Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings [Paperback]

The text and paintings here are revealing of Keroauc's soul as an artist tho without doubt his greatest paintings were done with words... and the numerous paintings and drawings reflect talent... however, most of the off the cuff pencil drawings are cartoonish and at times viewable for no more than 10 seconds. One thing he could rarily get right was a person's face, particularly the nose...very weird... The writer's pedantic analysis of Kerouac's work is alright at first particularly in setting the historical artistic context for modernist American painting, but begins to wear..and his assessment of Kerouac's work is inflated...There is no doubt Kerouac took his painting seriously. Paintings like The Eagle, the Ghost over Lowell at tenament dusk, the abstract paintings, the Clothesline, the woman with guitar and the pencil drawing of Buddha are all accomplished works..really quite surprising! (I would have liked to have seen his painting of Charlie Parker..but that is not in this collection). This book is recommended because, for once in the last ten years, we have some new insight into the man and his artistic vision.

This is a remarkable work about a remarkable artist - a real eye opener and worth every penny

Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac (March 12, 1922 - October 21, 1969) was far more than an American novelist and poet: he is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. And that is not all. As this excellent book demonstrates he was also an imaginative painter and drawer and Thanks to the fine writing by Ed Adler and essays and forwards by other admirers of Kerouac we are introduced to his visual output as well as his place in literature. Here are unpublished notebooks that shed light on the art world of his time.

As the publisher's notes state 'Like his friends William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kerouac took an avid interest in painting. This handsome book features over 130 pages of full-color paintings, black-and-white drawings, and sketches from Kerouac's nickel notebooks. Adler, who co-curated the 1994 New York University exhibition that first showcased Kerouac's art, here provides formal analyses of Kerouac's work as well as information on historical background and influences. Adler does a particularly good job tracing the aesthetic and thematic similarities in Kerouac's writing and art. Devoted fans of Kerouac's novels will find the subjects of these paintings (e.g., religious figures, cats, spooky men in slouch hats) familiar and interesting, and it is to these devoted readers that this volume will most appeal.' 'This first-ever collection of Jack Kerouac's visual art includes nearly every existing full-color painting collected and preserved by the Kerouac estate in Lowell, Massachusetts. Also included are dozens of black-and-white line drawings, sketches, and facsimile reproductions of Kerouac's notations from his unpublished notebooks. In writing, Kerouac's restless and relentless experimentation--what he called "spontaneous bop prosody"--pushed language to the boundaries of meaning. In painting and drawing he found a complementary means of expression. A friend and admirer of painters Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, Franz Kline, and Dody Muller, Kerouac was an ardent and deliberate student who worked to develop and refine his skills and his conception of the act of painting--a conception related to the spontaneous composition he had pioneered in his books. Ed Adler's essay offers an unprecedented view of Kerouac, the visual artist. Rich in anecdote and drawing on extensive quotation from Kerouac's letters, notebooks, and published writings, Adler's essay demonstrates the biographical and thematic preoccupations common to Kerouac's writing and painting, especially Kerouac's struggle to integrate the two spiritual traditions, Catholicism and Buddhism, to which he was devoted. No consideration of Kerouac will be complete without reference to this heretofor- unseen aspect of his life and work.'

The book is divided into telltale chapters; The Northport Years; The New York School; The Beat Poets; Self Portraits, and Drawing the Blues. In each chapter the numerous drawings and paintings are accompanied by comments by both Kerouac and by Adler and the result is a solid look at the visual works of one of American's Icons. It is rich in content and richer in memories of a different time in American history. Grady Harp, June 11

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  4.7 out of 5 stars