Jack 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.
1953, printed later
Artist, American, 1926 - 1997
Artwork overview
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Medium
gelatin silver print
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Credit Line
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Dimensions
image: 34.8 x 23.5 cm (13 11/16 x 9 1/4 in.)
sheet: 51.7 x 40.5 cm (20 3/8 x 15 15/16 in.) -
Accession
2009.103.7
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Copyright
Copyright (c) 2010 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Allen Ginsberg Estate; Ellen and Gary Davis, Greenwich, CT (through Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York); gift to NGA, 2009.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
2010
Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, National Gallery of Art, Washington; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Grey Art Gallery & Study Center, New York University, New York; The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, 2010 - 2013, no. 47.
Inscriptions
signed by artist, lower right on sheet in black ink: Allen Ginsberg; artist inscription, across bottom under image: Jack 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 Aileen Lee, "Mardou Fox." Aileen typed for W. S. Burroughs then in residence editing Yage [sic] 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.