pairing and unusual as the Fugs and Vietnam were two of the notable absences of the show. This type of hard edge would have benefitted the show.

The New York section of the show focused on the Fillmore East, Millbrook, and Woodstock with no mention at all of the freak scene of the Lower East Side that Ed Sanders and the Fugs represented. This aspect of the New York art world was big news during the Summer of Love. For example, Sanders made the cover of Life in 1967. He and the Fugs should have been included in the New York section.

There was a small part of the exhibit that presented photographs of Vietnam. Interestingly, most of the photographs were by Robert Whitaker who also took many iconic rock photos. The exhibit, as put together by the Tate, highlights the rock and not the war. I think the Whitney understands that Vietnam and violence are a huge part of the era and under-represented. For example, a handout available at the Whitney reads, “If you would like to hear more about the politics and social unrest associated with the Summer of Love, check out our Summer of Love podcast on Whitney.org.” Whitney press releases talk the talk. Unrest, turbulent era, protest are all highlighted but in reality the real meat of the exhibit on display is on the “sweet freedom of the moment” as captured by John Phillips in his song on San Francisco: “For those who come to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Yet if you dig and work at it, the other side of the coin, the underbelly of the Summer of Love, is there at the Whitney.

Tucked away — I would say hidden — in the Sondra Gilman Gallery on the Fifth Floor Mezzanine is a small exhibit entitled Resistance Is. While the Summer of Love exhibit was crowded and lines circled the museum on Sunday, this small section was basically unattended. Yet it was here that the sole picture of the Black Panthers (taken by Gordon Parks) hung. Curious really as the photograph was taken in 1967 of the San Francisco chapter of the group. The Whitney clearly realizes the importance of the Black Panthers to the era as the photograph is featured in the Whitney calendar for June-August. In addition the only photograph of the Chicago 7 hung in the Gilman Gallery. This prompts the question were was the student protest in the main exhibit. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement might be before the time period shown, but there is no excuse for not mentioning the takeover of Columbia in 1969 in the New York section of the exhibit. By the way where was Stonewall, the Weathermen or the more militant aspects of the feminist movement like the Red Stockings. This was all San Francisco with the Flowers in your hair and no Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker.

The Resistance Is exhibit also globalized and made contemporary its subject in a way the Summer of Love did not. London gets lavish attention but what about France, Italy or Germany to just focus on the Western World. Resistance Is looks beyond the West into the East and the Third World. The Whitney calendar reads, “Resistance Is considers the relationship between historical narratives and the conditions of social agency prevalent today.” There is footage from as recent as 2006. In a sense the Resistance Is exhibit was the more relevant to today. Or should be. The lack of a protest movement that embraces all aspects of culture and on the scale of the sixties is shocking right now given the apparent dissatisfaction with the state of the union in the United States. There is a more music, art, and literature being made than ever before, but none of what you see in the mainstream is about protest or resistance.

A whole wall is dedicated to Warhol’s Factory and the Velvet Underground. One would think that the inclusion of this speedy, gay element would provide something of a corrective for the show. Instead, the focus is on the Plastic Exploding Inevitable; heavy on handbills and posters. The exhibit seems to suggest that Warhol and the Velvets fit in with the visual, performance elements of the Summer of Love. This is unfortunate since the Plastic Exploding show in San Francisco was a disaster and highlighted the differences between the NYC and San Francisco counterculture. New York’s art scene was definitely not represented by Woodstock as suggested. Yet I think the Whitney realizes the harder edge and importance of the Warhol / Velvet circle in the counterculture and in the formation of the art scene of the 1970s such as punk and urban arts like graffiti.

Again you had to search it out on another floor. To my mind, an installation in the Rudolf Stingel show on the third floor provided all the commentary you could want on the impact of the Factory. Stingel constructed a large, floor to ceiling space out of Styrofoam which he then covered in silver wall paper. Previous attendees of the exhibit in other cities as well (as Stingel) were allowed to chip away and graffiti the silver wall so that by the time it reached the Whitney the purity of the silver was completely defaced in every nook and cranny. If the beginning suggested the tin foil of the Factory, the end result was the bathroom at CBGB. The installation placed above the Summer of Love exhibits commented on the trajectory of the New York art scene after the Factory and indirectly on the influence of the Velvet Underground. If the Summer of Love celebrated pot and LSD, Stingel’s silver room brought to mind images of shooting up in a toilet stall. The exhibit also had echoes of the urban landscape, a decayed setting that was the site of controversial renewal in the 1960s. The idea of the subway (graffiti art) or the jail cell (Attica, George Jackson) came to mind.

The Summer of Love exhibit is full of curious choices. There is a lot of coverage of Keith and Mick’s drug bust in 1967, but that was hardly the most important, most representative, or most “sixties” moment of the Stones. I would argue that occurred with the murder of Meredith Hunter by the Hell’s Angels during the free Stones concert at Altamont. Many of the major darker themes of the 1960s were captured by Baird Bryant, the cameraman, when he filmed the murder. It could be the Zapruder film of the counterculture. The exhibit provides film footage of Altamont, but focuses on the construction of the Ant Farm installation instead. There is a day-glo and air brushed feel to the entire Summer of Love show. For example, if you are going to feature Life magazine covers throughout the exhibit, you may want to end the show with the cover featuring Charles Manson. It is one of the most recognized issues of Life and an enduring image of the 1960s. If it was there, I missed it.

Why did the Tate show touch up the Summer of Love and why did the Whitney acknowledge the deficiencies but choose to hide them in the recesses of the museum? A cynic would say that you have to go no further than the gift shop. All the CDs and coffee table art books were available right up front. You get the sense that the Whitney was like a Starbucks selling sanitized nostalgia. By most accounts, the Summer of Love was over in San Francisco by 1967. Mass markets and mainstream media co-opted it for distribution to the curious in the 1960s, not just in the present. The gift shop in the Whitney highlights a major theme of the Summer of Love as it was experienced in 1967 — the commoditization of the counterculture — but to get any treatment of this from the exhibit you have to dig and be aware of what is missing from the display tables.

The wall on LSD is an interesting section of the exhibit that touches on these issues. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters get lots of pictures here. The 1967 Be-In is featured along with psychedelic publications like Psychedelic Review and Leary’s LPs and books. The truth is that San Francisco in 1967 was not about LSD at all. LSD was made illegal in 1966, and strangely, pot was scarce. Instead, heroin and speed flooded the market. There are plenty of conspiracy theories about this involving organized crime and the CIA, but none are mentioned by the exhibit. This section did feature exploitation / sleaze paperbacks on LSD and the hippies under glass. These pulp paperbacks shared space with Life and Saturday Evening Post features on the same topics. This section of the exhibit suggests the influence of mass market capitalism on the counterculture, the packaging and fetishization of illicit activity to Middle America, as well as the pacifying nature of exploitation. The inclusion of Leary and Kesey in this section brings home the point that they were hucksters as much as gurus. This is not hindsight; this was all understood at the time. Proof of this is the Diggers, maybe the finest critics of the Summer of Love. It was nice to see the Diggers featured alongside Leary, Kesey, and mass market treatment of the Haight.

This was the most complex and critical part of the entire show. I wonder if this was just coincidence or if it was intended. The selection of Life magazines in this section suggests the former. A few cover issues on LSD were present including of course the piece on LSD art. Yet the 1967 Hippie issue of the Saturday Evening Post should have been included there as well. Why feature the discotheque issue of Life? The Saturday Evening Post issue was much more pertinent then and now. It ran Joan Didion’s scathing piece on San Francisco entitled “Slouching toward Bethlehem.” To this day, Didion’s piece is one of the finest critical looks on the Summer of Love. It would have shown that the bloom was off the rose even in the mainstream media and driven home the point that the times were a’ changing and a bad moon was on the rise by 1967.

Printed Matter’s exhibit entitled Fuck for Peace: A History of the Fugs offers a nice corrective to the Whitney show. Located on 10th Avenue between 21st and 22nd Street, Printed Matter is a publishing collective that specializes in the book arts and alternative publishing. The Fugs are a perfect choice given that two members of the Fugs, Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, are legendary members of the mimeo revolution. The DIY aesthetic of the Fugs in song and in print fits in perfectly with the goals and production of the collective. The exhibit focused on two founding fathers of today’s zine and artist book culture.

The Fugs exhibit was small and cramped, but at the same time, had an air of inclusion. The exhibit featured publications, album covers, newspaper and magazine stories, fan letters, and lyric sheets. Yet there were no photographs and I think that was a mistake. Of course a broader show could have been done. This show would include documentation of the Fugs at Detroit, at the Chicago Convention of 1968, at the Pentagon in 1967. The political and racial turmoil of Chicago, Detroit and Washington were largely missing from the Summer of Love show. Such photographs would have broadened both exhibits but even so there was a grit and obscenity at the Fugs show that would have done the Whitney good.

If you are going to focus on the Summer of Love, you have to have some fucking in the streets. The first thing I saw when I entered the small back room of the Fugs exhibit was an image of Tuli Kupferberg sitting on a shabby couch clutching his cock. This was not a young nymph with flowers in her hair. Works like Fuck God in the Ass, Auden’s Platonic Blow, Sheep Fuck Poem, and the outrageous fan letters written in the Fuck You style provided the atmosphere of goofiness, depravity, transgression, and upfront sexuality that was the flip side of the Summer of Love. The Fugs also captured the anarchy, paranoia, and ugliness of the time.

Not surprisingly, William Burroughs is absent from the Whitney exhibit but all over the place at Printed Matter. You flip through the contemporary work being sold by Printed Matter and the Burroughs influence is strongly felt. I think this speak volumes about the type of 1960s being portrayed In the Fugs show as opposed to the Whitney. Burroughs tends to scare the parents. Hide your kids from the dirty old junkie. Printed Matter wants to shock while the Whitney wants to soothe.

All the Burroughs publications by Fuck You were there including one of the holy grails of Burroughs collectors: the Fuck You Version of APO-33. I have told the story of this legendary rarity elsewhere but let me say: It did not look as unprofessional and disorganized as I expected given Burroughs’ reaction. This is more proof that Burroughs was something of a control freak concerning the presentation of his own material and that the laissez-faire attitude towards his work is maybe something of an act. As a collector, seeing APO-33 was the highlight of the weekend.

Interestingly, the “evil” hands of the marketplace could be felt all over the Printed Matter exhibit. Many of the pieces came on loan from the Fales Collection of NYU (the APO-33, I suspect), but a good number including a beautiful copy of the Mad Motherfucker issue of Fuck You with the Warhol cover were up for sale. And not cheaply either. The Couch issue could be yours for $1500. From a collector’s point of view, the material at Printed Matter could not be more beautiful. The complete run of Fuck You magazine was immaculate. Too much so? I think the copies do not have the original staples and have been rebound. I could be wrong but the Mad Motherfucker issue was definitely rebound with new staples. For obsessives, this is problematic, but the brightness and crispness of all the material should overcome some of these feelings of violation.

Not surprisingly, the alternative art market created a darker exhibit than the mainstream market at the Whitney. Collectors interested in the Summer of Love can find the exhibit basically recreated work for work in the latest Beatbooks catalog. The Printed Matter show while smaller was in some ways more complex and more accurate. Make no mistake both places are selling something. Much could be made of the image of the 1960s each makes available. The packaging of these two shows comments on the various roles of art in society. For me, the view presented by Printed Matter and the images hidden from viewers at the Whitney are the ones that matter in the now and in the long run. Basically, the Whitney show highlights and foregrounds peace, love, and understanding. As Elvis Costello would say there is nothing wrong with that. But it is not what is most dynamic and lasting about the era. Great art is produced outside of the mainstream in a position of opposition. It is against something. The Summer of Love exhibit downplays protest and conflict (although the Whitney attempts to correct this). In addition, art associated with drugs are about erasing boundaries and about the pain of alienation. Drugs should intensify those sensations not numb or heal them. In an age of de-anxietized man, there are no great artists. There is little sense of the fear and paranoia of the 1960s at the Whitney.

The mantra of the real estate market is location, location, location. Maybe that is the key with these two exhibits as well. One museum is located on Madison Avenue and the other is on 10th Avenue. One’s view of the world begins with a look out one’s front door.