Back in the 60s - The Beat Generation

The beats came out of the Times Square subterranean world of down-and-out, streetwise, urban mix of characters. The underbelly of the Times Square terrain induced and introduced the term "Beat Generation". They were free-wheeling, coast-to-coast, hitch-hiking, spontaneous, exploring the spontaneous prose of the moment. Benzedrine kept them awake. They were exploring the sub-conscious which was a lead-into the Surrealists, improvisational jazz, Eastern mysticism.

The West coast beats fired the Ginsburg imagination. The winds of the 60s were already upon us. There was a Dada-Surrealist break-away from classical education and theories of modernism; a break-down to free forms of expression. DeKooning had some problems with this but Pollock had no trouble making this leap. He could take off running and push the boundaries of paintings. The east coast beats were more intelligentsia compared to the west coast beats who were more spiritualist.

A Peom about Baudellaire, "Beauth is everywhere" . . . "You had to make a dollar and hustle in the street." Let's drink cold water from a tin cup while on 57th Street they played bebop music.

Museums and artists were creating and experimenting with a new form of expressionism or a less studied approach. There was that breaking up of sensibilities.