“Now Jack as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your ‘Memère’ you’ll find yourself wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you’re an old man and can’t escape…” William Seward Burroughs camping as an André Gideian sophisticate lecturing the earnest Thomas Wolfean All-American youth Jack Kerouac who listens soberly dead-pan to “the most intelligent man in America” for a funny second’s charade in my living room 206 East 7th Street Apt 16, Manhattan, one evening Fall 1953.
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Subject ID143969
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Depiction ID39b62d10-7f3a-4e1c-8946-5dd94a3b610d
Subject ID143969
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_title“Now Jack as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your ‘Memère’ you’ll find yourself wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you’re an old man and can’t escape…” William Seward Burroughs camping as an André Gideian sophisticate lecturing the earnest Thomas Wolfean All-American youth Jack Kerouac who listens soberly dead-pan to “the most intelligent man in America” for a funny second’s charade in my living room 206 East 7th Street Apt 16, Manhattan, one evening Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143969
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Subject ID143963
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleWilliam S. Burroughs looking serious, sad lover’s eyes, afternoon light in window, cover of just-published _Junkie_ propped in shadow above right shoulder, Japanese kite against Lower East Side hot water flat’s old wallpaper. He’d come up from South America & Mexico to stay with me editing Yage Letters and Queer manuscripts. New York Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143963
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleG. Corso & P. Orlovsky hanging around Bill Burroughs' room Tangier 1961
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/217730
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titlePeter Orlovsky (b. 1933 –) visiting his family — Lafcadio then age 47 had lived with us S.F – N.Y. 1955 – ’61 & intermittent years later on; Mother Katherine aged 78 totally deaf lip-reading some after botched mastoid operation N.Y. Eye & Ear Hospital 1933, drunken surgeon; Laff’s twin sister Maril who’d roomed with Peter & me East 2’nd Street Lower East Side 1959 while attending baby-nurse school in Jersey, later a half-dozen years she quit hospital job angry hearing other nurse voices’ “filthy gossip” she said about Me and My Brother, Robert Frank’s film on Orlovskys— all this two decades before this moment. From second floor flat on lonely Cottontail Road they needed taxi for any heavy shopping with monthly Social Service Indemnity checks at Supermarket a mile away in Center Moriches, Long Island. July 26, 1987.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/150441
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleLou Reed, poet-musician (hero to avant-guard Czechoslovak intellectual rock-band dissident "Plastic People of the Universe" defended from government persecution by playwright Vaclav Havel and his Charter 77 friends) at make-up table in green room, public Theater Lafayette Street New York, invited by impresario Rose Lesniak (above) to Master Ceremonies, Premiere of Poetry- Music Video Clips by Anne Waldman ("uh! oh! plutonium") and myself ("Father Death Blues"), September 1984.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/213308
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleYevgeny Yevtushenko visiting late at night, we stayed up till 3 A.M. talking about which Russian writers works had been suppressed till that year’s recent Glasnost movement, April 1986.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/144253
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Depiction IDd451ba87-66fc-4a6e-9b23-210289560285
Subject ID142147
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleHerbert E. Huncke, author _The Evening Sun Turned Crimson_, who introduced "hip" vocabulary & attitudes to writers later labeled "Beat", his room Hotel Elite, N.E. corner 8th Avenue and 51'st street diagonally opposite Madison Square Garden. Rare glimpse of Huncke, then hustling bread on Times Square, strung-out - he fixed at the sink. Saw him infrequently that season, though we'd known each other well since 1945, found his room to say good bye, leaving New York to hitch south, Mexico and Bay area, here just before Christmas, Manhattan 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142147
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleLouis Marker, Jacksonville Florida. Bill Burroughs friend from Mexico City. I visited December 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/205227
typeimage
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Providernga
Depiction ID7cab1e42-1268-4759-8f67-87d5a8d2264a
Subject ID144245
Attributes
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleFrancesco Clemente looking over hand-script album with new poem I’d written out for his Blake-inspired watercolor illuminations, we’d done two books before; entrance corner of his loft overlooking Great Jones Street Manhattan, October 1984. He liked this picture.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/144245
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleJack Kerouac the last time he visited my apartment 704 East 5th Street, N.Y.C., he looked by then like his late father, red-faced corpulent W. C. Fields shuddering with mortal horror, grimacing on D.M.T. I’d brought back from visiting Timothy Leary at Millbrook Psychedelic Community, Fall 1964.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/144242
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleFrancesco Clemente and Julius Orlovsky (Peter's brother) visiting East 6th Street Ramana Maharshi storefront ashram, Lower East Side New York Fall 1984. For Francesco from Allen Ginsberg
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/205229
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Depiction ID9a2df75a-b779-4552-94ae-baf445d9aaa7
Subject ID143965
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleJack Kerouac, railroad brakeman’s rule-book in pocket, couch-pillows airing on fire-escape three flights up overlooking backyard clotheslines south. He’d already published _The Town & the City_ and completed a treasury of half-dozen unprinted classic volumes including _On the Road_, _Visions of Cody_,_ Doctor Sax_, early books of Blues and Dreams, & had begun _The Subterraneans’_ adventurous love affair with Alene Lee, “Mardou Fox.” Alene typed for W. S. Burroughs then in residence editing Yage Letters and Queer mss., unpublishable that decade, censorship ruled. I scribed “The Green Automobile,” Gregory Corso visited that season, 206 East 7th Street near Tompkins Park, Manhattan, probably September 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143965
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Depiction IDeb9c79bf-860b-4bb2-9f54-063d71f4fab3
Subject ID142148
Attributes
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleBill Burroughs in back bedroom waiting for company, he’d arrived from South America in August & we stayed together in my apartment till December working on _Yage Letters_ and _Queer_ manuscripts – Ace Books’d printed first paperback _Junky_ edition that Spring. “I come home from work [at N.Y. World- Telegram, newspaper copyboy] 4:45 and we talk till one A.M. or later . . . am all hung up in a great psychic marriage with him for the month —,” so I wrote to Neal Cassady, September 4, 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142148
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Depiction ID5b63184d-2e45-4ad9-8a12-b8d938c2011a
Subject ID154200
Attributes
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleGregory Corso musing on cot in room Peter Orlovsky & I shared in Tangier 1961 - we interviewed each other and Burroughs for first issue of City Lights Journal for Protection of All Beings, lots of talk.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/154200
typeimage
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Providernga
Depiction IDb383eeb8-456b-4d3d-96f0-9005f1c3d4cd
Subject ID163963
Attributes
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleBill Burroughs, more friendly + open than I realized at the time - 1953 - really pleased!
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/163963
typeimage
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Depiction ID0257aced-c2a2-499d-9693-5bdf13393245
Subject ID76847
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineRobert Frank Collection, Edward E. MacCrone Fund
subject_titleFriends Now Gone Forever...
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/76847
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineRobert Frank Collection, Gift of Robert Frank
subject_titleEugène Ionesco for "Mademoiselle" 2
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/88784
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Depiction ID1534046f-0176-4db5-82fc-3efdb7dbe840
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineRobert Frank Collection, Gift of Robert Frank
subject_titleFelix Pasilis--Painters no number
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/87355
typeimage
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Depiction ID2d265e47-bd46-4699-a965-01ab278000b1
Subject ID143978
Attributes
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleNeal Cassady & I went upstairs to attic at Millbrook estate near Poughkeepsie, big house where Tim Leary’s Castalia Foundation was then experimenting with psychedelic DMT, a half hour trip. Here Neal rests with eyes closed watched over by Susan Metzner in charge of holding the vial of clear liquid, just injected. I’d driven up from N.Y. with Kesey’s Merry Pranksters in their bus, Fall 1964.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143978
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleDick McBride, returned from England where he'd been distributing City Lights Books, Shig Murao & Jack Micheline facing my shadow through the door of Cafe Trieste, Grant Street San Francisco, March 16, 1985.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/208436
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Subject ID154188
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_title"Head bowed on his shoulder, now and then, he listened." My father Louis Ginsberg in his velvet chair 1976 the year he died. See poems in "Don't Grow Old" series for further explanation.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/154188
typeimage