Brion Gysin Tuning in to the Multimedia Age - Tuning into the Multimedia Age

Painter, writer, sound poet, lyricist, performance artist - Brion Gysin first came to prominence in the 1950s in the heady atmosphere of the so-called Beat Hotel in Paris. His enormous range of radical ideas would become a source of inspiration for artists of the Beat Generation, as well as for their successors (among them David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Keith Haring and Laurie Anderson). br/> br/>As a painter Gysin is remembered for his evocative views of the Sahara and for his unprecedented calligraphic abstractions inspired by Japanese and Arabic script. His later discovery of the potential of a paint-roller to produce a limitless ready-made grid provided the basis for the unique ''roller poems'' of the 1970s, a concept extended to the use of 35mm film to produce photographic sequences showing the construction of the Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg) in Paris. br/> br/>Gysin''s chance observation of random combinations of words led to the development of the cut-up technique by his friend William S. Burroughs, with whom he would collaborate most notably in producing i>The Third Mind/i> (1978). Gysin''s inventive ideas also extended to permutated poems and to the development in 1961 of the Dreamachine - ''the first art object to be seen with the eyes closed'' - capable of producing a change of consciousness in the viewer, as well as to light shows and stage performances in collaboration with leading musicians such as Steve Lacy and Ramuntcho Matta. br/> br/>The sheer variety of visual material illustrated in this first comprehensive study of Gysin''s life and work reveals him as a remarkable artist. The accompanying texts include a biographical outline, together with first-hand reminiscences by Gysin''s friends and contemporaries such as John Giorno and Bernard Heidsieck, and analyses of his work and ideas by later scholars. br/>

Product details

• Authors: Guy Brett, Jose Ferez Kuri, Jose Ferez Kuri, José Férez Kuri
• Assisted by: Jose Ferez Kuri (Editor), José Férez Kuri (Editor), Jose Ferez Kuri (Editor)
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.09.2003
• EAN: 9780500284384
• ISBN: 978-0-500-28438-4
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 250 mm x 250 mm x 10 mm
• Weight: 1230 g
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art; Biography: general, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General, English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, ART / Individual Artists / Monographs, ART / Performance, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: general, Individual artists, art monographs, Performance Art, Literary studies: poetry and poets