Having gone to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts last weekend — staring at the Van Gogh, the Monet, and realizing how much I love pretty much any French (or Dutch) painter from the late 1800s, early 1900s — then hanging out with some painters and other visual artists that night, I’ve been thinking a wee bit about visual arts. It’s not something I know much about or that I’ve ever expressed any talent for. I love writing, and that’s good enough for me.
But, this article and its subject seemed to fit into my mood:
But the Lowell-born author of “On The Road” also painted and drew with the same raw energy that fired his novels and poetry.
Ed Adler examines Kerouac’s visual art in an intriguing book that reveals a little-known dimension of a writer who still excite readers around the world.
Through rarely-seen art, Adler’s “Departed Angels” provides a gorgeous window into the psyche of an American icon.
There’s a fair amount of random books that try to make a buck off Kerouac’s name, image, or some obscure debris of his life. Atop an Underwood, one of the most recent books released that was supposedly “authored” by Kerouac, is by some accounts an unreadable and poorly pieced together collection of his early (and I mean, like 12 years old early) stories, fake newspaper articles about fake horse races, etc. Not that there isn’t some room for the minutae of his creative output, but how some of it is put out there and marketed leaves a bad tase in my mouth.
Maybe it’s just the reporter in this piece, but I have a better feeling about this latest book. It seems like a serious work, with some actual new research and new things being said about Kerouac, his writing and his development as an artist.
…
Yet in a sense, Adler has made a groundbreaking contribution while still writing a fun book. He has written an informative reference that documents connections between Kerouac’s signature “spontaneous prose” and a painting style influenced by Greenwich Village friends and an affinity for European masters like Brueghel, Cezanne and El Greco.
Citing notebooks and letters, he uncovers parallels between Kerouac’s benzedrine-fueled prose and his color-drenched paintings of saints and sirens.
In a 1959 notebook entry two years after “On The Road” made Kerouac a household name, he described his own approach to painting: “1. Use only brush …no fingers to press lines that aren’t real. 2. Use brush spontaneously without drawing; without long pause or delay; without erasing. Pile it on.”
Adler takes Kerouac’s visual art seriously as a reflection of a remarkable sensitivity to people, nature and the stirrings of his own conflicted soul.
In addition to images of luminous angels and exotic women, Kerouac scribbled out his personal universe of dozing cats, amorous couples and Beat notables, including Neal Cassidy and Gary Snyder.
It’s on my Amazon wish list!
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Well, I have been doing the art thing for a few years. I love Kerouacs writing, my birthday is in one month.
Now I know what to ask my wife for