John Yau Introduces Hyperallergic Readers to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Visual Art

John Yau introduces readers of Hyperallergic to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's exceptional paintings, by way of Ferlinghetti's first solo exhibition in New York, "Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Études." "Originally scheduled to open in March to celebrate Ferlinghetti’s 101st birthday," writes Yau, "the exhibition consisted of 14 works — two paintings, nine works on paper, and three small prints — in which the artist does sketchy interpretations of mythical figures (Icarus, Leda, and Orestes and his mother, Clytemnestra), literary figures (William Butler Yeats), and naked young men and women." More: 

Ferlinghetti’s pared-down world of myth shares something with the work of Mary Frank and Nancy Spero, but is largely animated by a wistful sense of humor. Beneath his fluid oil portrait, “The Young Yeats” (oil on canvas, 30 by 24 inches, 2008), Ferlinghetti has written with a dry brush on the cream-colored ground: “Maud Gonne gone.”

Ferlinghetti tells the viewer nothing more, leaving to those who know — or those who are curious to learn — to fill in the details about Yeat’s half-century-long mad crush on the suffragist, political firebrand, and actress Maud Gonne, and their shared preoccupation with the occult.

This particularly struck me because Ferlinghetti’s poems are often imagistic and accessible. In the paintings, there is an assumption that the viewer knows something about mythology, poetry, and politics. Nor are Ferlinghetti’s inscriptions on the artworks necessarily literal or transparent.

Continue at Hyperallergic.