Beat poet Ferlinghetti's art gets yanked from S.F. building lobby

[Newsjock]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

You'll have to forgive Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the legendary poet who helped launch the Beat Generation, if he feels like he has tumbled into a time warp.

Fifty years after being charged with obscenity for publishing Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" - he won the case in a landmark 1957 ruling - some of his own art has been yanked from public view because several of the paintings depict nudity.

"It feels like we've regressed to the Fifties," Ferlinghetti said Thursday, taking the opportunity to point out that just last week a New York-based radio station refused to air a recording of Ginsberg reading "Howl" because it feared fines from the FCC. "It seems this mentality will be with us in every age."

... The abstract pieces, done in oils on 15-foot-wide house painter's tarps, went up Saturday night in the soaring lobby of the Bank of America building downtown. By Tuesday night, they were gone.

... Several of the paintings, done mostly in blues, browns and oranges, depict nude human figures. They are done, however, in an abstract figurative style that eschews detail in favor of bold colors and thick strokes.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_7150564

[saltpoint]

1. His poem, "Dog" is a masterpiece.

And he runs a sensational bookshop, too.

The "authorities" always look like wooden fools in these instances.

[nashville_brook]

17. had to look it up >>> here's "DOG"

The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn't hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit's Tower
and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee
He's afraid of Coit's Tower
but he's not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog's life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking
democratic dog
engaged in real
free enterprise
with something to say
about ontology
something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master's Voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramophone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything

[saltpoint]

20. Hi, Brook. And thanks so much for posting "Dog." It's a favorite of mine.

Some poets are crusty bohemians.

L.F. fills that bill nicely.

Many thanks.

[Lautremont]

2. First Ginsberg (in absentia) and now Ferlinghetti.

This is the 50s, but with more crime, pollution and inflation.

[Triana]

3. How sad. These people really need to get over themselves...

...Ferlinghetti is an icon. As is his art and poetry. :wtf: is the matter with the stiff suits and their addled pressboard brains?

[aaronbees]

4. That is pathetic

They're nice paintings, warm in tone and really pretty tame. I love Ferlinghetti. I didn't know that about a radio station refusing to air "Howl" recently; that's even more pathetic. Welcome to a nation in fear.

[EFerrari]

5. My city is being taken over by the Pod People.

:(

[Zhade]

6. And repped by Pelosi, either too cowardly to stop the invasion or complicit.

I feel for you!

[Vidar]

8. Good to see you, Zhade. Haven't seen one of your posts for a while.

[EFerrari]

13. I got to meet Lawrence when Matt Gonzalez held a post game show

in North Beach after the 2004 election -- where Matt "lost" as Kerry "lost". I asked the room who really believed Junior had been elected. Not re-elected because we know he's never been elected.

It was an interesting moment. Several hands went up but not most hands. And Matt told me he agreed with me but he didn't seem very happy that I'd asked outright.

[lurky]

9. SF, New York, and everywhere else that was ever interesting...

The poddies have taken over and are banishing all eccentrics, creatives, and non-conformists to the hinterlands. Soon our cultural centers will be nothing but neutered, Republicanized versions of themselves. Suburbia with tall buildings.

[EFerrari]

10. The resistance here is building. We weren't paying attention before

but we are now.

They can have this town when they pry it out of our cold dead hands.

[lurky]

11. That's great news!

How are you doing it? Here in NY, it seems like the bulldozer of gentrification is just unstoppable.

[EFerrari]

12. All the progressive groups are working together.

Against the war, for impeachment, for housing and so on. We're not counting who helps who more. We just pitch in together. It's sort of amazing.

We are at the moment losing the battle against gentrification but, we're all on the same page about it. Too many fires for now. But, this place is stirred up.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

19. You notice that too????

A friend and I were just talking about that -- all this downtown, "luxury" condo, chi chi restaurant, bullshit that has been happening to the City is disgusting. Fuck the artisans, fuck the working class, fuck anyone who doesn't believe the future of San Francisco should be all super shiny and "white". It's like the entire City ahs been populated by a bunch of Gavin Newsom, Willie Brown, Union Street clones. :puke: VERY disheartening.

On edit: What are your thoughts on the Mayoral race?? Short of writing in "Sponge Bob Squarepants" and I looking at Quentin Mecke. Have you heard anything about him???

[Vidar]

7. Wow! Blast from the past. 30 years he took a nap at my place.

I have no particular credentials, but my former fiancee was head of our University's poetry union at the time. I didn't realize he was still alive.

[EFerrari]

14. He is! And he's still great.

:)

[xchrom]

15. ok -- there's some deep irony -- san francisco?!?! -- n/t

[velvet]

16. "As safe as toast"

The artist, however, said the paintings - worth about $50,000 a pop - are as safe as toast."

A fine analogy that, from a fine poet. So apt. What could be more innocuous than toast?

Long ago last century I exchanged glances with "the artist", it was on a staircase in Melbourne Town Hall, where he was performing with Alan Ginsberg and Ravi Shankar. I'd known what to expect from Ginsberg and Shankar (and of course they failed to disappoint) but Ferlinghetti's work had been a complete surprise, and a pleasant one. It was intermission, no one else on the stairs, Ferlinghetti's coming up, I'm going down, there's politely brief eye-contact as we pass. I swear I saw his eyes flash. And they were purple. But that might say more about me at the time than him. Anyhow, a fine poet.

Are the paintings in the article among those that were taken down? If so I imagine it was the naked Christ that had the bankers barking loudest, but I bet it was "The Upper Classes" that really got under their nails.

[nashville_brook]

18. the paintings are with the story -- they ARE safe as Toast

[kath]

21. Here's a great poem he wrote shortly before the Iraq invasion:

Speak Out!
by LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI


And a vast paranoia sweeps across the land

And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers

Into the beginning of the Third World War

The war with the Third World

And the terrorists in Washington

Are drafting all the young men

And no one speaks

And they are rousting out

All the ones with turbans

And they are flushing out

All the strange immigrants

And they are shipping all the young men

To the killing fields again

And no one speaks

And when they come to round up

All the great writers and poets and painters

The National Endowment of the Arts of Complacency

Will not speak

While all the young men

Will be killing all the young men

In the killing fields again

So now is the time for you to speak

All you lovers of liberty

All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness

All you lovers and sleepers

Deep in your private dreams

Now is the time for you to speak

O silent majority

Before they come for you