ENGL 4310 – Heart Beats Exhibit

The Beat artists represented in this exhibition embody unique expressions of the artistic rebellion that rocked American culture during the 1950s and can be considered individual beats within the pulsating “Beat heart.” Poet Allen Ginsberg’s first public reading of his poem “Howl,” at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955, triggered an unanticipated explosion of emotional energies unleashed by his denouncement of spiritual emptiness and blind conformity to a growing capitalist, materialist society. Writers Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, and Anne Waldman each wrote from their own distinct emotional and intellectual registers, but they were all part of a shared conversation promoted by the little magazines that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s and served as the metaphorical circulatory system for the Beat cultural body.

All of the writers whose work appears in this exhibition made early print appearances in little magazines such as Yugen, The Floating Bear, Big Table, Intrepid, and Angel Hair. Little magazines are non-commercial, small press publications that focused on literature, art, and social theory by obscure authors. They are considered precursors of the contemporary zine and mini comic. The great strength of these magazines was the rapidity with which they distributed new forms of artistic expression to those most directly involved in producing it. In this way, little magazines brought together painters and poets, sculptors and novelists, all hungry for what was new. The little magazines themselves often operated on shoestring budgets and sacrificed durability for speedy production, almost always vanishing after print runs of months or a few short years. This exhibition combines Beat writers with little magazines and the artwork of the period to communicate the interconnectedness of the entire Beat artistic scene.

Heart Beats is curated by the 2019 Utah State University English 4310 Beat Class, which consists of the following students: Maddie Barker, Tanner Benson, Terin Crane, Brecken Duve, Jayden Hamling, Paige Hammer, Samantha Hanson, Nate Hardy, Nicole King, Sarah Lueckler, Megan Mattinson, Kortland Phillips, Bennett Robinet, Andrea Sagers, Erin Searle, Maysen Smith.