Something for the weekend -- Angel Headed Hipsters at the National
Theatre
Asylum's roving reporter Declan Tan headed to the National Theatre to
give its Angel Headed Hipsters exhibition of private photos from the
Beat Generation's most famous poets the once over.
The Beats. Every right-minded reader, wannabe hipster or drug fiend
aficionado has come across them at some point, either as a literary
justification for their plundering scag habits, or in the form of a
strategically placed book of poetry/cut-ups to intrigue those sporadic
evening visitors.
Maybe both.
And most likely because they've vindicated your Dionysian rationale by
their very existence, you have a soft and fuzzy spot reserved for them
and all of their travails.
If so, then here's something for you: a tidy little exhibition
showcasing the Beats and associated merry pranksters, with the slightly
unappealing name 'Angel-headed Hipsters' (though a quote),
opening at the National Theatre this week.
Read on for a gallery of the exhibition's highlights and some mildly
chaotic literary captions.
Click through for some of the gallery's highlights. For each images we
downed a pint of whiskey, a spoonful of peyote (and an ibuprofen) and
tried to imagine how the beats would write magazine captions. Just go
with it... man
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http://www.aolcdn.com/ke/media_gallery/v1/ke_media_gallery_wrapper.swf
The Beat Generation
The private photos of some of the best of The Beats.
Wikicommons
The show features the beats in their prime, either posing for blurb shot
posterity or simply out of their spindly faces on all manner of
sought-after substances. There is portrait after portrait of the artists
as young men, quietly frowning or drowning in their own iconoclastic
juices.
"The main element of the exhibition shows them as friends in New York in
the early 50s, four years before any of them became famous," says
theatre manager, John Langley. "They were all convinced they had a
literary future, and they freed themselves to pursue it by taking menial
jobs, which allowed them a level of comfort and, above all, mobility
which would seem impossibly glamorous today."
'Howl', a film starring James Franco as Ginsberg "premiered during the
run of the exhibition, there is a perfect synergy there in that you see
James Franco as Ginsberg taking some of the photographs in the
exhibition, in the film," adds Langley.
Ginsberg himself scribbled etchings and diary excerpts as captions for
his pictures, and the exhibition often demonstrates his spasmodic
ability to capture a mood and a moment. And on other occasions shows how
he just plain forgot to twist the focussy thing. And anyway, it's the
booze and the drugs that draws us to them anyway, isn't it? So he had a
decent excuse.
For a group that wanted, fought for and, to some extent represented,
freedom, they did a pretty decent job of finding it amongst the murder
and the bullshit.
Make their acquaintance
at the National in London until March 20.
--
http://www.asylum.co.uk/2011/01/28/something-for-the-beat-end-angel-headed-hi
psters-at-the-natio/
Via InstaFetch
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