Titan at Triton: Ferlinghetti's art on show

Santa Clara gallery unveils paintings by the late jazz poet and novelist, publisher and bookseller. Jonah Raskin was there for Rock and the Beat Generation

Review

‘Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Painter, Poet, Pacifist’, Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA

By Jonah Raskin

FOR JOHN Miller Mathias, who curated the show, it was a dream come true. ‘The dream was to celebrate Ferlinghetti’s life,’ Mathias told me, his voice clear and passionate.

Titled ‘Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Painter, Poet, Pacifist’, the exhibit showcases 55 works of art by the man who co-founded City Lights Bookstore in 1953, and put into print his first book of poems, Pictures of the Gone World, at City Lights Publishing. ‘I think Ferlinghetti gave everyone in California permission to self-publish their work,’ Mathias said.

I saw the exhibit as the Triton in Santa Clara, south of San Francisco, on a weekday afternoon, along with Starr Sutherland, a filmmaker, and Natalie Craig, a painter, both of whom live in San Francisco in the shadow of the Beat world.

Ferlinghetti died in San Francisco in 2021 at the age of 101, but his art lives on. It did for me and for Sutherland and Craig who, like me, had all viewed previous exhibits of Ferlinghetti’s work. We agreed that the Triton show was clearly the best, the most comprehensive and, aesthetically speaking, the most pleasing to the eye.

‘What I heard from many people who came to the museum was that they didn’t know Lawrence was a painter,’ Mathias said. ‘They were surprised to see how many canvases he painted and how large some of them are.’ He added: ‘Lawrence was prolific.’

Pictured above: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was 101 when died in 2021, outside his City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco

He often worked quickly, painting spontaneously in much the same way that Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady wrote, spontaneously, at least on occasion.Painter Natalie Craig had the rare opportunity to observe Ferlinghett in action. ‘I saw him in his studio, watched him approach a canvas and make a mark without hesitation,’ she said. ‘It was truly amazing.’

Mathias reminded me and my pals that Ferlinghetti painted in Paris before he returned to the States and published his own poetry. ‘His career could have gone either way, toward poetry or toward painting,’ he said.

In the last phase of his life he returned to painting with a vengeance and wanted to be recognised as an accomplished artist. To the end of his days, Ferlinghetti was disappointed that he didn’t receive the accolades he thought he deserved for his work with oils and acrylic, canvases and paint brushes. The Triton Museum of Art accorded him long overdue recognition.

‘I think it was important that Lawrence changed his last name from Ferlin to Ferlinghetti,’ Mathias told me. ‘After he did that, he had more flow and more liquidity in his life and in his work.’

Pictured above: John Miller Mathias, curator at the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara

He added, ‘It was also important that New Directions published Lawrence’s work. including A Coney Island of the Mind, and that City Lights displayed his New Directions books.’

Three large paintings catch the eye when one first enters the large, well-lit room where the art is arrayed on four walls: War, Liberty #2 and Swan Song, which depicts an elegant swan.

Those three works represent some of the major themes that Ferlinghetti returned to again and again: his opposition to armed conflict; his love of human freedom; and his admiration for the beauty of the natural world and all living things.

Pictured above: Liberty #2, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

One wall offers a dozen or so black-and-white pictures of the poet by photographer Chris Felver who also made a documentary about him titled Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, painter, pacifist and publisher, helped to bring about a rebirth of wonder in a world reeling from war, materialism and the twin obscenities of greed and selfishness. May his art and his legend live. The exhibit closes at the end of December 2022. If you're at all close, run to the Triton.

Note: Jonah Raskin is one of America’s leading commentators on the counterculture. His novel Beat Blues: San Francisco, 1955 was published in late last year and reviewed in R&BG on September 27th, 2021