The Centre Pompidou presents “Beat Generation”, a novel retrospective dedicated to the literary and artistic movement born in the late 1940s that would exert an ever-growing influence for the next two decades.
Beat Generation
“Beat generation” is a retrospective dedicated to the literary and artistic movement born in the late 1940s that would exert an ever-growing influence for the next two decades.
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- 02 August 2016
- Paris
Foreshadowing the youth culture and the cultural and sexual liberation of the 1960s, the emergence of the Beat generation in the years following the Second World War, just as the Cold War was setting in, scandalised a puritan and Mc Carthyite America. Then seen as subversive rebels, the Beats appear today as the representatives of one of the most important cultural movements of the 20th century.
For the artistic practices of the Beat Generation – readings, performances, concerts and films – testify to a breaking down of artistic boundaries and a desire for interdisciplinary collaboration that puts the singularity of the artist into question.
Alongside notable visual artists, mostly representative of the California scene, an important place is given to the literary dimension of the movement, to spoken poetry in its relationship to jazz, and more particularly to the Black American poetry that remains largely unknown in Europe, like the magazines in which it circulated.
The exhibition illustrates how profoundly the Beat Generation – in its expressive freedom, its breaking down of boundaries between disciplines and cultures, its “poor”, ecstatic and contemplative aesthetic, and also its violence – influenced the development of today’s countercultures, revealing it as their origin and casting light on ongoing problematics.
until 3 October 2016
Beat Generation
curated by Philippe-Alain Michaud
Centre Pompidou
46 Rue Beaubourg, Paris