Paintings and graphic works
reveal the hidden face of Jack Kerouac at the Maga Museum in
Gallarate (Varese) from December 3 to April 28.
The exhibition presents around 80 works by the father of the
Beat Generation, many of which have never been shown before in
Italy.
'Jack Kerouac. Beat Painting', curated by Sandrina Bandera,
Alessandro Castiglioni and Emma Zanella, also includes
photographs by Robert Frank and Ettore Sottsass, a project by
Peter Greenaway and the video of an interview with translator
Fernanda Pivano for Rai Teche.
The exhibition aims to shed new light on one of the literary
icons of the 20th century and the principal exponent of the
literary and artistic movement that shocked and scandalised the
US and Europe from the end of the 1940s.
The Beats and the group formed by Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg,
and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in fact rejected post-war
technological idealism in favour of a new, almost tribal ethics
based on spontaneity that would lead to the Hippie movement,
opposition to war in Vietnam and the 'Three days of peace and
music' of Woodstock.
The works on show have been chosen to illustrate the entire
spectrum of Kerouac's creative process, exploring in particular
his relationship with the tradition of American visual culture.
Their force lies in the total identity that he managed to
forge between life, literary production and all other forms of
creative expression such as music, song, poetry and cinema.
Thus the exhibition at the Maga is a unique opportunity to
admire Kerouac's work, which until now has only been displayed
in a few select museums such as the Whitney Museum, Centre
Pompidou and Zkm in Karlsruhe.
It is divided into sections including portraits of famous
people such as Joan Crawford, Truman Capote, Dody Muller and
Pope Paul VI and references to Beat culture, from Robert Frank
to William Burroughs.
It also explores the writer's relationship with Italy through
a series of photographs taken by Robert Frank and by Ettore
Sottsass of his wife Pivano, who introduced Italy to the Beats
with her celebrated translations, as well as Ginsberg and
Kerouac himself.
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