SAN FRANCISCO — Few figures are extra beloved in San Francisco than Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The late poet, writer, editor, essayist, critic, and bookseller may be finest identified to most individuals for his 1958 poetry assortment Coney Island of the Thoughts, which has offered over one million copies — or for being arrested on obscenity expenses for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, or for founding the famed Metropolis Lights Bookstore. Because of an intimate and beautiful exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, Ferlinghetti is now cultivating a brand new repute as an artist.
Ferlinghetti for San Francisco gathers lithographs, etchings, prints, broadsides, and letterpress books that the famed poet made within the latter a part of his profession. The 25 works on view are all drawn from the Achenbach Basis for the Graphic Arts, a lot of them donated by the writer’s property after his demise.
Ferlinghetti all the time claimed portray was his past love, however poems saved getting in the best way. It’s no shock that an artwork exhibit by a poet and writer goes all in on prints and works on paper. He was, in any case, a e-book man. Actually, Metropolis Lights started as the primary all-paperback bookstore within the nation, and that dedication to paper and printing is obvious on this present. Certainly, Ferlinghetti for San Francisco is a love letter to the nice prospects of the web page because it poses fascinating questions concerning the distinctions and overlaps between “studying” and “seeing.”
For instance, in “The Human” (2012), letters, graphemes, and hieroglyphics take heart stage. Although the human faces, from which the textual content appears to emanate, are a lot bigger, they’re, paradoxically, much less outstanding. It’s as if the “people” are relegated to the margins, ceding to the centrality of language. To be human, the piece suggests, is to talk, to put in writing, to make marks, to speak.
Equally, each “And He Was A part of the Sea” (1998) and “Far Out On the Lake a Darkish Boat Drifts” (1993/2020) juxtapose the textual and the pictorial in shocking methods. Textual content and picture jockey for our consideration. Phrases are scrawled boldly above a picture and but concurrently perform as picture. They exist inside the borders of the seascape and bleed into the body of the visible area. The phrases are neither headlines, precisely, nor captions; somewhat, the decoding experiences are like encountering a comic book and even promoting: We learn earlier than we see, however the studying can also be the seeing.
“Allen Allen” (2000), my favourite piece within the exhibition, additionally performs with the competing gestures of textual content and picture in compelling methods. Right here, a poem celebrating Ginsberg by Edward Sanders turns into Ferlinghetti’s canvas, successfully making a double tribute. The 2 Allens — the {photograph} and Ferlinghetti’s drawing — don’t compete however somewhat complement one another of their mimetic/non-mimetic essences. Picture is superimposed on textual content in order that Sanders’s phrases seem like emanating, nearly godlike, from the legendary poet.
Many works within the present are collaborations, which seems like a metaphor for Ferlinghetti’s life. One nice instance is Limitless Life, a collection of 10 drypoint and aquatint prints by Bay Space artist Stephanie Peek that seem alongside sparse poems by Ferlinghetti. Peek’s closely shaded monochromatic photographs of the moon (or is it the solar?) reflecting on the ocean, or birds flying into or out of the sunshine or a cave evoke Japanese block prints and scroll work, which pair effectively with the austere, haiku-like verses.
Ferlinghetti was one of many nice ambassadors of up to date American poetry. The few instances I spoke with him, he by no means needed to debate his personal work; he would all the time advocate different poets I ought to learn. That lack of ego is mirrored in all the exhibit, which is a becoming tribute to his beneficiant spirit and capacious imaginative and prescient. He would have cherished every little thing about this present.
Ferlinghetti for San Francisco continues on the Legion of Honor (100 thirty fourth Avenue, San Francisco, California) by way of July 19, 2026. The exhibition was curated by Natalia Lauricella and Mauro Aprile Zanetti.
